1966

by Bobby Charlton

  Alf displayed his usual calm. He moved among us, spreading his belief that we had already established that we were the stronger, better side. England’s hopes, he had seen, were in good hands.

  The decisive moment would surely come. It did, at least out on the field we assumed it had and there seemed to be a similar conclusion on the terraces, filled with great passion and, at moments of pause, the beat of a single drummer, with just twelve minutes to go. As the rain showers ceased and the clouds dispersed, and we felt the sun on our faces, it was Bally who had again recharged our attacking tempo.

  Schnellinger was a beaten man now as his tormentor won a corner and raced to take it with the urgency he had displayed right from the kick-off. His corner was headed out, but only to Hurst to the left of the goal. He went one way, then another, before his shot struck Hottges and looped into the air. Advancing on the ball were two Englishmen, Peters and Jack. Peters, to everyone’s relief, and not least Jack’s, won the race and placed his shot unerringly into the empty space on the goal-line left by Tilkowski and the worn-down Schnellinger.

  After the game Jack was asked if he felt as though he had been denied a moment of glory. His expression said that the question might as well have come from outer space. ‘No, I didn’t feel cheated,’ he said. ‘I’m glad the bugger didn’t come to me because I would have hit it over the bar.’

  At the same time Peters was reluctant to paint himself as a master of the most precise finishing but his account of the goal still gives an insight into the workings of a fine football brain. He said, ‘Geoff probably shouldn’t have shot because the angle was too tight. Hottges stuck out a leg and the ball went up in front of me and I only thought of keeping it down, I didn’t really try to place it and the goalkeeper went one way and Schnellinger the other – and the ball went straight down the middle.’

  I had never seen a more beautiful sight on a football field and my own reaction was the purest exhilaration. I raced into the arms of Nobby, shouting, ‘Nobby, we’ve won, we’ve won, they can’t beat us now.’ That euphoric conclusion might well have been confirmed by me with just four minutes to go and when I say that I have no regrets about the events of that historic day I speak in a general way. There is always somewhere in the corner of your mind where you dwell on the fact that you might have done something better and certainly that was the case when I lost Beckenbauer for a moment and found myself with Hunt outnumbering a suddenly stranded Schulz in front of the German goal. Again it was a result of Bally’s incessant desire but when Roger passed to me it came a little too square and I hit it too early.

  It was the chance of a matador’s sword stroke but there was no great cry of olé, just a huge sigh, and three minutes later, with just one minute left on the clock, it was not German blood on the sand.

  Jack will always believe that the late convulsion was a result of an error by the Swiss referee Gottfried Dienst. The referee decided that Jack had fouled Held when he went up to head clear a ball lofted into the right-hand edge of the penalty area. Jack contended, and it was a view supported by a panel of international referees four years later, that the free-kick should have gone the other way, Held making no attempt to get to the ball but simply presented his back to the man in the air.

  For Banks and Nobby the imperative was not outrage but a frantic attempt to defend against the free-kick which, everyone on the field sensed, was Germany’s last chance to extend the battle into extra-time. Banks recalled his sickening fear that everything was about to unravel. He said, ‘Well, I had to set up the wall. The kick was from just outside the penalty area. We set it up, Nobby dragging five players in and there was probably only one of our men on the half-way line.

  ‘Germany knew it was their last chance to get back and they shoved everyone in the area. Emmerich had a crack, the ball hit the wall and ricocheted out to the left and Schnellinger, pushing forward like everyone else, ran in for the sake of running in, and we thought the ball hit him on the arm. Had it not hit him, it was right out for a throw-in, it wasn’t even good for a goal-kick, Emmerich mishit it that badly.

  ‘Schnellinger’s arm took the pace out of it and it just went slowly across as Weber closed in. The ball was on the floor and I thought he might keep it down there until I saw Ray Wilson with his leg stretched out, so I dived that little bit higher over Ray’s leg in case the ball came off it but Weber was stretching and he lifted it, and it went over my arm.’

  It was for me the confirmation of the dread that had come with the missed opportunity. I thought of the wonderful release, the great rush of finality, a successful strike would have brought and the yearning for that was only increased by the last, desperate force of the Germans. Held and Seeler were now the chief threats, along with their most creative midfield allies Beckenbauer and Overath. With Bally and Peters I did all I could to help the defence while maintaining my Beckenbauer vigil.

  And then it was breakdown, a spectator’s role for me in the wall formed by Nobby, the referee blowing full-time just after I restarted the game in the centre circle and Seeler walking up to me and saying, ‘Bobby, that’s football.’

  Forty years later I reflected on that moment and a decade on there is not a word I would change. Certainly it returns me to some of my deepest feelings about the game and, though it may not be written on a tablet of stone, I believe it has weathered in the years well enough. I recalled, ‘I could only nod my agreement with Uwe Seeler. It was indeed football. It was dreams made and snatched away. It was a referee’s decision going the wrong way. It was that fine line which had been so vivid when I ran out of the tunnel a little more than ninety minutes earlier.

