World Cup 1966 - Alfie's Boys

It's 1966, 50 years ago, and England are celebrating.

They're celebrating the first and, as it turns out,

the only time that they've been on top of the footballing world.

They've just won the World Cup.

It's the first time I've actually seen the England manager

with the World Cup and, my word,

he well deserves to hold that aloft, doesn't he?

He certainly does.

Let's just enjoy those scenes out there on the balcony.

This is the story of a bunch of working-class lads,

their unlikely boss and a spirit that conquered the world.

The World Cup, of course, is the greatest competition in the world.

Without any consideration at all,

I said that England would win

the World Cup competition.

In terms of what people had, they had nothing or very, very little.

A dreadful, difficult time.

I just think maybe, in them days, getting picked for England

was just the most important thing in their lives.

It was the age of the pill,

so sexual freedom came in, not that Bobby and I ever abused that.

It was revolutionary.

Everything started from the jaded and tired '50s.

You were frightened to death, really.

Honestly, his face, he went berserk.

He went, "You've what? You've forgotten it?"

The F word came out quite a few times.

Geoff Hurst said, "See you next time, Alf." He said, "If selected."

Everything we did, we all did everything together.

I mean, there was arguments and cups of tea going across the room.

He used to turn and look at you, and he'd go, "Come on, come on!"

A team that won the biggest prize in sport.

-COMMENTARY:

-In goes Hurst, it's an equalizer!

Some people are on the pitch, they think it's all over.

It is now.

And on the Sunday, what do I do? Cut the grass and clean the car.

Life's all about people, and these people were very special.

It's about their hopes, their dreams and, in my case, disappointment.

'66, to me, was a horrible bloody year.

He said to me, "What about that, kidder? What about that?"

1966 in the World Cup, he was the best player in the world.

I mean, look what I'm doing now - 50 years later,

still talking about it

because it was the greatest moment in football history.

HE COMMENTATES IN HIS OWN LANGUAGE

It's looking like about 22,000 out of the 27,000 capacity

as Zagallo takes the corner.

There's Garrincha... It's a goal! Brazil have scored.

Oh, dear!

1962 - England knocked out of yet another World Cup.

It was embarrassing, really,

because England had invented the game of football -

well, as the story goes -

and yet, as a nation, they'd done absolutely nothing of note.

Oh, dear!

-COMMENTARY:

-Garrincha now coming to the middle

and there's Amarildo to Garrincha.

It's a goal, a beautiful goal by Garrincha!

Yeah, it drives me mad, it does.

Frustrating is not the word, really, you know.

They don't seem to play as fast as us,

they don't seem to put as much effort in.

The only thing I can think of

is that they read the game a lot better.

Something had to be done...and this is what we had to do it with.

These were the boys hand-picked to turn it all around.

Hand-picked by one man, Alf Ramsey, a London lad himself.

Well, I should say Essex, really, though he didn't sound like it.

I think there's a beginning to everything whereby it did enable us

to make up some of the ground that had been lost in previous matches.

Elocution lessons, by all accounts.

Anyway, he wasn't lacking in confidence.

Oh, most certainly.

I think, with all sincerity,

that we shall win the World Cup in 1966.

HE CHUCKLES

Well, Alf said we'll win the World Cup in '66.

Yes, it was, "Here is your dose of the truth drug.

"You will take this and swallow it and believe it."

And we thought, "Well, that's a good shout but, you know,

"it's something to say. He's trying to lift our spirits."

Walter Winterbottom, who'd been the previous England team manager,

Walter Winterbottom had struggled

from the time he took over in 1946

to the time he handed over to Alf in '62

because the international committee

had the last word on who played in the team.

You cannot have a committee choosing a team.

You must have one man with a vision of his own

and a philosophy of his own to choose a team to win a game

and, because of that, we weren't really going anywhere.

Alf Ramsey said, "I'm the manager. I pick the team. I do this, I do that.

"Please get out of my way so I can get on with the job."

That was his attitude right from the word go and, remember,

he lost his first match 5-2 in France.

He wasn't the most demonstrative of people.

The first game we had, we went to France.

I was the captain at the time... and we lost the game

and we got back on the bus. He said, "Do we always play like that?"

So I said, "No, no, not always."

He said, "Well, that's the first bit of good news I've had all night,"

that's what he said.

And I thought to myself, "Right, I know where we are now."

There's one or two people probably would be regulars

that would expect to play,

but a lot of the team, they weren't sure.

I mean, I was never sure that I was going to play.

He'd always make a point of coming round and thanking every player.

And he'd be walking down the line and he came to me

and I put my hand like that and said, "I'll see you, Alf."

He went, "Will you?"

I thought to myself, "Blooming heck!"

And he didn't want me to go away thinking, like,

"Oh, he's had a good game.

"He thinks he's going to get picked for the next match."

Alf was a control freak, there's no doubt about it,

but time was running out and some things were beyond his control.

