by Greg Tesser
So, following a coin toss, which went in the favour of the visitors, there was to be a play-off two weeks later at the Camp Nou.
The headline on the back page of the following day’s Daily Mail was a real screamer: ‘CHELSEA ALONE IN EUROPE’.
The play-off was an embarrassment for Docherty’s men, as they were torn apart 5–0. In fact the most notable aspect of the whole event was that the tussle was shown on big screens at Stamford Bridge, with a programme and all the add-ons of a typical match day.
As a dyed-in-the-wool Blues fan, I took full advantage of this piece of innovation, settling into much the same position in the new stand as for the second leg. It was all very depressing – definitely a game too far for the Stamford Bridge youngsters.
The commentator chosen for this ‘Big Screen Bash’ was Simon Smith, who died in 2001 aged eighty-six. A jaunty East Ender, boxing was really his game. In fact he became the first British commentator to cover a World Heavyweight title bout when he commentated on the fight involving Muhammad Ali (then called Cassius Clay) and Henry Cooper. Ali liked Smith a lot, often referring to him as ‘my man from the BBC’.
So, it was all over, a season that at one stage looked like producing a remarkable quadruple, but fizzling out as spring turned into summer. Football now closed its shutters, packed the suncream and went on its hols, but only for a few weeks, as on 11 July, the FIFA World Cup – the biggest sporting spectacle since the 1948 Olympics – was to make its debut on these shores.
Talking of balls, I was attempting to juggle a few, with my The Amateur Footballer magazine and rock PR now joined by my nod to management as I signed on a cockney group called The Ricochets.
The Ricochets were good, the boys in the band combining earthy rock with tinges of the blues mixed in with 1950s’ doo-wop. We actually cut one disc, ‘Well’, which had been on the B-side of The Olympics’ 1958 hit ‘Western Movies’, a record that had charted at number twelve in the UK, and reached number eight in the Billboard Hot 100 in the USA.
But soon I was to wave goodbye to sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll, and wrap myself completely in the then conservative environment that was association football. I didn’t know it then, but just a few years down the line and this conservatism would all but disappear as the worlds of football and rock collided, thanks almost entirely to one man: George Best.
‘World Cup Willie’ was the official mascot of the 1966 World Cup; there was also a song of the same name recorded by the King of Skiffle, Lonnie Donegan. It hardly seemed an appropriate match, but the population of England didn’t seem to mind as the tight-lipped Alf Ramsey, who some years before – much to the bemusement of both press and public alike – had predicted World Cup success for the hosts, continued to spout optimism as the England side developed into a hard-to-beat unit. Ramsey possessed two players who would have graced even the most arty of Brazilian sides in Bobby Moore and Bobby Charlton; and in Gordon Banks, England had the finest goalkeeper on the planet.
I am a privileged person. I have seen an England captain lift the World Cup in the flesh. I saw every single one of England’s games. For this, I didn’t have to go online and wait for hours to get my transaction confirmed, worried all the time that some gangster or money-launderer or terrorist would grab my credit card details or even my whole identity. No, I simply turned up on the day with a few shillings in my palm and paid at the gate – simple!
England’s World Cup adventure began badly, with a tedious, goalless draw with the ultra-physical Uruguayans. Undaunted, boss Ramsey took his squad to Pinewood Studios to have a ‘butchers’ at Sean Connery in Bond action. The ploy obviously worked, for in their next game, with Bobby Charlton running the show, they prevailed 2–0 over Mexico.
The third game against a weak French team was a 2–0 stroll, but Jimmy Greaves, never a favourite with the manager, was injured and took no further part in the tournament.
‘Cometh the hour, cometh the man’. In this case it was Geoff Hurst, who replaced the goal-greedy Greaves, and proceeded to grab the headlines with his headed winner in a battle that lived up to its name.
The opposition, Argentina, were rightly considered one of the tournament favourites. They played a brand of football that was as alien to Ramsey as the Bolshoi Ballet, but their Achilles heel was temperament – they had turned being temperamental into a fine art.
Their captain, Antonio Rattin, was a midfielder of the hard school. The expression ‘he takes no prisoners’ could have been written for him. He had this arrogant, dismissive air about him, and the general impression he gave was that he was always likely to combust, and combust he did.
