What it was like to be at the 1966 World Cup Final
More than fifty years ago, in July 1966, one of my school friends was given two tickets to the World Cup Final, so we went up to Wembley and — quite fortuitously — witnessed the greatest match in England’s footballing history.
Michael and I had left school a year earlier, in 1965, having travelled together each day on the 29 bus from the outskirts of North London to our comprehensive school in Hertfordshire. Michael’s father was a businessman who owned an electronics store in Tottenham Court Road, which he sold before moving to Sydney in Australia. While waiting to leave, Mr G made profitable use of his large and splendid Bentley car by leasing it to the Mexican team manager. When Mexico left the competition at the group stage, Michael came into possession of two precious tickets to the final, in allocated seats, very close to the touchline.
We made our way to the ground by tube, still not quite believing our luck. I am sure that my own father, a keen footballer, may have felt a twinge of regret as we left for Wembley, although he wasn’t the sort to show it.
I loved the jostling crowds that day, walking in just the one direction with a great sense of purpose, flanked by mounted policemen, all of us wary of the wide variety of coaches and vans crammed full of supporters that crept along the same stretch of road towards the ground.
The walk from Wembley Station led us in between the iconic twin towers of the old stadium, that unimpeachable cathedral of sport. It is poignant now to realise that my grandfather had walked that way in the early 1920s (an old diary tells us that he saw Spurs beat Wolverhampton Wanderers in the FA Cup Final), and there I was doing much the same in the 1960s.
Michael was a music student in 1966, and my most abiding memory of our day at England’s greatest ever football victory must be his non-stop commentary on the playing of the band and the singing of the crowd.
Indeed, whilst some people are lucky enough to go to such a match with a helpful friend who can explain every one of the footballing skills on display — and there are quite a few like that in the stands — I was fortunate enough to sit beside a trainee choral conductor with a profound knowledge of the day’s musical repertoire.
I had been to a few league matches before, when I was much younger, during family visits to my grandmother’s house on Roe Green, in Worsley, outside Manchester. We visited Eliza regularly — and her sisters, my great aunts Polly, Annie and Harriet. We made the trip from London several times a year, whenever there was a school holiday. I realise now that my father, a PE teacher, must have planned these trips very carefully as we always seemed to fit in a soccer fixture at Old Trafford or Maine Road, or a game of rugby league at Swinton, or a county cricket match in the summer.
If I think of these games now, I immediately picture my father standing on the terraces next to my uncle Albert, both tall men with wide shoulders that we could perch on when we were little. Over the following years, thanks to them, I was able to see the likes of Bobby Charlton and Nobby Stiles at the United ground, who would be on the field together again in the 1966 World Cup Final.
We didn’t know what magic to expect that day at Wembley, although I had seen pure football genius a couple of times already: Eusébio bending the ball unbelievably into the goal for Benfica; and a mesmerising dribble by George Best, leaving Manchester United’s opposition dumbfounded, all accomplished with the pace, acceleration and balance of a gazelle.
George Best was from Northern Ireland, and therefore not in the England team, although he was there that day in the crowd, watching the match, just like us. Strangely, I saw George Best five years later in quite different circumstances. It was in 1971, in a bar near the small apartment I had in Paris when I found a job in France. Although he had a reputation as a playboy, he was drinking alone at that point in the evening— he said famously that he spent most of his money on booze, girls and fast cars, and the rest he just squandered!
We looked inside the programme, and saw the line up for the day:-
Germany England
GK Gordon Banks GK Hans Tilkowski
RB George Cohen RB Horst-Dieter Höttges
CB Jack Charlton CB Willi Schulz
CB Bobby Moore cpt CB Wolfgang Weber
LB Ray Wilson LB Karl-Heinz Schnellinger
DM Nobby Stiles CM Franz Beckenbauer
RM Alan Ball CM Wolfgang Overath
AM Bobby Charlton RF Helmut Haller
LM Martin Peters CF Uwe Seeler cpt
CF Geoff Hurst CF Sigfried Held
CF Roger Hunt LF Lothar EmmerichI remember that sinking feeling when Germany scored the first goal. The play was at the other end of the pitch from us, so it wasn’t that easy to make out what was going on. I learned later from the repeated broadcasts of the match that one of the English backs tried to stop a cross that then went loose in the penalty area towards Helmut Haller, who put the ball straight into the net. We already knew that Haller was one to look out for, as he had the second highest number of goals in the competition after Eusébio.
Not long afterwards, the ball was at our end of the ground when the referee’s whistle interrupted play. Bobby Moore took all the free kicks, usually very quickly, and this one he floated into the German area, which was right in front of us, and we watched as Geoff Hurst rose unchallenged to level the score with his first goal, a header. Hurst had replaced an injured Jimmy Greaves at an earlier stage in the competition, and it surprised many that such a prolific goal scorer as Greaves was not reselected after his recovery. Instead it was Hurst who was given the opportunity to play in the final of finals.