That was 1962, the World Cup final in South America.

Four years later, the trophy's here in London

because this is the year when England, the birthplace of football,

stages the championship of the world for the first time in history.

Well, now, in just a few minutes in a London hotel,

the draw is due to be made for the final stages to be played in July.

He wanted to make the most of England's home advantage,

to maximise the amount of friendly supporters.

That was the host's prerogative.

And it's already been decided that England should play in London

and Brazil in Lancashire, in Groups One and Three respectively.

This is a privilege afforded to the host country and to the holder.

Whenever I think of the World Cup,

I go straight back into my grandma's house,

her big kitchen and the telly stuck up there.

This is for Group One to play England.

-The first, Uruguay, in Group One.

-So, Uruguay play against England.

She used to go upstairs and have a wash, put some lipstick on,

get changed and come and sit with her chair in front of it

and he'd come on and he'd go, "Good evening,"

and she'd go, "Good evening."

SHE LAUGHS

So, she was still drawn into it.

And the fourth is Mexico.

Remember, England must finish first or second out of those four

to get into the quarterfinal.

They'd be up against it, all right,

but these lads were used to a bit of hard work.

Life as a footballer in the '60s was nothing like it is today.

It was a different world. We'd just come out of a war.

In many ways, in the late '40s and early '50s,

you were worse off because all of the aid had stopped

and everything, and nobody had anything.

I mean, first kicking a ball around was an old leather ball

with the bladder hanging out of it, you know.

It was hard for families, cos everybody was skint in those days.

I used to have bread and jam

when I got home from school, every single night.

A cup of tea, two big thick slices of bread covered in jam -

that was it.

You grew up to be like your mum, you know. You dressed...

Just twin set and pearls. Yeah, I've put the pearls on!

All the women all had their hair the same - perms and rollered

and the same style and so...tired.

Most of us had done national service.

I'd been in the King's Own Royal Regiment for two years.

I'd played in the British Army team.

Six or seven of them were players who went on

to play for Young England or England.

My Army days, 18 to 20, Windsor.

The Duke of Edinburgh came in one day when I was on guard,

and I was only just standing next to the gate

and I had to open the gate for people to go through

and he was walking up towards me and I said, "Halt! Who goes there?"

"The King. The King's..." And I said, "Pass, all's well."

I was born in 1939.

There was a certain amount of discipline to your life

after this particular...

Well, I mean, I never saw a chicken till 1955 or something like that,

but the fact is, people had to have that discipline.

A lot of those guys did, you know, but when I came into the game,

the top wages were just coming up a bit from £8 a week.

I mean, footballers, when I first met Bobby, I didn't even realise

that footballers got paid to do something.

I thought it was a part-time sport.

I didn't realise that footballers played it and it was a job.

When I came to Leeds at 15 and a half, 16,

our job was to do the ground.

We used to re-seed the pitch, paint the dressing rooms,

paint outside, and then you got the opportunity,

when all the jobs were done and the groundsman had finished with you,

you got a chance to go training.

My father made me leave school at the age of 15 at Christmas

and my first job was a local coal round

and the guy bought a wagonload of coal

and we'd lift the hundredweight bags and drop them down into the cellar.

Only because I missed a bus and decided to go

and watch the local team playing on the rec,

where we kicked a ball about as boys,

was I able to get a team to play for,

because a bloke walks over and says, "Do you want a game?

"Our goalie's not turned up." "Yeah, I'll play!"

It wasn't, "I'm a footballer and I've got a flash car,"

because they didn't.

They weren't on very good wages.

When I got married to Bobby, well, I'd stopped working

when I was 19, I retired to get ready for the wedding,

but I was earning £11 a week and he was earning £8,

so I was the breadwinner, and that's a true story.

He was earning much less than I when I first met him.

You were more part of the people, if you like.

You didn't live away from the people.

We didn't live in big houses.

In all honesty, the only player that had a big house was Bobby.

We all lived in terraced houses or semidetached houses

and Bobby bought a detached house.

I remember some of the players at West Ham didn't drive cars

and they would come to the game on the bus with the fans, you know?

The bus queue was 20 or 30 yards long

and no chance of getting on,

so I used to have to walk the last mile down to the ground

and, of course, all of the supporters are going down with you.

"How do you think we'll go today, Ray?"

"Oh, I think we'll be all right."

We didn't get paid that well.

When teams came to play at Elland Road, before a match,

I would go to the hotel and say to the lads,

"Listen, I've got some fantastic cloth. Tell us what you want.

"Two pairs of trousers and a jacket and a suit." It worked, it did.

I mean, Terry Venables was one.

Terry, every time he came to Leeds, he used to have a suit.

No! Jack Charlton used to sell suits

and get lengths of material out of the back of the cars and used to...

Not dropped off the lorry,

but they used to sell them in Leeds,

I can remember that.

You had to remember, it was the time as well.

