1966

by Bobby Charlton

  At various stages of the long road all of them had made strong cases for their inclusion, most notably the gifted Peter Thompson, who had performed so impressively when we lost heavily to Brazil in the Maracanã two years earlier, and Budgie Byrne, who around that time had scored a memorable hat-trick against Portugal in Lisbon. They left us, along with Thompson’s Anfield team-mate Gordon Milne, a clever, talented midfielder operator, the fine, strong Chelsea forward Bobby Tambling and Blackburn’s stylish full-back Keith Newton.

  It was hard to see such accomplished – and ambitious – professionals leave. Each of them had had good reason to nourish their hopes, and not least Newton who just a few months earlier had been awarded his first cap in our 1-0 win over West Germany at Wembley.

  Inevitably, I speculated on what my own feelings might have been had I received that ominous tap on the shoulder. I knew I would have been devastated because I had come to love my life with the England team. Each game had become a wonderful challenge, a test not just of any natural talent I might have but also my ability to be in charge of it, develop it according to the needs of the team and a manager whose judgement I had come to respect so highly.

  As a youngster I had seen the international game as a luxury, something of a bonus, a quite glamorous distraction if you like, from the club football which imposed such heavy physical demands in return for a livelihood which in enjoyment and satisfaction I had always believed couldn’t be rivalled in any other walk of life. By now, though, playing on the international stage, running on to the fields of places like the Maracanã and Bernabéu, had become an element of my lifeblood. I could only imagine the empty feeling my rejected squad-mates carried away from the Shropshire village Alf had turned into one of the great testing grounds of our careers.

  It was also true that none of us had reason to believe that our tickets to play had been stamped unequivocally. There was never a point when Alf, by accident or design, conveyed this assurance and in the games that came after Madrid it was clear enough he was still steeling himself for some major decisions.

  In the first of them, a 1-1 draw against Poland at Goodison Park early in January, he kept the 4-3-3 system, with Ball, Stiles and Eastham again working in the middle and Gordon Harris of Burnley getting a run in my place in the forward three. I had a twinge of injury and Alf was happy enough to take a closer look at a player who had become a major factor in the extremely impressive Lancashire team.

  Six weeks later I came back against West Germany at Wembley, when Nobby Stiles stabbed home his only goal in international football and Geoff Hurst’s debut was, strangely enough on reflection, less a talking point than the boos which rippled down from the terraces of an Empire Stadium disgruntled by a performance which carried little of the panache or certainty displayed at the Bernabéu.

  Alf dismissed the jeers and the slow handclapping and preferred to dwell on the encouragement provided by Hurst’s strong running and powerful physical presence. If the champagne that came with the Madrid honeymoon had been enjoyable, it had not exactly turned his head. Back in the dressing room he said to us, ‘Listen to them moan out there. But I will tell you this, they’ll go mad if we beat West Germany by one goal in the World Cup final.’

  Peter Thompson was one who was not lifted by Alf’s defiance and later he reported that he had left the stadium cast down by the fear that he had missed an opportunity to make a convincing case for the enduring value of an out-and-out winger. Many years later he still felt the pain of that time, saying, ‘Bertie Vogts marked me. I had about five kicks and they were all in the warm-up. In the dressing room afterwards Alf sat down beside me, put his hand on my knee and said, “a little disappointed, Peter.” That hurt me so much more than Bill Shankly shouting and ranting back at Anfield. Alf was the exact opposite. I respected him so much. I still remember the hurt of those few words that day.’

  Alf, as always, was moving along in pursuit of maximum, proven strength. Thompson’s stumble had left the door ajar for Connelly or Paine or Callaghan. Hurst had arrived beside the stoically enduring Roger Hunt, to challenge the hope of Jimmy Greaves that he would quite seamlessly reassert his primacy among England goalscorers after a long and draining bout of hepatitis.

  It was no atmosphere in which I could afford to believe that my job was done, my case established. Perhaps it was motivation which was always a little more than subliminal and maybe it was that, and the usual stimulation of going back to where it all started for me at Hampden Park, which provoked some of my best form against Scotland in the next match. After Jimmy Johnstone and Denis Law responded to an early onslaught from Hurst, who opened the scoring with his first international goal, and two from Hunt, I stretched our lead to 4-2 with one of my more spectacular long shots.

  We won 4-3 and most everyone agreed it was a spirited riposte to the critics who tore into us so ferociously after the German game. Everyone, that was, except Alf. Something in the Scottish air, or perhaps the water, always brought the sharpest edge to his demeanour. On this occasion he may have read a piece by a leading Scottish sports writer, John Fairgrieve, one which might have inflamed even someone much more equable than Alf about the possibility of losing anything north of Hadrian’s Wall.

  Fairgrieve wrote in the Daily Mail, ‘There are those who contend that Alf Ramsey is an unappreciated genius. There are many more who believe he is the biggest threat to his country’s prestige since Bonaparte. My own view is that England do not have the smallest chance against Brazil or Italy in the World Cup in July. Against several other finalists, like Hungary and Russia and West Germany they could not be fancied at all. And if I was being really harsh, I would say that England are really lucky to be in the World Cup finals at all. Many Englishmen already believe this and say so.’

