1966

by Bobby Charlton

  Over a hearty breakfast I told Ray that I planned to fill some of the dead time by going to Golders Green to replace a shirt I had bought earlier in the week and buy José Augusto his ill-fated present and he said that he also needed to do a little shopping before the arrival of his wife. So we went down there together and though we received plenty of attention it was less oppressive than in the hotel. We were offered discounts in some of the shops and, like a good Yorkshireman, Ray took advantage of one of them and bought a new pair of shoes to wear at the evening banquet.

  Alf was as calm as I had ever seen him when we returned to the hotel in time for an early lunch and a brisk briefing. He said we all knew what we had to do, we had done the work and now we just had to execute it one last time.

  The lunch menu, as always, was designed for comfortable digestion – a choice of poached eggs, chicken or beans on toast – but for once it was difficult to find an appetite. The morning excursion had heightened our awareness of an expectant nation and now only the first sound of the referee’s whistle would lift some of the weight from our shoulders.

  We left for Wembley at 1.15, past the saluting firemen and all the people in the street and those leaning out of their windows waving flags – a new phenomenon – and each mile brought a little edge to the tension.

  The sensation of a normally reserved nation willing itself to believe in a great triumph grew so strong I said to Ray that London was surely creating the greatest din since VE Day. The bells of the fire engines rang. Factory hooters blared. It was, I would say many years later, as if all of London was moving in for the kill. But still mostly we spent time in our own thoughts. We had said to each other all that we had needed to say, we had after all had plenty of time, and the man who sat by my side – inevitably it was Ray Wilson – shared my understanding of this.

  In between acknowledging the waves and the cheers rising up from the streets, I thought of the usual people, Duncan and the others lost in Munich, and Jimmy Murphy, Matt Busby and all those who had helped shape my career, and when I looked across to my brother Jack and exchanged determined nods, it brought to mind one of the visitors to our hotel after the victory over Portugal.

  It was Fritz Walter, the captain of West Germany when they beat Hungary so sensationally in the 1954 World Cup final in Berne. He talked about what it meant to play in the final, the pressure and the challenge and, in the end, the liberation it brought when you finally got to play the game that would settle all the questions about a team and the individuals who formed it.

  In one sense at least I would be walking in his footsteps and sharing some of the emotion he still remembered so vividly twelve years later. He had played against Hungary in the company of his brother Ottmar. Jack and I could only hope we enjoyed the same result.

  We arrived at Wembley at 1.45. I saw Norma and my mother Cissie and father Robert. They all wished me well, my mother with her usual passion and confidence, my father more quietly but I could see how intensely he was hoping for our success and he said that he knew that both Jack and I would do our best, which in the end was all we could do. Norma squeezed my hand and kissed my cheek and said she was confident we could achieve all that was set before us.

  Some of the lads went out to the pitch to taste the atmosphere and also test for the right length on their studs. Ray and I sat together in the dressing room. I read through mail and telegrams, moved by all the different postmarks which retraced my travels across the world and lingering a little longer on those from the North East where it had all begun, before joining Ray in our now automatic pre-match rituals.

  Much to our surprise, though, it was not the usual dressing room. It was filled with television crews, reporters, well-wishers and, as someone noted, the man who made the tea but on this occasion was proffering only an autograph book to be signed. Geoff Hurst was especially aghast, saying, ‘This just isn’t the Ramsey way.’ Bobby Moore was also irritated by the break in tradition but he did say, ‘Perhaps Alf thought it would give us something to occupy our minds, help the minutes slip by.’

  Everyone, though, was determined to prepare as we always had. George pounded away at his unique preparation. Banksy was, yet again, claiming his own space, inhabiting once more his world of confidence and constant vigilance and hair-trigger reflexes. Bobby Moore, despite his displeasure, was as cool as ever, sprinkling the passing time with his jaunty enquiry, ‘All right, Bobby?’ and his usual exhortation, ‘No worries, mate.’