The main cause of his and his colleagues’ ire was German referee Rudolf Kreitlein, who having endured a torrid time from the South Americans, eventually decided he had had enough by dismissing Rattin from the field for ‘violence of the tongue’, despite the fact that he spoke no Spanish! This decision sparked a sequence of events unprecedented in modern football, with Rattin, believing the harassed official was displaying extreme bias in favour of the home nation, refusing point-blank to leave the pitch.
It was at this stage the entire Argentine eleven threatened to walk off the field. Eventually, the enraged Rattin made his way to the dressing rooms, but not before he had overtly sat down on the red carpet, which had been laid exclusively for the Queen. Two policemen were then needed to escort him off, but he was not yet done. As he left, he wrinkled a British pennant.
Ironically, this whole episode proved to be a landmark, as the behaviour of Rattin and his team undoubtedly led to the introduction of yellow and red cards.
Down to 10 men, the Argentinians lost any impetus gained during the early stages, and it was left to replacement Hurst to head England into a semi-final with Portugal, Eusébio and all.
Unbeknown to 99.9 per cent of Blues supporters, Portugal’s epic 5–3 victory over North Korea in the quarter-finals had a Chelsea flavour about it. Lifelong Chelsea fan Stanley Moore, who possessed a grin as wide as former US President Richard Nixon’s, but with 100 times more sincerity attached to it, is seen in Goal!, the movie of the World Cup, beaming as North Korea’s unknowns tore into a 3–0 lead. The reason for this was simplicity itself; his Korean wife was the team’s official ambassador for the tournament.
England just needed victory over Portugal to be in their first final, and as I have already said, I was there. West Germany, who had ousted the Soviets in their semi-final, were the opponents. Life not being at all politically correct back in ’66, it was the Battle of Britain all over again – the Second World War revisited – our revenge for the Blitz.
On the morning of the great day, 30 July, I awoke early, an event in itself. Friday nights at the Flamingo or the Marquee were exhausting affairs, liberally laced with pills and sex. But I was twenty and I could take it. A friend and I picked up two tickets for a fiver from a consumptive-looking tout, puffing away merrily on a roll-up, outside Wembley.
We found our places in the cavernous terraces and for a few minutes just stood in silence, soaking up the atmosphere. Standing near us were some Germans who spoke excellent English. They were overtly polite and wished England all the best. They were inhaling large cigars. To our right were some vociferous Everton fans. They weren’t so friendly.
These Evertonians baffled the Germans, with their non-stop jeering aimed at Liverpool’s Roger Hunt every time he touched the ball. Hunt rhymed with ‘the C word’, and this was used to noisy effect. The Germans were incredulous, wondering why they were rubbishing their own player. Explanations of the intense Merseyside rivalry somehow failed to satisfy them.
The score was 2–1, with seconds left on the clock. The Germans, who seemed down-and-out, found a second wind and managed, I know not how, to conjure an equaliser. Extra-time, and yet another ‘Lucky Strike’ was lit – it tasted foul. Dry mouth, dry throat, heart thumping – this was not good.
A Hurst shot thundered against the crossbar; ‘Was it a goal?’ I screamed. No one, no
t even the officials, seemed to know. Then suddenly the diminutive linesman from the Soviet Union, Tofiq Bahramov – he was actually from Azerbaijan, but the press labelled him Russian – signalled to referee Gottfried Dienst from Switzerland. Following a conference, which to the majority of the nearly 100,000 present seemed of interminable length, Dienst – almost begrudgingly – gave the goal. The German players were not happy, and our German friends looked like they needed a Valium or three. Then it was 4–2: the Hurst hat-trick. People on the pitch… I won’t go on.
Bahramov’s legacy is what dreams are made of. The Azerbaijan national stadium is named after him, and when England travelled to Azerbaijan for a World Cup qualifier in 2006, a statue of him was unveiled making him the only referee to have a stadium named after him. Unfortunately Bahramov was not there to see it, as he died in 1993, aged sixty-eight.