  These were not sentiments to soften Alf’s mood and another journalist discovered this when he airily expressed the view that the Hampden match, whatever its defensive shortcomings, had been a great one to watch. ‘For you, maybe,’ Alf almost snarled, ‘but I thought there was some appalling football played. We must be much, much better.’

  No matter that at times Law could hardly have attacked with more menace had he been issued with a claymore, or that the small and mesmerising Johnstone had produced some runs amazing in their touch and intricacy, England had conceded three goals. That they had scored four was beside the point as far as Alf was concerned. Much as he wanted to beat Scotland, in any circumstances, the victory had not been underpinned by the kind of performance that he now demanded as a matter of course.

  Alf was conscious enough that in at one least one aspect of his argument his Scottish critic could not be convincingly contradicted. In England much of the euphoria over the triumph in Madrid had indeed become resubmerged in some of the old doubts.

  This was the much-respected English sports writer John Moynihan, author of the classic and wonderfully evocative study of the post-war English game, The Soccer Syndrome: ‘Perhaps we of the press and supporters of England would like more communication from Alf Ramsey and less of the attitude that the England side is his and his alone. Haven’t we waited long enough for a team to win this competition?

  ‘Ramsey is not always a man to arouse confidence in the task. Is he trying to build a team with or without Jimmy Greaves? Is his plan a flash in the pan, relying on hard workers like Roger Hunt and Nobby Stiles, merely following the plough? England’s team needs to be a team of eleven Rolls-Royces, average runners will not do. And surely he must play at least one established winger.’

  Alf’s response was coolly defiant when he picked his team for England’s last game on home soil before the start of the World Cup, which was now just two months away. He said, once more, that all his selections were about strengthening his squad rather than entrenching a mere eleven players. He said every member of his group had to be able to step into any match, ‘otherwise they are worthless to me’.

  Pointedly he added, ‘I have picked a team against Yugoslavia because I want to
see what certain players and combinations can achieve.’ With that latest Ramsey injunction buzzing in our ears, we put in an immeasurably better performance than the one that had irritated him so much at Hampden. Jimmy Greaves, back in the team after his debilitating illness, scored in the ninth minute. I scored my thirty-seventh goal in my sixty-fifth international with a powerful shot which nicely celebrated the fact that we had played with much of the assurance and the touch we had displayed in Madrid.

  Alf was especially pleased with the performance of the slim twenty-two-year-old to whom he had given a first cap and the chance of a late run into the company of potential world champions. As it turned out, the making of a late, perfectly timed run quickly proved to be one of the young player’s most compelling specialities. His name was Martin Peters.

  8. Man in the Mask

  MARTIN PETERS WAS, right at the start, cast as the quiet one who might just pop out of the shadows clad in a black mask and a cape. He was certainly stealthier than Geoff Hurst, his West Ham team-mate who was two years older and two matches earlier had come into the team against West Germany with a game that was both intelligent and strong while placing little reliance on any kind of subterfuge.

  Geoff was as he appeared at first sight: a force that never could be left unattended by the defender who was expected to contain it. He had power, some guile and a wonderful honesty. Martin’s virtues were not so immediately obvious, or at least not so easy to instantly classify. It was also true that the young east Londoner came without the pervasive aura of his other club-mate and great influence, Bobby Moore.

  Speaking for myself, this meant that it took as long as a few minutes to grasp fully quite what a brilliant addition he was to the cause.

  What Martin had, it was clear enough long before the end of the Yugoslav game, was something to indeed gladden Alf’s heart. If he had that stealth, if he could disguise a run, a sudden and biting intervention, his subtle style would never obscure his most striking quality.

  It was a capacity to provide anything you would want from any midfielder, ancient or modern. He had a quite seamless ability to marry defence and attack. He read so quickly the requirements of either role – and he did it with astonishing consistency.

  When a few years later Martin was moving towards the peak of his maturity – while still in his mid-twenties – Alf provoked some mockery with that headline-grabbing declaration that here was a footballer ten years ahead of his time. Martin may have been a little sheepish under the weight of that praise, but he had no reason to be so. My own view was that he had a talent that would have been sharply relevant at any phase of the evolution of football.

  This was because it covered so cleanly all the requirements of the game: vision, the coolest execution, fine skill, and – something I could only envy – a devilry and control in the tackle that made him an opponent to be abused only at high risk.

  He was a young football man for any season, any system and any epoch.

  When his football days were over and, like Geoff, he had made a career in the insurance business, he gave a low-key and quite unemotional account of his progress into the England team. It is fascinating to go back to because, it seems to me, it perfectly reflects the style of his arrival. It was one of a young man ready to deal with any challenge which came before him.

  He recalled, ‘I’d played just once for Alf at the Under-23 level, against Wales at Bristol in 1964. Then nothing until 1966. Until three months before the Yugoslavia match I hadn’t even been mentioned in dispatches. Then I had an Under-23 match against Turkey at Blackburn, didn’t score and it came down the grapevine that Alf thought I couldn’t head the ball.

