66: The World Cup in Real Time

Ian Passingham

Description

It is now 50 years since 1966 and all that. We've all heard Kenneth Wolstenholme's famous TV commentary: "Some people are on the pitch...They think it's all over...It is now" countless times. But, aside from that and a few other classic facts, what do most of us really know about the 1966 World Cup finals? 66: The World Cup in Real Time retells the story of the iconic 1966 World Cup finals as if they were happening today - in a complete and highly-readable format. Live newspaper-style reports of all the matches, alongside reaction, off-field news and gossip from all 16 nations, form the basis of this unique book and bring the tournament back to life for the reader. There are tales of players breaking curfews, the England WAGS of the day, the Queen nervously asking how long was left as the clock ticked down in the final; while football's first-ever drug-testing programme left the Brazil team worrying whether drinking coffee would lead to failed drug tests! Take yourself back to the era of Beatlemania, mini-skirts, black and white TV, Harold Wilson's Labour government, the Cold War, and relive England's greatest-ever footballing triumph!

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 28 février 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785311703
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2016
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Ian Passingham, 2016
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 978-1-78531-121-5
eBook ISBN: 978-1-78531-170-3
---
Ebook Conversion by www.eBookPartnership.com
Contents
Acknowledgements
Notes
Introduction
Prelude (Part One) 1872-1962 From Masters To Pupils
Prelude (Part Two) 1963-1966 World Cup Countdown
The World Cup In Real Time
Tuesday 5 July - Six days to go
Sunday 10 July - One day to go
Monday 11 July - Matchday One
Tuesday 12 July - Matchday Two
Wednesday 13 July - Matchday Three
Thursday 14 July - Rest Day One
Friday 15 July - Matchday Four
Saturday 16 July - Matchday Five
Sunday 17 July - Rest Day Two
Monday 18 July Rest Day Three
Tuesday 19 July - Matchday Six
Wednesday 20 July - Matchday Seven
Thursday 21 July - Rest Day Four
Friday 22 July - Rest Day Five
Saturday 23 July - Matchday Eight
Sunday 24 July - Rest Day Six
Monday 25 July - Matchday Nine
Tuesday 26 July - Matchday Ten
Wednesday 27 July - Rest Day Seven
Thursday 28 July - Matchday Eleven
Friday 29 July - Rest Day Eight
Saturday 30 July - Matchday Twelve
Sunday 31 July - The Day After The Final
Monday 1 August - Two Days After The Final
The Aftermath (Part One) The Man Behind The Mask
The Aftermath (Part Two) What happened to
Appendix
Bibliography
Photographs
Acknowledgements
THANK YOU to everyone who has helped on the road to 66: The World Cup In Real Time . To Vicky (another reason why 1966 was a special year) for all your encouragement, help and patience. To Ella and Alex for your support. To Vicky, Magnus, Alex, Rob and Shaun for giving up your time to be guinea pigs. And to the staff at the wonderful British Library.
Also, many thanks to Pitch for having faith in this project. I am grateful to everyone at Pitch who worked on the book and particularly to Duncan for his excellent artwork and to Graham for his skill and great patience in fine-tuning the layout and typesetting.