The teams were still level at half time. Some 15 minutes later, England won a corner at the far end, and the reaction in the stands told us what happened as a result. We learned afterwards that Alan Ball had sent the corner kick to Geoff Hurst, and that Martin Peters finished off the move. The score was now 2–1 to England.
The England fans burst into song on a regular basis. Michael was in his element, and I can still conjure up the moment — in a surprisingly vivid flashback — when Michael marvelled at the impromptu start of another refrain from the football fans’ songbook, wondering aloud if there might be a choirmaster somewhere. When a foul went unnoticed, we joined in with the crowd and belted out Oh, Oh, What a Referee. We especially liked singing When the Reds Go Marching In (before the match, Germany had drawn the right to wear the white shirts, so England were in red that day), and I am fairly sure that we sang along with Rule Britannia as well, even though it already seemed outdated. I didn’t much like those jingoistic anthems even then, but it is all too easy to be carried away by the moment.
Towards the close, Germany pressed relentlessly for an equaliser. One minute before the final whistle, Jack Charlton gave away a free kick not far from our seats, for climbing onto Uwe Seeler as they both went for a header. The free kick bounced off the defenders’ wall to Wolfgang Weber, who levelled the score at 2–2, and forced the match into extra time. My vague recollection now is that the build up to this goal was something of a mêlée, more like the confusion of a rugby ruck. Nevertheless, it is the groan of the crowd that is etched most clearly into my memory.
As the whistle blew, reality sunk in — the contest would have to start again. I can still recall that weird sense of disappointment and appreciation, the two combined together, a feeling of frustration offset by a growing esteem for West Germany, whose unyielding attack had paid off. We looked down at all 22 exhausted players, wondering how they could ever summon up the necessary reserves of energy to continue — back in 1966, there were no substitutes lining the benches.
After 11 minutes of extra-time, Geoff Hurst’s next goal put England 3–2 ahead. We know now that this is one of the most hotly disputed goals of all time. Having received the ball in the penalty area, Hurst unleashed a shot that crashed down off the underside of the crossbar. However, the referee couldn’t see if the ball passed over the goal line, so it was down to the linesman, from Azerbaijan, to award England’s controversial goal.
Michael and I had a commanding view this time. The linesman was standing just in front of us. He looked rather eccentric, with his military moustache and a bright white belt holding up his black shorts. To be frank, although we were close by, the ball moved with such speed that we could hardly see the ricochet, let alone whether it crossed the line or not on the way down!
It didn’t matter too much. Geoff Hurst went on to score again in the final seconds, when he rifled home his third goal of the game. I was certainly very puzzled by this turn of events— the play was at the other end again, and we couldn’t quite work out what was happening. Anticipating the whistle, the crowd around us had started to stand, making it more and more difficult to follow the action.
We learned later that the BBC commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme was distracted at that very moment by the sight of a few England supporters spilling onto the turf. When we got home, we heard the repeat of his now legendary remark as the game ended: “They think its all over. It is now! It’s four!”— the right words and the right rhythm, at precisely the right time.
With the roars of victory came those feelings of jubilation, partisan in their way, bubbling out of the strangeness of the last few minutes. It is only a game, they say, but the atmosphere reached fever pitch. And we looked on to see the stolid Charlton brothers, as they collapsed in tears and hugged each other in a way that, not too long before, would have seemed wantonly unrestrained.
I do not recall much more after the final whistle, and, to be honest, some of the finer detail about that day has accrued over time. Our memories are recast by endless replays on television — I cannot really say that Nobby Stiles actually danced past on the pitch in front of us, holding the cup aloft, but I like to think that he did.
Yet much of it is there in my mind’s eye, and I certainly came away with a few enduring impressions. The first was the amazing stamina of Alan Ball, who ran his heart out for the full 120 minutes, easy to pick out with his socks round his ankles. Another was the commanding play of a young Franz Beckenbauer, already inventing the role of an attacking sweeper even though his main task in the final had been to cling to Bobby Charlton like a limpet.
More than anything that day, however, I recollect the boundless energy of the stocky German captain, Uwe Seeler, always at the centre of things, and understandably heartbroken at the end. The roar of his first name, a slow semitone chant that we too took up with gusto, still rings loud in my ears … Oo-Vay … Oo-Vay … Oo-Vay …
Post Script
I worked in Germany for the first time later that year, on company audits in Krefeld, Kleve, Heilbronn and Hamburg. In each location, needless to say, the conversation often seemed to turn to that disputed goal!
Michael moved to Sydney eventually, and conducted orchestras not only there in Australia but also in Germany and Iran. He relocated to California in the 1990s, and was the artistic director and conductor of a community-based orchestra, the Auburn Symphony, until 2012.