  We all had our massages, Jack, as usual, insisting on going last. Bally had something to say to everyone. Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters seemed to be weighing how far they had come so quickly. Roger and Ray, as always, were quiet and composed. And Nobby was, of course, Nobby, ready for battle.

  There was a final word from Alf as he mingled among us, patting our backs and saying that he was absolutely sure not one of us had been given a task beyond our ability. We simply had to remember all that we had achieved so far and how hard we had worked.

  Alf shook hands with each of us as we walked out of the dressing room in the bright red shirts of our changed strip. Alf was clad in his official blue tracksuit and preferred black brogues. In the tunnel there was a brief delay to allow, we were told, the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh to take their seats.

  I found myself standing next to the German goalkeeper Hans Tilkowski and I looked into his eyes for any sign of nerves. It was not a rewarding exercise. It left me speculating on whether he was one of the most fearless opponents I had ever encountered – or one deserving of an Oscar nomination.

  Then we were moving forward, locked again in the awareness that the decisive moment had come. If anyone had forgotten there was a deafening reminder from the 93,000 crowd. Some would say later that we had been handed a great advantage by playing all our games at Wembley, a charge which Fifa countered with claims that the guaranteed extra income from ticket sales was for the benefit of all the game. My own, maybe prejudiced, view was that there was no finer playing surface in the world and, at least in those gentler days, a less intimidating crowd and that any team of skill and character would have welcomed the chance to play there.

  Certainly there was much pressure on us as the pre-match ceremonials slowly unwound. They took all of fifteen minutes from the time the Queen first set foot on the red carpet and each one of them brought another notch of tension.

  I glanced at the man I was charged to stop, young Franz Beckenbauer, and he held my gaze. One of us was heading for the highest ground we might ever know. That, or an abyss. Both of us had been told that we had the power to shape that difference.

  It was a call, no, a demand, that would carry us to the very edge of our limits.

  17. The Leaves that Never Fade

  I KNEW FROM the moment Alf gave me my battle orders it couldn’t be as I might have imagined and if there was the slightest doubt about this it disappeared at the kick-off. This was when Franz Beckenbauer, like a young guardsman reporting for sentry duty, came to stand beside me.

  Yet there is not one small eddy of regret as I walk once more among the trees and go back fifty years to play again the World Cup final. It is early spring now and there are the first green buds to replace those fallen brown leaves of autumn that were under my feet when I started this final accounting. But then I too am young again – or, at the age of twenty-eight, at least relatively so – as I return to 30 July 1966. It is to come back to the well that I know will never go dry.

  Here is where in my mind’s eye Alan Ball will never stop running, where Nobby is still indeed Nobby in all his battling will and Bobby Moore is immortal and never more demonstrably born to lead.

  I see them all on our football day of days. I see the nerve of Gordon Banks holding despite the late assault on our belief that we had done all that we had been asked to do. I see George Cohen, so indomitable when it mattered most, and Ray Wilson gathering himself brilliantly after a rare mistake which might so easily have broken the most accomplished and experienced of players
.

  I see Martin Peters, acute in his reading of the game and utterly sure of himself at a moment on which everything seemed to hinge and which my brother Jack would never forget for what it said about his ability to be perfectly still in his mind and so fast to execute and, yes of course, I see Jack, making his maybe unlikely but miraculously effective partnership with Moore.

  I see the hat-trick hero Geoff Hurst and his relentless workmate Roger Hunt hammering at the German defence and I wonder all over again how it was that Alf was able to measure so finely the potential of all the men in whom he would place his final trust.

  And what do I see of myself? I do not see so many of the spectacular flourishes which helped make my reputation but I do remember, with a touch of lingering pain, one missed chance to settle everything. However, I see mostly someone, inevitably and almost completely inseparably, in the company of the man Alf deemed the greatest threat to our chances. And yes, more than anything I feel pride and great relief and satisfaction that I was able to play my part, even if it was one I would not have selected for myself. It is, after all, the most essential requirement of any member of a side which has any serious ambition to become a team of champions.

