1966

by Bobby Charlton

  More impressively still, the threat of Hungary’s brilliant forwards Ferenc Bene, Flórián Albert and János Farkas was dismissed with much power and, at times, a touch of brutality. Perhaps the Soviet football was not illuminated by the sweep of Beckenbauer’s imagination or the sharp skill and intelligence of Overath, but we had been forced to acknowledge less spectacular but increasingly solid contributions of such as the captain Albert Shesternev, Igor Chislenko and Valeriy Porkujan. They seemed to be men who became more effective in direct proportion to the pressure applied to them.

  It was thus – and this seems a little strange now in view of the tumultuous events that were still to stretch before us – something of a relief when Beckenbauer deceived Lev Yashin with a shot that gave the Germans the two-goal lead that survived a late strike by Porkujan. The most significant fact was that it had been a poor match, one hardly guaranteed to provoke the trepidation that had been created by the menace of Argentina – or, now, the possibility that men like Eusébio and Coluna would suddenly find new levels of inspiration.

  In any event, I went to my bed confident that one small speck of concern, the last residue of my fleeting anxiety, would be gone by the morning. This was a stiffness in my neck, for which I had received some treatment after a brief consultation with the team doctor. There was no need for great concern, we both agreed. The problem, caused by a touch of fibrositis in my left shoulder, flared three or four times each season but it was always swiftly cured by physiotherapy. Still, I heaped up the pillows and offered up the prayer that a night of rest would leave me perfectly primed both physically and mentally.

  To my horror, I discovered it had not. My neck was still stiff and the result was a morning of growing tension. I could hardly bear the thought that after all the years, all the times I had pulled on the England shirt, a random quirk of my body, which had always been so reliable, might just betray me at such a moment.

  It didn’t help that when at lunchtime Alf came to sit by my side I still had to hold my head at a certain angle.

  As always, Alf went straight down to business. He asked me, ‘How’s your neck, Bobby? Are you fit to play?’

  My life, all my ambitions, swept before my eyes when the question came in. I had a duty to be honest but I also found it impossible to believe that a problem I had been successfully negotiating for some time now had suddenly become insurmountable. I would be fine when the time came, I would be able to continue to fulfil the destiny to which I had elected myself for so long now. So I breathed deeply and said, ‘I can feel it slightly, Alf, but I’ll be fine.’

  I will never know how I would have stood up to some deeper probing from the manager who so often had put aside the call of sentiment while making his most taxing decisions. It is one of those mysteries which, however riveting at the time, get lost in the course of a lifetime. The pause in our conversation may have been exaggerated in my mind but it seemed like an age before Alf said, ‘All right, we’ll keep the same side.’

  Of course, this did not signal the end of my ordeal. That afternoon seemed to touch eternity. What if Alf and I had performed too great an act of faith? What if my ambition had overreached itself and been abetted by the judgement of a man whose most basic belief had always been that no one player was bigger than the team? They were not the kind of questions to make for anything like a serene nap before they served the poached eggs on toast.

  But then, on the bus ride to Wembley, and in the rituals I shared again with Ray, the pain in my neck eased, my movement was free.

  The voice of Bally sounded less shrill; indeed, along with the now familiar eccentricity of George Cohen’s preparation, and the amiable bickering of Jack and Nobby, it was soothing. My world was back on an even keel. I had a game to relish and a performance to put in that I hoped, as much as I had for anything in all my career, I would remember with pride.

  15. Laughter and Tears

  WE WERE THERE, we could touch it now. Taking hold of the World Cup, which for so long had been a mirror of our imperfections as a football nation that lacked the humility to learn from either its own mistakes or the brilliant progress of others, was one step, one firm grasp away.

  In Sweden, where I was a restive spectator, and in Chile, where some were inclined to celebrate our first appearance in a quarter-final, the prize had seemed as remote as it had ever done since England’s first misadventure in Brazil in 1950.

