How England won the 1966 World Cup: A proper manager, no wingers, and Bobby Charlton in his pomp

New York Times

2 days ago

This is the eighth in a series by The Athletic looking back at the winners of each men's World Cup. The previous articles have looked at Uruguay in 1930, Italy in 1934 and again in 1938, Uruguay in 1950, West Germany in 1954, before a Brazilian double in 1958 and 1962. This time, it's the turn of England in 1966.
The codifiers of association football had a mediocre record at the World Cup until hosting it. England hadn't entered the first three tournaments because the FA were still refusing to be a part of FIFA. In their four attempts since deciding to take part, England had twice reached the quarter-finals, but had twice been eliminated at the group stage.
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Yet England still enjoyed great reverence across the footballing world. In 1963, the FA celebrated its centenary by hosting a game between England and a Rest of the World XI, a genuine collection of the best footballers from every other nation. England won 2-1. Even accounting for home advantage and the unfamiliarity of the opposition players with one another, it's clear England had outstanding individuals. The spine of Gordon Banks, Bobby Moore and Bobby Charlton were all arguably the best in the world in their position.
But they needed home advantage to become the world champions. And while hosting the tournament has always increased the chances of success, particularly in the early days of the World Cup, this was the first time since the opening two editions — Uruguay and Italy — that the hosts actually won it.
Upon taking charge of England in October 1962, Alf Ramsey declared that England would win the World Cup. It was a bold claim.
But this was a manager who had recently completed something even more unlikely than winning the World Cup with the host nation. In 1955, aged 35, he'd taken charge of Ipswich Town, in the third tier of English football. Two years later, he won promotion to the second tier. Four years after that, he won promotion to the First Division. And then he promptly won the title at his first attempt. Even when considering that the gap between the divisions was less substantial than in the modern age, this was an unprecedented transformation of a club. Sensing things couldn't get much better, he left Suffolk for the England job.
Ramsey had been a no-nonsense England full-back in his playing days, including at World Cup 1950. He also scored the final goal in England's most famous defeat, the 6-3 loss to Hungary at Wembley in 1953. He was never overwhelmingly popular with the press or supporters, but he never tried to be.
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He remained in charge of England for another eight years after this World Cup success, before being sacked when he failed to qualify for World Cup 1974. He was barely seen afterwards, aside from a brief stint in charge of Birmingham City, when he'd originally joined to serve on the board. But Ramsey really only had two major jobs in his coaching career, and he won the First Division and then won the World Cup.
Ramsey was, in a sense, the first proper England manager. Until the Second World War, there had been no official position of head coach, and the squad was selected by a selection committee. This seems bizarre today, but in a world before matches were widely televised, and when all weekend matches kicked off at the same time, it was thought that keeping across the entire First Division (and beyond) was impossible. England merely had a 'trainer' in charge of tactics.
Walter Winterbottom is generally considered England's first official head coach, but he was also the FA's first director of coaching, and used to joke — maybe half-joke — that 'the job had a sideline to it: manager of the England teams'. The plural reflects that he was in charge of both the main England team and the amateur equivalent, and genuinely seemed to consider this of less overall importance than his other role. Besides, he also had his squad picked by an eight-man selection committee.
Ramsey, almost routinely described as 'not an establishment figure', wasn't going to stand for any of that and was given full control of picking the England squad and starting XI. 'It's a new position,' he said upon his appointment. 'This sort of thing has never been done before and I think we'll have to find out what we can do. It's something that has to be established and something that one has to find out about.'
Ramsey was considered unusual for picking a full 22-man squad for every international break; in the days before substitutes, it was previously considered enough to pick a much smaller group.
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England's success didn't convince everyone that the position of England manager was necessary. In the early 1980s, Brian Glanville, the most revered 20th-century English football writer in English football, wrote a World Soccer column claiming that England had generally coped fine without one, although this was partly a dig at the poor performance of Ramsey's successors, Don Revie and Ron Greenwood.
Surprisingly, for a country not renowned for being overly interested in tactics, England are unique in that their World Cup-winning side had a nickname describing their tactical approach: these were 'Ramsey's wingless wonders'. A telling sign of this approach is that England's centre-forwards can be seen taking throw-ins in the final.
The idea of playing without wingers was almost unthinkable before World Cup 1966. English football's most adored players were wingers — in the previous decade, they'd fielded Stanley Matthews and Tom Finney in the same side. And in Ramsey's early days in charge, he put great emphasis upon the importance of wingers. But his sides became increasingly narrow. He started the tournament with Manchester United's outside forward John Connelly, something of a forgotten figure, in the side. But by the end of the tournament, England barely had any width at all.
The eventual starting XI was difficult to describe in terms of system, but players had very clear characteristics. Moore was the refined ball-playing defender, while Jack Charlton was more old-school. Both full-backs pushed forward. Nobby Stiles was a combative defensive midfielder who came under fire for his tackling during this tournament, and his presence allowed Martin Peters to roam. On the right, Alan Ball was something between a box-to-box player and a wide man, and notable for his sheer energy in the final, while Charlton very vaguely played from the left but was more of a No 10.
