Gareth Southgate’s admirably modest team may just offer some form of redemption for World Cup veterans like me
Back then – 30 July 1966 – it was pretty well possible to park your car within a minute’s walk of Wembley’s twin towers, and when our Ford Zephyr came to a juddering halt, me clutching the envelope containing our tickets in one hand and my self-constructed union jack flagpole in the other, my dad gave me a talk I had never expected. It was not about the rarity of this moment, the first English appearance in a World Cup final since the tournament began. It was about the opposition team: West Germany. I said I knew they were good. East Germany, by contrast, were rubbish.
He told me he did not like the team we were about to play and reeled off the names of cousins of whom I had never previously heard who had died in two previous world wars. He told me about D-day, something it emerged he had a small hand in planning at Shaef, the Allied headquarters.
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