One of the German fans handed me a cigar. Boy, it was bitter. By this time I had a mouth like a plumber’s handkerchief, but who cared. England were World Champions. There were no Chelsea players on view that day, but I didn’t care. It was in many ways the beginning of an era. An era during which English and British football shone as it had never shone before. It wasn’t yet the new rock ’n’ roll, but we were on the cusp.
Manager Alf Ramsey was the right man for the occasion, but many people suggested then, and more have suggested since, that his inflexible rigidity held back the game in this country. Certainly much later, in the early 1970s, the German midfield general Gunther Netzer made Ramsey’s England team resemble a collection of journeymen. Ramsey was a good manager, of this there is no doubt, but he could have achieved true greatness if he had studied the social situation of the 1960s and adapted accordingly. Flair never appealed to him, so the likes of Alan Hudson, Rodney Marsh and Peter Osgood were never considered integral members of his exclusive club. Would George Best have made it into Ramsey’s first eleven if the über-talented Irishman had been English? That is the question.
SEVEN
A FIRST FINAL FOR THE BLUES
AND OSSIE’S NIGHTMARE
Three weeks later, the England boys were back doing their day job. The game of the day on Saturday 20 August was undoubtedly West Ham’s home London derby with Chelsea.
The three Hammers heroes, hat-trick man Geoff Hurst, skipper Bobby Moore and midfield artist Martin Peters (Alf Ramsey once said he was fifteen years ahead of his time) received a rapturous reception from home and away fans alike. It was carnival time down in the East End. ‘I’m forever blowing bubbles’ was being sung as never before.
I made the long journey by underground from Golders Green to the wonderfully atmospheric Boleyn Ground, and arrived some half-an-hour or so before kick-off. One memory I have of the whole occasion, apart from the quality of football itself, was the amount of young men with transistor radios glued to their ears listening to commentary of the final cricket Test Match at the Oval between England and the West Indies – something that in these football-obsessed days would be about as likely as the current Chelsea team taking a pay cut!
Some of Chelsea’s play that hot August afternoon was as exciting as anything you could ever wish to see on a football field. Charlie Cooke was magical and mesmerising; Peter Osgood was all élan, elegance and movement, and there was John Hollins running his socks off; the harrier and hustler-in-chief. The game flowed like some sporting version of vintage Dom Perignon.
West Ham lost the game 1–2, but in a way, despite the pizzazz of the football from the visitors from the King’s Road, it was all a bit unfair. After all, three of the Hammers – Moore, Hurst and Peters – had been put through the mental and physical mill just three weeks before in a World Cup final, whereas all the Chelsea players were fighting fit.
Chelsea opened the new campaign with an unbeaten run of twelve games. Then on 5 October in a third round League Cup-tie, the tide turned in dramatic fashion when their Mozart of the football field, Peter Osgood, broke his leg following a tackle with Emlyn Hughes.
Ossie’s injury understandably knocked the stuffing out of Docherty’s team. Later that same month, the manager signed big target man Tony Hateley from Aston Villa for a club record fee of £100,000 as a replacement for Osgood. But Hately was no Osgood, and the purchase was not a sensible one – it smacked of panic.
In many respects, the sparkling Chelsea side of the 1960s (and in particular the later version that captured the FA Cup and the UEFA European Cup Winners’ Cup) was a forerunner of the more modern version. The Cookes and the Osgoods thrived because of the quick passing and movement coupled with off-the-cuff dribbles and feints, whereas Hateley was a long-ball merchant. For him, the nectar of the gods was a perfect cross into the penalty box where he could rise and head home – he really was a truly magnificent header of a ball. On the ground, however, he was average to say the least. Interestingly enough, Docherty, the man who bought him once said that Hateley’s passes ‘ought to be labelled to whom it may concern’!
His final goals tally – a paltry 6 from 27 appearances – was indeed a poor return. But there was one goal that at the time was an historic one for the Stamford Bridge club.
It was Saturday 29 April 1967. The place was Villa Park in Birmingham, and Chelsea, whose form had deteriorated since Osgood’s traumatic leg break, were definitely second favourites in their FA Cup semi-final with Leeds United.