Ian Passingham is a journalist with 30 years experience in local and national newspapers. Having worked as a news reporter, news editor and sports editor with Essex County Newspapers, he joined the Daily Star in 1994 as a sports sub-editor. In 2003, he moved to The Sun as assistant sports editor and has been a senior SunSport production journalist for the last 12 years.
Notes
THE information in this book is drawn mostly from reports published at the time and has been cross-checked against video footage and 1966-related books published since the tournament.
The day-by-day reports in the book are intended to reflect events as they were understood at the time and, therefore, deliberately exclude information which has emerged in the 50 years since the tournament, such as Bobby Moore having been treated for testicular cancer and what Alf Ramsey may (or may not) have told his players or FA officials in private conversations at the time.
The chronology of the story is true to events as they happened. In a few instances, a quote or a trivial story may have been shifted from its original date to give a better balance to the overall narrative. None of these are in any way taken out of context.
The spellings of many participants names vary in reports published in 1966 and since. The titles attached to some officials also vary. Every effort has been made to report these accurately.
Largely, the spellings of names correspond with those used in Chris Freddi s highly-comprehensive Complete Book Of The World Cup: 2006 edition , as the author clearly went to great lengths to clarify them. In the case of the North Korean player, Pak Doo-Ik, Freddi refers to him as Park Doo-Ik, but the use of Pak rather than Park has been so common over the last 50 years that it seemed ridiculous to deviate from the popular version.
The attendances given are the official figures FIFA list today. Surprisingly, the final attendance figure (96,924) is lower than England s final group game against France (98,270). In fact, according to the same source, the England-France match had the highest attendance of any fixture. Attendances reported at the time differ in some cases from those given now by FIFA, particularly for matches at Wembley. The England-France attendance was actually reported as only 92,500. This and other figures published during the tournament are too conveniently rounded (75,000 for England v Uruguay, for example) to be considered reliable. However, it should be noted that in some instances the FIFA statistics may also be open to question because they possibly include advance ticket sales. Some fans bought packages of tickets for a number of matches and then did not actually attend them all. Other tickets may have been bought by touts and gone unused.
Introduction
It s only once in a lifetime, you know.
With these words, Prime Minister Harold Wilson coaxed Alf Ramsey on to the balcony at London s Royal Garden Hotel for English football s reluctant hero to receive the acclaim of the thousands of fans who had gathered below to celebrate.
As Wilson watched the England manager raise the Jules Rimet Trophy on the night of 30 July 1966, little did he know how prophetic his words would be.
Fifty years on and English football is still waiting to host a World Cup again, let alone win one.
To most of us, the story of the 1966 World Cup finals in England has been simplified over those 50 years to something like
England aren t very good.
Ramsey becomes manager. Ramsey says we will win the World Cup.
The cup is stolen.
The cup is found by a dog.
Ramsey calls Argentina animals .
Russian linesman (who s actually from Azerbaijan) says Geoff Hurst s shot did cross the line.
Kenneth Wolstenholme says, Some people are on the pitch. They think it s all over. It is now. That sums it all up pretty nicely, but there is so much more to the story. And certainly so much more than England s victory.
Home fans welcomed 15 visiting teams and - unlike today, when many overseas stars play in the Premier League and there is widespread TV coverage of football from around the globe - these foreign players would have seemed exotic and mysterious. In the case of North Korea, they might as well have been men from Mars.
Playing (and, importantly, refereeing) styles were wildly varied around the world and the game in general bore little resemblance to what we see today. There was brutal tackling and little protection for flair players, the game was played with heavy leather footballs and teams got only two points for a win. There were no substitutes, no red and yellow cards and no back-pass rule.
In England, football did not have the mass interest it has today. The FA Cup Final was one of the only matches televised live and English football chiefs were anxious to keep it that way amid concern over falling attendances. Indeed, the level of interest in football was reflected by advance ticket sales for the World Cup, with even the England group matches not coming close to selling out.
Today, our top clubs stadiums are state-of-the-art allseater sporting venues after the massive rebuilding programme sparked by the 1989 Hillsborough disaster. Ahead of the World Cup, our ageing grounds were in such a state that it was feared they would be an embarrassment. After a long battle, the FA and Sports Minister Denis Howell convinced the government to pump 500,000 into stadium improvements and work carried on until the last minute at some grounds.
On the field, Ramsey s team were not generally given much chance of success. England had once been regarded worldwide as masters of the game, but by the time Ramsey took charge in 1963, even the most deluded and arrogant among the English football Establishment had long since realised this was a myth.
While English football s standing had been revived to some extent by increasing success in European club competitions, expectations of success for the international team had been dimmed by our dismal failure at four World Cups once the FA had finally deigned to enter, having snubbed the three pre-Second World War editions of the competition.
Opinion was divided over the England manager and his methods. Many fans and pundits predicted failure as Ramsey experimented with personnel and formations right up until the big kick-off.
As a personality, he certainly wasn t universally popular. The bulk of England s support came from the working classes and Ramsey was one of their own. He was very much a players manager and, privately, he despised the old-school FA blazers . In public, though, his aloof manner and guarded sound-bites, spoken in a carefully cultivated and sometimes almost comical wannabe upper-class accent, meant he came across as one of the Establishment rather than the Dagenham-born son of a straw and hay dealer.
Much has been made of England having home advantage in 1966, but the reality was that disillusionment with the state of the national team was such that Football League chairman Joe Richards felt moved to issue an eve-of-tournament rallying call to fans, saying that the atmosphere at Wembley was as cold as any away ground for our players .
As a major sporting event, the World Cup could not claim to rival the Olympics. It was, though, steadily g