Random tales from the 1966 tournament that have absolutely nothing to do with Azerbaijani linesmen, Kenneth Wolstenholme or Pickles the Dog1. The branding for the 1966 Football World Championship for the Jules Rimet Trophy was all over the shop. But at least Fifa were trying. The 1966 finals was the first to be blessed with a mascot, a small lion wearing a union jack shirt walking along with its eyes narrowed to the point of being totally shut. A myopic nationalist, who’d have thought it. Willie was the creation of the freelance artist Reg Hoye, who had first considered “a little man in a bowler hat” and “a man in a cloth cap” but wished to steer clear of class...
Hungary were unbeaten in four years. West Germany had no chance. Yet in the 1954 final the underdogs produced one of the great World Cup shocksThe rain was teeming down in Bern and Hungary were about to win the World Cup. Ferenc Puskas had put the Mighty Magyars ahead after six minutes and Zoltan Czibor had doubled the advantage after eight. They were 2-0 up inside 10 minutes and they had not lost in four years. They were 2-0 up inside 10 minutes against a team that they had beaten 8-3 barely a fortnight earlier. They were 2-0 up inside 10 minutes against a side who, four years earlier, did not even exist.What unfolded over the next 80 minutes, if...
Italy should have seen off Haiti with ease in 1974 but the group game burst into life through the unheralded Emmanuel Sanon …The win-or-bust, tension-ratcheting final rounds of the World Cup allow memorable moments and dramatic sub-plots to breed like bacteria on a soggy handkerchief. Italy v Haiti, however, was the opening game of Group Four, a match which the heavy favourites won by a two-goal margin. And yet it was a day when one man rose into legend and another crashed into infamy; an afternoon knitted with spectacular yarns and statistical curiosities and embellished with one of the sport’s most controversial substitutions.We should start, though, with qualification, a process through which one side sailed with record-breaking ease, while the...
On 4 July 1998 the forward took three divine touches, scored the perfect goal and sent the Netherlands into the semi-finalsBobby Moore never got a bathmat wet in his life. Mike Summerbee, who sometimes shared a room with Moore on England trips, said he was “the only man who could have a bath and get out dry”. Moore would flick the water off one leg, dry that with a towel and then step out on to the dry leg, before continuing the process with the rest of his body. Moore’s routine will come as no surprise to those who watched his immaculate, pristine defending. Nor will the fact that he brought such meticulousness to his wardrobe, where jumpers were hung...
In 1938 Italy went to France and shrugged off protests and wild unpopularity to successfully defend their World Cup crownThe critical moment was … when our players raised their hands to give the fascist salute … I entered the stadium with our players, lined-up military style, and stood on the right. At the salute we predictably met with a solemn and deafening barrage of whistles, insults and remarks. It seemed like we were in Italy so much did the expressions resound of our idioms and dialects. How long that rumpus lasted I couldn’t say. I was rigid, with an arm outstretched horizontally I couldn’t check the time. The German referee and Norwegian players looked at us worriedly. At a certain...