  In Gothenburg I watched the champions elect Brazil strolling in the park with the easy, confident gait of men who believed they were about to inherit the world. Four years later, on a Chilean mountain top, I could see clearly enough they still occupied another stratosphere.

  Now, the years of waste, and muddled arrogance, might just be redeemed.

  We would meet West Germany in the final in four days. The thirtieth of July 1966: a day to bring home the game we had once given the world, a day to make men and women come out into the street in national celebration. A day which those of us who had lasted on the long road, and the others who had elected themselves to the march, like Nobby and Jack and, most urgently, Bally and Geoff and Martin, had to make it so it would last for ever.

  Our progress at the end had hardly been carefree, but this only served to lift us still higher when we looked up at the scoreboard and saw it in black and white: England 2 Portugal 1.

  Sometimes, I suppose, you only come to value something most truly when you see how easily it might have been taken away. So we clutched ourselves and each other just to confirm that it had happened. Our dream, our work, had not been wrenched away.

  There were many reasons to celebrate, but two were the most powerful and uplifting.

  Firstly, no one had to tell us that for most of the match we played as well as we could have hoped. Everyone could say that they had played a valuable part in the most important challenge we had ever faced. And that when the pressure came down so heavily, when the heart of so much of the nation had missed a beat, our nerve held. Secondly, the man who had shaped our performance had his own cause for satisfaction. Alf, not for the first time or the last, had read it perfectly.

  The Portuguese had indeed also come to play. They were making a death or glory investment in their rich skills, and this was evident in our first glance at their team-sheet. Missing were the names of João Morais and Vincente, the defensive enforcers who had besieged Pelé so unscrupulously.

  They put on their very best face. It was exemplified by the strong, beautiful talent and leonine countenance of Eusébio, who for so many in football here and across the world seemed poised to assume the mantle of the departed Pelé.

  Now, though, he was walking away, proud head down, shoulders slumped, eyes awash.

  If we wanted to measure our elation, consider the height of it, we only had to look at the degree of pain that had come to one of the greatest players the game would ever see. In the last minutes of the game we had seen once more the scale of his ability and the passion he had brought to his task. At the moment of the final whistle, when we had survived a late eruption from him and his superb team-mate and captain Mário Coluna and the towering José Torres, he began to shed his tears.

  My compassion for a great footballer, one I would always admire, was tempered, though, I still remember vividly, by a wave of relief which filled every corner of my body and my mind.

  When Eusébio beat Gordon Banks from the penalty spot with eight minutes to go – after Jack had fended away with his hand a header by Torres – appalling questions had leaped into my mind. Could it really be, after all the work and the pain and the exhilaration, and with far from the least of it coming in this game in which I had scored two goals and put in, said the most demanding of critics, Brian Glanville of the Sunday Times, my best showing in an England shirt, that we might not win the World Cup? Could we have come so close to a final statement only to be sent away?

  Such questions made the last minutes as torturous as any I would ever know out on the field. Suddenly, it seemed that our cont
rol might be ripped away. Eusébio, so deftly frustrated by the carefully measured attention of Nobby – and forced for a while to claim corner and free-kicks as his best chance of making a significant impact – was now aflame.

  He surged along the left flank in the last moments to create, quite beautifully, a chance for Coluna. Banks made a brilliant save from under the bar. It was a catastrophe avoided and then suddenly it was over, we were in the final. When Gordon turned away Coluna’s shot I looked immediately for Eusébio and saw his shoulders sag. I also saw the first hint of his tears.

  You never want to see such despair in a great opponent but you also have to be honest: his pain was my joy and that was something I had to force myself into containing as I embraced him before he left the field. I told him that I could so easily have been in his shoes and he nodded his thanks and left. As I watched him go, I was reminded once more of how fine sometimes is the line between the fulfilling and the dashing of all of our hopes. A few hours earlier I had been made wretched by anxiety as I felt the pain in my neck. Now the world lay at my feet.