  ‘By then I’d had a varying three seasons – lost my place at West Ham in 1963 when they went on to win the FA Cup, got back the next season at centre-half, moved to left-back, then right-half when Eddie Bovington was injured and was then never out. Being selected against Yugoslavia was joining the elite but I’d never taken much notice of the national team, being more concerned with my club place, and playing for Ramsey didn’t really enter my head until Geoff got in against Germany.

  ‘Admittedly I was in the preliminary forty for the World Cup and apparently Greenwood was pushing Ramsey for me to have a go. Not that there was too much difference in the way England played, I found playing for West Ham aligned you for international football, though probably that’s why they found it difficult trying to win the league. That first game I tended to let Bobby [Charlton] and Jimmy Greaves have the ball but later I started to do more what was instinctive.’

  In every game it seemed to me that Martin worked himself near to death. He ran endlessly and in the process took pressure off the defenders, often less obviously than such as Nobby and Bally, but in all the crucial ways just as significantly. Sometimes I felt a shaming twinge because just as I relied so much on the tackling and passing service of Nobby, I was also forced to note the range of Martin’s contribution to the team. The expectation on my shoulders was that I go forward, threaten whenever I could the opposing goal, and largely forget about almost everything else.

  Martin defended and attacked with such great assurance and this quality could not have been more evident in that first game against Yugoslavia at Wembley. He came close to scoring two goals. He tackled, he filled vital space which he glided into unmolested. He made chances, he headed off danger to our goal as though he had all the time in the world. It was a stunning debut in terms of both technique and awareness and it persuaded me that here was a player who could always be relied upon to keep his head.

  On reflection I shouldn’t have been surprised by his immediate impact. A little research would have gone a long way to explaining why Alf so strongly suspected that here was a young man promising to do anything you would want in a football player.

  Before becoming England’s first £200,000 player with his move to Spurs in 1970 – Alf’s old team-mate at Tottenham and now manager Bill Nicholson had become quite as much of an admirer – Martin had played in every position for West Ham, including in goal when, in his third game for the club, he replaced his injured team-mate Brian Rhodes.

  And now, as I revisit an inventory of my team-mates made years ago when I was first asked to try to assess their different qualities, the strengths they had which lingered most powerfully in the memory, I see again that the impression Martin first made was the one that would always be imprinted so firmly in my mind.

  Martin, I said, was the newest boy on the team bus and he didn’t have a lot to say, certainly nothing like so much as the cheeky chappie Alan Ball, but then he had a confidence that could hardly have become more tangible or enduring to this day, when like all of us he is obliged to deal with the frailties of advancing age. And this, despite his quiet manner, made it so much less surprising when he so quickly brought such a sharp and uplifting cutting edge to all that we attempted to do.

  There was indeed much scepticism when Alf said that Martin was running so far ahead of his time but I have to say, once again, that it was born of a quite profound ignorance about what is most important in the game. Sometimes it seemed to me that he was connected to some separate system of thought that enabled him to drift into the action as though from nowhere, with a vital interception or strike on goal the frequent result.

  Perhaps for some there was a temptation to believe he did it on a whim but the more you played alongside him, the more you realised how deeply he understood the game and the rewards that came with the most subtle movement. That first impression he made in the game against Uruguay was a calling card of unimpeachable authenticity.

  What never ceased to amaze me, though, was the fact that Peters, Hurst and Moore could bring so much to the England team, provide such a constant and intelligent presence, and always look thoroughbred performers for West Ham, without carrying their club team on to a more consistently competitive level.

  They had that success in the FA Cup and the European Cup Winners’ Cup, and they were widely accepted as purve
yors of much stylish football, but with great strength in key areas, with Moore an outstanding commander of defence, Peters so influential in midfield, and Hurst an unquenchable forager up front, you might have expected a more substantial and enduring dynasty. Instead, it was as though their great players were stamped with the legend Made for England, and only someone as pragmatic as Alf could consistently make their different strengths so integral to the successful working of a team.

  This is not, for a moment, intended to belittle the achievements of Ron Greenwood, the West Ham manager who gave England three players of wonderful quality. His team wore their ambitions to play superior football on their blue and claret shirtsleeves.

  That desire was deeply embedded in the thinking and the emotions of West Ham United and what I am saying, I suppose, is that football will always at some point demand a certain compromise between that which is beautiful and something else, something more gritty, more grounded in an understanding of what makes the difference between winning and losing.

  I discussed this when referring to the night in Madrid when Nobby made his crucial, and some would say unacceptably cynical, contribution to Manchester United’s passage into the European Cup final of 1968, and again I believe the debate is made relevant when considering the gap between the foundation Ron Greenwood had built for the creation of one of the great English club sides – and the relatively slim body of their total accomplishment.

  I remember United playing an important championship game at Upton Park and the concerns we took on the journey to east London. The reality was that we won comfortably. Our fears that the combined quality of Moore, Hurst and Peters would imperil our title ambitions simply didn’t materialise. It was impossible not to wonder why as we returned to the north. Was there a failure of competitive development in the West Ham team, did they lack the hard imperatives imposed by a Ramsey – or a Busby?