  Most fundamentally of all, and in the face of any of the questions that are still raised fervently in Germany about the legitimacy of our third and Geoff’s second goal in extra-time, I have never questioned our right to carry that title. In this I am very happy to be buttressed by the opinion of the man who over the years has become one of my closest friends in the game.

  Thirty years after the drama – and with the perspective that came with the huge personal success which included winning the World Cup as both a player and manager – Franz Beckenbauer declared, ‘The World Cup final of 1966 remains in Germany one of the great talking points. Was it, or wasn’t it, the third goal for England? People still argue. I think that’s a shame because it reduces some of England’s glory. To be truthful, England were the better team, over ninety minutes and then in extra-time. There’s no argument. They deserved the trophy.

  ‘That tournament enabled me to become well known, a star as they say, so I was grateful that we should have such a memorable final against the host nation. Before the game our coach Helmut Schoen had given me the job of marking Bobby Charlton, who was the best player in the world at the time. I never remember being so exhausted as I was at the finish that afternoon.’

  Whatever the merit of his generous assessment of my ranking in the world at that time, I prize Beckenbauer’s statement most for its concession that the better team won. And, I will always believe, it was a great game to win. It was not a classic example of flowing, beautiful football in the way of our semi-final victory over Portugal, and it may have lacked some of the grandeur of our collision with Brazil in Guadalajara four years later, but for me it was always filled with the lifeblood of the game. It had a fine competitive edge and it was, as Beckenbauer said, inhabited by so many players who were ready to go to the very edge of their ambition and physical endurance.

  That intention, and the intensity of it, was established beyond any doubt within five minutes. In that time both Banks and Tilkowski had been seriously engaged – and required to make excellent saves, Banks flicking away a twenty-five-yard drive from the powerful Seeler and Tilkowski scrambling to stifle a header from Hurst which came in low and threateningly at the foot of the post.

  The tempo was set and it would rarely fall below the thunderous. Given the nature of both sides, that was hardly a surprise. It was a statement of will which never flagged and it was announced in every corner of the field, most stunningly by Bally. Before the game he boasted to Nobby that he was going to put the celebrated full-back Karl-Heinz Schnellinger on the rack, one that would be tightened another notch with every passing minute.

  It was a promise he fulfilled right up to the last and conclusive passage of play and, as I look back, I cannot recall a single moment when it was necessary to question his commitment. It was indeed almost as though he became both our legs and our conscience. He did to Schnellinger, a lauded figure with AC Milan who in Italy enjoyed the special aura that to this day still surrounds the master defenders, precisely what he said he would and this was a huge factor in our early momentum. The Germans had produced moments of danger but without the biting, creative edge that Beckenbauer might have provided, without the responsibilities he shared with me.

  It meant that when the Germans went ahead after thirteen minutes to leave us trailing for the first time in the tournament – and bringing additional alarm to those who knew that a World Cup winning team had never been behind in the final – it had the effect of a surprise slap in the face. More shocking, still, was that it was Ray Wilson, of all people, who made the critical mistake.

  The details are still etched clearly in the memory and many years later Ray and Gordon Banks were still recalling them, as survivors of what might have been a disaster to haunt all their football lives.

  It was a routine build-up by Germany with Helmet Haller, Seeler and Schnellinger moving the ball out to Sigi Held on the left. There it seemed that the danger had evaporated when Held sent over a poorly directed cross which, conservatively speaking, Ray would ninety-nine times out of a hundred treat as the smallest disturbance of an afternoon nap. For a little while, though, the consequences threatened full-scale nightmare.