  For Eusébio there would still be many years of acclaim before his career drew to a close in the lower reaches of the Portuguese game and on fleeting pioneering duty for the old North American Soccer League in football outposts like Toronto and Las Vegas.

  He would win six more league titles with Benfica and when he died in 2014 and was buried in a Lisbon cemetery before being allocated a place in Portugal’s pantheon of heroes, the national flag was placed in his grave. He had been voted into the top ten players of the twentieth century and Alfredo Di Stéfano, no less, declared that he had never seen a better, more powerful footballer.

  He was Africa’s first great player and his emergence from poverty in Mozambique was a major milestone in the growth of the world game, but despite all the ceremonials and the respect and love so tangible in the rainy streets of Lisbon I couldn’t detach any of it from the image of his departure from Wembley.

  Already he had a career of great distinction – as a twenty-year-old he had made his first impact on Di Stéfano when Benfica beat Real Madrid for the European title in Amsterdam in 1962 – and when he came into our semi-final so many believed that he was just two strides away from rivalling Pelé for the title of the world’s best player. But then, when he disappeared down the tunnel – and we hugged ourselves in the knowledge that we were just ninety minutes away from the greatest prize of our football lives – he was, if he knew it or not, walking away from the peaks of football.

  Two years later on the same field, and with Nobby again standing sentinel, only a brilliant save by United goalkeeper Alex Stepney prevented Eusébio from seizing another European title. Again, he had brought terror to English hearts but once more he found fulfilment elusive.

  Still today I think of Eusébio when I come to consider my own good luck, the way that I was able to tick away my disappointments as a young player and, one by one, replace them with the warm and lasting glow of major achievement. It is one of the many affinities I have with Nobby that we share the distinction of being the only Englishmen to win both the European and World Cups and it is impossible to forget that he played such a huge role in both achievements.

  Twice Nobby was handed the job of containing the force and the talent of a player who had seemed to be moving towards the zenith of his powers. Twice he had responded with endless application and a superb awareness of what was happening around him.

  Of course, for me there was never going to be a victory which would ease the pain of Munich – but here was the satisfaction, and the gratitude, which comes when you have reason to believe you have managed to become strong at some broken places.

  Eusébio’s career was played out on a different trajectory. First it soared, then it drifted away from the highest possibilities. Maybe it is wrong to drape a fabulous career in such poignancy because of a couple of results but try as I might I can never banish the sight of Eusébio coming to terms with the greatest disappointment of his career. In Portugal they still call our semi-final ‘the Game of Tears’.

  For us – and not least Alf – it was a game of great vindication. His 4-3-3 system, whatever people would make of it later, and however many levelled the charge, emptily in my view, that it was ultimately a cause of decline in the quality and the imagination of English football, not only produced a winning performance of hard and functional effort. It was also touched by beauty and quite a lot of it was made in England.

  At the same time it did indeed show the effects of an intelligent application of a team’s collective strength. One of these was a series of outstanding individual performances. If it was true I had my best match for England, that I was able to produce all the strongest aspects of my game, a huge reason was that I felt perfectly attuned to all that was around me. Until Eusébio made his last roar of defiance, we had dominated what most agreed was the best game of the tournament.

  Remarkably, given all that was at stake, it was also among the cleanest. The absence of Morais and Vicente was the first announcement that Portugal had put behind them the violence of their assault on Pelé. The second was an astounding amiability on and off the ball. The first foul took twenty-two minutes to arrive and then it was committed by Martin Peters, who obstructed Eusébio. By the end, and despite the huge rise of tension in those last few minutes, the French referee had blown for just ten transgressions.

  No one was more restrained – or more effective – than Nobby. It was the supreme example of his ability to read the game. He shepherded Eusébio quite brilliantly, refusing to lunge in but always jockeying him out of easy space or opportunities to strike, and the more the great threat was subdued, the more confident we became.