Up front was the biggest talking point. Jimmy Greaves, the greatest goalscorer in English top-flight history, dropped out of the starting XI through injury midway through the tournament and never regained his place. Hurst, who had only made his debut earlier in the year but had headed the quarter-final winner against an infamously physical Argentina side, remained in the team. Ramsey also stuck with Roger Hunt, who lacked Greaves' natural talent but had a reputation as a hard worker.
That, for many, symbolised Ramsey — an admirer of disciplined workers rather than talented individualists.
You can make a case for various players. Hurst scored a hat-trick in the final. Moore was the captain and became the symbol of England's victory. Banks was a truly legendary goalkeeper. Ball was the best performer in the final.
But ultimately England's true star was Bobby Charlton, a player who won that year's Ballon d'Or and finished second in the subsequent two years. A rampaging attacking midfielder who was the all-time top goalscorer for both Manchester United and England until Wayne Rooney surpassed him in both respects (Harry Kane since surpassed Charlton and Rooney for England goals), he produced the best individual moment of England's campaign with a brilliant goal in the group stage win over Mexico, running from the halfway line, feinting to go on his left foot, before chopping onto his right and firing into the top corner from 30 yards.
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'He was one of the greatest players I have ever seen,' Ramsey later said. 'He was very much the linchpin of the 1966 team. Early in my management, I knew I had to find a role suitable to Bobby's unique talents.' That was a particular compliment from a manager who hadn't appreciated the talents of other big-name attackers. Charlton, unusually considering he was England's third-most advanced player, wore No 9 in the tournament, partly a reflection of the fact that Ramsey had previously used him as a centre-forward.
Charlton's best display for England came in the semi-final win over Portugal, where he lit up the game with his passing — sometimes considered a relative weakness compared to other greats in his role — and also scored both goals in a 2-1 win.
The quality of that display led to him being quieter in the final, however. West Germany manager Helmut Schon was so scared of Charlton's goalscoring threat that he instructed Franz Beckenbauer, at this point renowned as an exciting attacking midfielder, to man-mark Charlton out of the game. Broadly speaking, Beckenbauer managed that, but possibly at the expense of West Germany's own attacking threat.
Overall, a really good game between two sides — Beckenbauer's role aside — focused on pushing forward and attacking. Helmut Haller put West Germany ahead after a rare mistake from Ray Wilson, before Hurst headed home unmarked from Moore's flighted free kick.
Goalkeeper Hans Tilkowski was often criticised for not coming to claim this cross — and the way he stood behind his line and simply pointed at Hurst did look rather odd — but he'd previously taken a bad knock when coming for another cross and was therefore hesitant to leave his line again.
Peters seemed to have won the game with a simple volley at a corner, after Hurst's effort had been blocked and looped up into the air, but then defender Wolfgang Weber scored an even scrappier goal to equalise in the penultimate minute.
That meant extra time. Ramsey famously told his players that they'd won the game once, and now they had to do so again.
There are two options from extra time. You can argue that England's goal to go 3-2 ahead is the most famous moment — on the turn, Hurst smashed the ball against the bar. It bounced down onto the line and then out. The goal was given by linesman Tofiq Bahramov, who became referred to as 'the Russian linesman' in England, although he hailed from present-day Azerbaijan. In fact, he's such a hero in the otherwise unremarkable footballing nation of Azerbaijan that the country's former national stadium was named after him.
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Without wanting to go over the nuances of a 59-year debate and the various modern technological attempts to prove it one way or another, it seems unlikely the ball actually crossed the line. The common argument from Hurst is that it must have been over because England striker Hunt turned away to appeal for the goal rather than heading in the rebound. This is somewhat disingenuous; Hunt wasn't at the right angle to tell, and the ball was bouncing slightly past him anyway.
England at least scored a fourth, although there was further confusion here. Referee Gottfried Dienst had put his whistle to his lips, seemingly about to blow for full time, before waving on the play. This meant some England supporters had started their pitch invasion with the play still going on, with Hurst sent in behind by a long ball. This prompted the most famous commentary line in British sporting history, courtesy of the BBC's Kenneth Wolstenholme. 'Some people are on the pitch! They think it's all over,' and then, as Hurst slammed home another goal, 'It is now.'
It was Moore's second assist of the final, and more significantly, Hurst's third goal — his hat-trick is analysed in more detail here. He remained the only hat-trick scorer in a World Cup final until Kylian Mbappe's for France in 2022. Hurst now proudly declares that he's the only hat-trick scorer in a World Cup final to finish on the winning side.
England were hardly hailed as spectacular winners across the world, especially in an era when Brazil were regularly winning the tournament with wonderful football, but this was a tournament of few genuine contenders. Caution and discipline in their first four matches, when they were underwhelming but kept four clean sheets, gave way to more impressive displays in their last two matches. They were the better side in open, entertaining games against both Portugal and West Germany.
It's difficult to identify who else should have won it. Hungary started promisingly before fading. The most praise was generally reserved for two first-time qualifiers: North Korea, who famously defeated Italy and then went 3-0 up against Portugal before losing 5-3. Portugal, the other key debutants, had the most revered player at the tournament, Eusebio. But they lost to England fair and square in the semi. The majority of matches were considered somewhat drab and overly aggressive at a time when a more defensive approach to football seemed to be on the rise.
The 1966 success is sometimes retrospectively framed as 'the worst thing that could have happened to English football', as it convinced them to knuckle down and focus on hard running over talent. That always seems overly contrary, and besides, that wasn't Ramsey's fault — unlike Winterbottom, he wasn't the FA's director of coaching, too. His task was to win the World Cup, and he did.
(Top photos: Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix/Mirrorpix via Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)