I was there with both Stanley and Stephen Moore. I had travelled the country with Stanley throughout this epic FA Cup run, beginning with a January visit courtesy of British Railways to Huddersfield Town’s old ground on Leeds Road: a 2–1 victory there. In early February we drove the comparatively short distance to a bleak Brighton where, some two hours before battle commenced, we sampled some Italian-style haute cuisine in a restaurant where the owner, who was a friend of the ebullient solicitor, was so Italian it wasn’t true. But having said that, he was also a Chelsea fan, and methinks he played the part of the British idea of your typical Roman.
Following an unpromising 1–1 draw at the old Goldstone Ground (after which Daily Express sportswriter supreme Desmond Hackett wrote that if Chelsea won the Cup ‘I would eat my hat’), the Blues had blasted Brighton 4–0 in their rematch. Hackett was such a household name in those days that the cockney rhyming word for a jacket became known as a Desmond, even though he himself was a Lancastrian by birth.
He was possibly the last man in Britain to don a brown bowler, and he was forever threatening to consume it if his forecasts proved inaccurate.
Round 5 on 11 March, and a comparative cruise at the Bridge: 2–0 against an oh-so-average Sheffield United.
The other club in Sheffield, Wednesday, were the opponents in the last eight. A dour affair looked to be heading for a replay when, with thousands of supporters making for the exits, up popped Tommy Baldwin to nick victory in the dying seconds. And so to Villa Park and a semi-final that was as controversial as it was dramatic.
Sitting just a few feet away from us were The Likely Lads stars James Bolam and confirmed Blue, Rodney Bewes. This was some nine years before their well-documented fall-out – they haven’t spoken since – but back then they were as inseparable as any best mates could be. In its halcyon years, The Likely Lads and its early 1970s sequel Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? attracted an audience of 27 million.
Some years later Ian La Frenais, one half of the Dick Clement/Ian La Frenais writing team, responsible for not only the Likely Lads series but also such classics as Porridge and Auf Wiedersehen Pet, would meet up with other showbiz personalities at Alvaro’s in Chelsea for a pre-match lunch before joining the throng at Stamford Bridge to urge on Ossie and co., but more of this anon.
Anyway, back to the game itself: it is fair to say that controversy and debate raged unabated for weeks, indeed months, about one decision in particular made by referee Ken Burns. A respected official, Burns stuck to the letter of the law, but in retrospect his decision to deny Leeds substitute Peter Lorimer an equalising goal was incorrect, certainly from
a moral standpoint.
Chelsea had taken the lead just sixty seconds before the interval, when Charlie Cooke waltzed past both Billy Bremner and Rod Belfitt before sending in a perfect cross for the much-maligned Hateley to head powerfully into the net, leaving Leeds ’keeper Gary Sprake grasping at thin air.
The Lorimer ‘goal that never was’ came literally seconds from the end, but just a few minutes prior to that, Leeds’ England international full-back Terry Cooper had a goal ruled out for offside – another debatable decision.
Then, with Chelsea fans almost audibly counting down the clock, a free-kick was awarded to Leeds on the edge of the Blues box. Johnny Giles rolled the ball to Lorimer, who let fly with a venomous effort that eluded the defensive wall to find the net. Lorimer was understandably ecstatic, but Burns had other ideas. He maintained that the Chelsea wall had not been the required ten yards when the kick was taken, so it would have to be retaken. Cue vehement protest from the Leeds boys, but to no avail – Chelsea had made it to their first-ever Wembley FA Cup final.
As we left Villa Park, and despite the fact that none of us was wearing a Chelsea rosette or sporting a royal blue scarf, one mean-looking, very irate Leeds fan dashed towards me, fists outstretched in the manner of an early Victorian prize-fighter. If it hadn’t been for the efforts of both Stanley and Stephen Moore – they were both built like rugby forwards – I could well have suffered a black eye or worse!
Even boss Docherty admitted afterwards that, ‘I would have had no complaints if the goal had counted’. But as Chelsea fans through-and-through, the two Moores and I didn’t really give a fig for what was right or wrong. We were going to Wembley Stadium – ‘The Venue of Legends’ – for a meeting with old London foes Tottenham Hotspur on Saturday 20 May, a mere nine days after I had achieved the age of majority, and I tell you that was some wild party.