  Banks remembered the breakdown with the precision of a man for whom the measuring of danger, of time and space, had become fundamental to all his success – and our defensive security. He said, ‘It was going beyond Ray and I shouted, “Leave it.” But Ray wasn’t too sure about Haller and decided he’d better not take a chance in case he tried to come round the back of him, so he headed it but the ball dropped straight at Haller’s feet. He only half hit the shot but Jack had come in to cover and was standing about three feet away. The ball was travelling between us and Jack went as though he was going to try to stop it. I couldn’t move until it came past him in case of a deflection, and by the time I went down it was on top of me and I was too late and it skidded into the corner of the net. Jack and I looked at each other as much as to say, come on, let’s get back into it.’

  I’ve always believed Ray defined himself as a great professional in his reaction to that potentially catastrophic misjudgement. He played on with such easy composure and anticipation that five minutes after the incident you might not have guessed it had happened. Despite all that followed, however, the wound would never fully heal. Twenty years later he was recalling it with the same raw horror that came in the moment of breakdown.

  He said, ‘It was an awful mistake, no doubt about that, it was a Third Division ball. I had a lot of time and I doubted if Haller would come in to challenge me for it but I had an awful feeling that Seller might be lurking somewhere behind me. With the indecision, I was rocking on my heels and I finished up with this marshmallow header.

  ‘It just dropped down for the lad and bingo . . . he just had to knock it in. It was the only time I was grateful to be thirty-one. If I had been younger it could have destroyed my game. I looked at Jack. It wasn’t just unlike me, it was unlike anyone in the defence over the last few years. Afterwards Alf said to me, “That’s the first mistake you’ve made for me in four years.” I sit back sometimes and think about it, the sort of mistakes like that which cost matches.’

  That it didn’t prove so decisive in our case was due to several factors – and each of them recreates an old but still-powerful surge of pride. Pride in my immediate sense that I was surrounded by team-mates who were able to treat Ray’s mishap as less a disaster and more an impertinence. That radiated from every England player and I still remember clearly my own thoughts as we lined up for the restart. This was a passing inconvenience, I told myself.

  We had come too far, and we were too good, to be denied now. Hurst and Hunt were too persistent, Bally and Peters were too sharp and combative and inventive in midfield, and for myself it was easy to see the point, even at th
is early stage, of Alf’s strategy regarding Beckenbauer. Most pervasive of all was the sublime leadership of Bobby Moore. His response to the setback was hardly frenzied. That was never part of his make-up and one cheaply conceded goal wasn’t going to change that for a second. However, he had never been more commanding, or more urgent, and it was through him that we were level again in six minutes.

  Moore both shaped and willed the equaliser. The job of containing the greatest German threat still had to be paramount in my mind and nor was this any time for our captain to be distracted from his defensive vigilance but when I flicked the ball away from Beckenbauer and into Moore’s path the consequences could not have been more galvanising.

  His vision, and instinctive understanding with his West Ham team-mate Hurst, had never been more refined. When he was brought down by Overath I ran to his left to give him the option of a short free-kick but he had seen a weakness in the German cover. It was square and after dummying to pass to me he put perfect flight and weight on his ball into an unprotected place in the German penalty area. As the ball arched in, Hurst filled the space and his header went into the left-hand corner of Tilkowski’s net. Once again it was our game to win, our World Cup to collect.

  The Germans had a tough defence, personified by the uncompromising Willie Schulz at the back and stiffened by the tackling of Wolfgang Weber and Horst Hottges, and just before half-time they reminded us of their threat when Seeler produced a sudden, explosive shot which stretched Banks to his limits in making another fine save.

  At the break, Alf spent some time urging Hunt to stay forward at every opportunity to put pressure on Schulz, saying that it was more important than his coming back in pursuit of the ball, but overall he was happy. Beckenbauer was as quiet as he was ever likely to be, the Germans had already felt the menace of Hurst and, Alf believed, the more the game wore on, the more they would be stretched by the mobility and desire of Ball and the subtle running of Peters.