  ‘So what do you do? You play on, of course, you fight for what you still believe belongs to you and if anyone had forgotten, Alf was moving among us now with the reminder. He asked Bobby Moore, who was lying down on the pitch, to get back on his feet because it was imperative that the Germans did not get the idea that we were exhausted. At the final whistle Jack had also gone down. I will never forget the sight of my brother sitting there, after having spent so much of himself, with his head in his hands.

  ‘Alf made a short but extremely effective speech, one which two years later would be echoed by Sir Matt Busby on this same pitch after a second goal by Benfica had forced Manchester United into extra-time in the European Cup final. Alf said that we had won the game once but it had been taken away from us. Now we had to go out and win it again. We had to make sense of all the work and all the sacrifice. We had to do something that would make us proud for the rest of our lives.

  ‘Bobby Moore was not a man easily impressed by words intended to be inspirational but he would always insist that this was among Alf’s finest moments. He touched all the players. He reminded us of all that had been achieved, how far we had come and, most of all, how it would be absolutely intolerable if the prize was allowed to slip away.’

  It was indeed the perfect speech, and demeanour, from Alf. It embodied all the good things that I had come to value in him so much, and beside which any of those oddities of speech or manner that his critics were so eager to mock – and sometimes made his players chuckle – disappeared like wisps of morning mist. There it was in the now bright afternoon sunshine, the meaning of Alf and all he had come to represent – professionalism, nerve, team unity – carrying our tired limbs and bruised spirits into the last thirty minutes of a three-year campaign.

  Everyone who follows English football and has glanced back at the barest outline of its history will know the details of what followed. Now as I recall it all once more the most abiding conclusion on why it happened as it did was that Alf had concentrated our minds – and hearts – on the most important truth. It was the one Franz Beckenbauer so generously conceded so many years later. We were indeed stronger than the Germans and it was as if Bally was determined to re-establish this reality at the first opportunity. In a minute he had forced Tilkowski into a fine save after still another run down the right so determined that he might have b
een appearing on the field for the first time that afternoon.

  He left a marker which said that we could not and would not be beaten. I quickly attempted a postscript when I put in a shot which the German goalkeeper could only turn against the post.

  When the breakthrough came, 100 minutes into the battle, it would, of course, launch a controversy that is still not settled in some German hearts but then our greatest blessing would come in the last kick of the match when Geoff Hurst scored again. Both goals, including the first one which, down the years and after close inspection of film evidence, I have come to accept was maybe not legitimate, undoubtedly shared the same glorious trademark. It captured the essence of Alf’s last rallying cry. The goals were about superb individual contributions to a bone-deep team ethos.

  The first one may have become something of a pantomime of confusion but that was in the attempted measuring of millimetres around the goal-line. But then about the execution there had been a roaring conviction – and the participation of three players on whom Alf had done nothing less than stake his reputation.

  In the case of Nobby he had risked everything, his job and all our hopes, and it was my great friend who sent the ball down the right to the scampering feet of his room-mate Bally. Schnellinger now had glazed eyes as he contemplated the final stages of his ordeal and he could do nothing to prevent Ball sending a pass to Hurst. So there it was, a devastating, ultimately game-breaking strike fashioned by Stiles, who the FA and Fifa wanted to eject from the tournament, Ball, who had done so much to persuade Alf that he should abandon one of football’s greatest and most crowd-pleasing traditions, the winger, and Hurst, who had claimed the place of the much loved national hero, Jimmy Greaves.

  Hurst, who had already justified Alf’s decision with that superbly timed equaliser, swivelled and smashed the ball against the underside of the bar and as it came down the nearest English player, Hunt, threw up his arms in celebration. I too was convinced it was over the line and whether or not I willed it to be so was a question that only gathered strength down the years.

  In the end, though, I have to admit I was obliged to share the opinion of Franz Beckenbauer both on the sweep of the game and the legality of a goal which, satisfactorily from my perspective, did not in fact prove to be the difference between the teams.

  When it happened I was as ecstatic as when Peters had given us the lead so close to the end of regular time. I embraced anyone near me who I believed was wearing the shirt of the new world champions. Then, in the corner of my eye, I saw the referee running over to the mustachioed linesman from Azerbaijan, Tofik Bakhramov. There is a fine statue to Tofik, the man who brushed against football history, in his home town of Baku, and I have to say I was turned to stone before the referee pointed to the centre circle and confirmed my best hopes. No one knew how the officials settled on their verdict without a word of each other’s language but that was something that could await historic analysis.

  When it came it was not so easy to dispute the German argument. The evidence of Beckenbauer is certainly impressive, and especially in the light of his generous verdict that we had deserved to carry the day. He said, ‘We had been lucky with our second goal to draw level moments from the end of normal time, first with the free-kick given against Jack Charlton and then the deflection and a scrambled goal-mouth shot. At the time of England’s third goal I was in the penalty area with quite a good view. I was convinced the ball touched the goal-line – but was not completely over – when Geoff Hurst’s shot bounced down from the crossbar and therefore it was not a goal. What language did the Swiss referee and the Azerbaijani linesman use when they discussed the incident? Who said what? We’ll never know.’