  Of course it was beyond the resources of Nobby, or perhaps any defender on earth, to entirely stifle one of the most potent talents football would ever know, and inevitably Gordon Banks was also involved in the task. But by then we had laid claim to the game – and all the spoils that went with it.

  Our first goal after half an hour flowed from Alf’s principles of teamwork and selfless running and the creators, appropriately enough, were Ray Wilson and Roger Hunt.

  Ray brought the ball out of defence and fed it into the goal area to Roger who, sensing the unfolding possibilities, had made space for himself there before turning the ball inside and inducing panic in the Portuguese keeper José Pereira. His dive failed to prevent the ball reaching me fifteen yards out. I saw a clear gap – and two options. I could either attempt to blast in my shot – or try to stroke the ball home with the side of my foot. I took the latter course and the yells of the crowd echoed perfectly my own sensation, one that was not dissimilar to when I exploited another piece of Roger’s foraging against Mexico. Yes, surely, we were on our way.

  That feeling was redoubled with just ten minutes to go when I got the second at the end of another move that might have been ordained by Alf on the training field. This time my co-authors were Alan Ball, George Cohen and, most crucially, Geoff Hurst. I find it a little haunting at this long distance to return to an earlier recall of mine of the moments which, all logic insisted, had carried us to the final. It reminds me yet again of an old truth in sport: the one that says the moment you believe the job is done you put yourself at risk.

  ‘The Portuguese,’ I said, ‘clearly did not share my assessment, or the crowd’s, that the job was essentially completed when I slotted in the first goal. Indeed, their entire attitude to this game reminded me of why I liked them so much. There was no hint of passivity from them. In the first half Pereira had been under considerable pressure but now the action was beginning to move steadily in the direction of Banks. The towering Torres was locked in battle with Jack and the wingers Augusto and Simões were stretching us wide, so much so that Cohen and Wilson and Moore were not slow to call back defensive recruits from midfield.

  ‘Ball, who was now such an integral part of the team it seemed odd that he had been stood down for those two group games, Peters an
d I were repeatedly required to help out as Stiles battled on with all his great spirit (and nous) in the toughest contest of all, the decisive one with Eusébio. While Peters, particularly, was capable of tackling with the precision of a specialist defender and Ball was tigerish, my own contribution at this point was necessarily running, supporting and offering channels of relief when the ball was won from the clever touch of the Portuguese.

  ‘My tackling had always been the despair of Jimmy Murphy but he acknowledged that I didn’t shirk from any running on behalf of the defence. If I could run all day, and from time to time I could score, it mostly left the hardest taskmaster I would ever know content enough. My second goal of the game came with just ten minutes to go and again it was the fruit of Alf’s insistence that players must work for each other and that if a team simply relied on flashes of virtuosity it was never going to win the big games – or be a consistent force.

  ‘The flow of the move and the vital role of Geoff Hurst live in my mind for, I believe, one basic reason. All of it seemed to define the team Alf had made.

  ‘The ball was moved out of defence to Alan Ball, then switched across the field to Cohen via Moore. We were operating on another law of Ramsey. You did not sit on a lead; you do not invite dangerous opponents into your parlour. As much as possible, and without any concession on the need to be strong always in defence, you prosecute the game as aggressively, and as honestly, as you can.

  ‘Cohen sent a long ball down the right to Hurst, who was running so strongly he outstripped the defender, Alexandre Baptista, and though Geoff’s angle was acute my inclination would have been to shoot. Instead, he did something that, who knows, may well have clinched finally any argument left in Alf’s mind over Geoff’s challenge to Jimmy Greaves.

  ‘I’ll never forget it for what it said about the ideal of being unselfish on the football field. He checked for a moment as Baptista resumed his attention and held up play long enough for me to run free beside him. He rolled the ball into my stride quite perfectly and the moment I hit it I knew that it was going in.’