  One of the ironies was that it was Bally who ushered the referee towards the linesman – and later he said, ‘I was in a better position than him [the linesman] and I couldn’t really tell myself. It had been a good move leading up to it. Nobby knocked the ball inside the full-back and I’ve got almost to the by-line and clipped it back and Hurst had made a near-post run. Because I was worried about being offside I made to step off the pitch but as Geoff shot, I came back, and as it hit the bar I was right in line with the linesman ten or fifteen yards behind me. As Weber headed over the bar I’ve turned and said, “Goal?” and there was a lot of shemozzle and the referee and linesman hardly said a word to each other because they couldn’t understand each other and the linesman just pointed to the circle and off he went, but in all honesty, hand on heart, I couldn’t say whether it was or not.’

  When I was last asked to go on the record with my own verdict I found myself very close to Bally’s position. I said, ‘The film probably shows more that the ball wasn’t over the line. My inclination at the time was that it was a goal, because I’d moved forward in case Geoff turned it square to the left, so I felt I was in a reasonable position to see.’

  I was probably influenced strongly by the reaction of Roger who was closest in and immediately threw up his arms to claim the goal. But then later Roger also implied that there had to be doubts, saying, ‘Normally in that situation I would have gone in and, looking back, I still don’t know why I didn’t. I don’t think, in fact, I’d have got the ball. It bounced down and high up to my left and Weber headed it away. I have thought many times since, “Why didn’t I go in?” The linesman definitely couldn’t have seen. When I looked across moments later he was still moving back towards the corner flag, he was still so far away and hadn’t got his flag up.’

  Such doubts might well have festered somewhat down the years if Geoff Hurst hadn’t scored the goal that brought us home even as some fans began to encroach on the field in anticipation of the final whistle. But in that triumphant moment – when Kenneth Wolstenholme famously shouted into his microphone, ‘They think it’s all over. It is now . . .’ – history could not have been shaped more appropriately. Not only was it the climactic moment of the long campaign, it was another perfect expression of so much which had made it a success.

  As Bobby Moore ignored the urgent advice of Jack to send the ball flying somewhere close to the North Circular Road, and Bally made still another searing run along the right, our captain produced the last perfect brush stroke to what would be an undying image of his leadership. He picked out Geoff again with a ball that could not have been more finely tailored in Savile Row. And Geoff made one last run, his final claim on a place in football history. His shot flew into the top corner of the net and then you knew, everyone knew, it was over.

  There was nothing left for me to do after a last run in the company of Franz Beckenbauer except to seek out my brother so that we could share our wonder at being together on such a day and with such a result. Along with the others we tried to persuade Alf to enjoy, at last, a little of the limelight but he pushed us away, saying, ‘This now is for you players, you won it’ and when he said that I felt the first unashamed tears welling in my eyes.

  As I said at the time, I never believed in crying in defeat but victory, well, that was an entirely different matter. It spoke of all the emotions that you had carried to the moment for which you had worked so hard. It was a mixture of relief and an intensely personal benediction, a prayer of thanks for the blessings I had received.

  Certainly I knew, as I wiped my eyes before going up the steps to receive my medal from the Queen, a part of me would now always reside in the football heavens.

  Epilogue

  SO THERE IT was and how it will still so powerfully linger as I join my comrades for our golden anniversary reunion. The landmark will no doubt create a special fervour when we raise our glasses to the departed who did so much to make the glory that we will always keep so close to us.

  The cares of the day, so far removed from the sunlit release that came to us so overwhelmingly in the late afternoon of Wembley, and then in the joyful streets of the West End of London, will again be put to one side.

  Old debts will be acknowledged and tributes paid and inevitably so many of them will go once more to t
he men to whom we had to say farewell: Alf, who so unflinchingly reached all the hard decisions that made it happen; Bobby, who steadied us so profoundly with the aura of his greatness; and young Bally, who never stopped believing in himself and the men he came amid to prove so quickly that he was not some mere noisy apprentice but the most natural-born competitor any of us had ever seen.

  We will do, those of us who have survived and are fit enough to attend, what we have been doing for half a century now. We will rekindle those happiest hours of our football lives which unfolded when we drove away from Wembley in possession of the World Cup.

  Of course we will pick out the personal memories that endure most strongly. George Cohen will laugh and wince again when he recalls the kiss Nobby, minus his dentures, planted on his lips. For me, perhaps inevitably, it is of the easy weight of Jack’s arm on my shoulder as we jogged around the pitch. Few brothers, however more consistently devoted they had been, had surely ever felt quite so close at a certain imperishable moment in their lives.

  ‘You know, Jack,’ I remember saying, ‘I don’t suppose our lives will ever be the same again.’

  Most wonderful for me was to see Norma again and feel her pride in what had been achieved, and that of my mother and father, and this was after travelling through the streets of a city which was plainly preparing for a night of spectacular celebration. None of it would be more vigorous than that of Jack, whose wife Pat was pregnant and close to labour and had stayed home in the North East. In her absence, Jack went on the town with his close journalist pal Jimmy Mossop of the Sunday Express, who later reported they had woken up, chilled and a little mystified, in a back garden deep in the suburbs.