There was still a bit of stiff upper lip around, you know,

in Britain, but therein might have been

the groundwork for a bit of resilience that saw us right in '66.

And I still think Alf recognised that, too, because, after all,

he was the same era or before, of course, a very good player himself.

Alf played for Spurs, of course. He played for Tottenham.

I used to go and watch him as a kid.

We'd go to White Hart Lane, Alf would be playing in front

of Bill Nicholson, who became the manager at Tottenham as well.

When Ipswich offered him a crack at management,

he took himself up the A12 and into history.

Sir Alf Ramsey, at Ipswich Town,

created this little town team which they now call the Tractor Boys

to win the First Division with a unique style of play.

You'd come off the park thinking you'd wiped the floor with them,

and you'd lost 3-1.

They seemed to have the ball all the time,

but nobody could fathom how he was doing it.

He was very lucky. He had a super chairman, old John Cobbold.

John said, "The only crisis we have at Ipswich

"is if we run out of gin in the boardroom," you know.

Since he's been with us,

Ipswich Town have met with more success

than any other football club in the country.

Mr Mayor, you've been so kind to invite us here again...

Alf, to me, was the character.

I think Alf was brilliant and then this posh accent he had.

"Oh, hello, Norman. How are you? Lovely to see you."

I like coming here anyway. I don't know whether the players do.

Normally, they don't drink.

LAUGHTER

The funny times that I liked him,

when he dropped his guard and Alf would have one or two whiskies

and the F word came out quite a few times,

which you wouldn't think.

You mustn't believe all the stories the chairman tells.

If you had seen me in Hamburg,

you'd have seen that the ringleader of the party was the chairman.

LAUGHTER

Alf was a bit more of a complex character

than I think he wanted people to know.

I mean, first and foremost, he took elocution lessons

cos he used to speak like me cos we come from the same manor, Dagenham.

-You come from a working-class home...

-Good stock.

Good stock, a working-class home from the east side of London,

-I'll put it that way.

-I'm not ashamed of that.

-I have got nothing to be ashamed of.

-Of course.

When I knew him, he was a Cockney, but when he was England manager,

he used to talk like the Duke of Edinburgh.

I used to say to him, "Didn't you used to be a Cockney?"

He used to say to me, "..off!" You know?

When he was with the team, that's when he was at his happiest

and when he relaxed,

but he wouldn't be once he had to put the hat on as "I'm the boss".

When I left the Ipswich Town Football Club

to become the England team manager,

I found it a very difficult position to accept.

Mainly because I was not involved

and connected with players every day.

With the England team, you might see them once a month,

you might see them once every two months,

and I missed it. I missed it terribly.

He thought, first and always, that football was a team game

and he tried to fit round pegs into round holes.

He did a simple plan with guys that worked extremely hard.

Jump!

And very good players, you had excellent players,

right throughout the squad.

Right through the squad.

I know my father felt this,

that England had five world-class players -

Gordon Banks, Ray Wilson, Bobby Moore, Bobby Charlton

and Jimmy Greaves.

And he surrounded those players with the people that

were going to help them be world-class at that stage.

There was a story about Sir Alf Ramsey and little Alan Ball

and Nobby Stiles...

The story goes, and it is a true story, that Sir Alf Ramsey

took them out into a park.

He said... It was after training and he called him and Norbert -

that's what he called Nobby.

Sir Alf Ramsey's best mate was there with a dog,

and the dog had a stick between its teeth

and Sir Alf took the stick off the dog

and threw it and the dog chased after it and brought it back.

"Great," he said. "What does the dog do?"

He said, "The dog, Alf, runs, gets the ball, brings it back

"and puts it at me feet."

He said, "Marvellous,

"cos that's what I want you to do for Bobby Charlton."

And him and Nobby said... They looked at each other and went,

"Easy, no problem."

"Win the ball back, give it to Bobby Charlton,

"and we'll win the game," virtually. And that was it.

People like...Nobby Stiles,

my brother, Jack, they weren't what you would call

classical players,

there was a question mark.

My selection.. In the team he picked,

I wasn't a high-profile player

and I would say the same for maybe Nobby Stiles.

I would say the same for Jack Charlton.

Possibly George Cohen.

Heave! And down!

Lovely Jack Charlton story, which actually summed us up...

And Jack was nearly 30, which is quite ancient, I guess,

to be selected for England for the first time.

So Jack, being interested in coaching

and all these sorts of things, asked Alf, "Why are you picking me now?"

Sir Alf said, "My dear Jack, I am choosing and picking

"and building a team, so I don't always choose the best players."

Now, I don't know whether Jack was looking for a pat on the back,

but he got a slap round the face on that, but...

We were listening at the side and we could hear this.

But Jack tells it absolutely beautifully.

He said, "And you fit the pattern that I have in me mind

"in the way I want the team to play."

In other words, he didn't pick the best players,

and he always admitted he never picked the best players

at the time, he picked the people to fit

the pattern of the game that he wanted us to play,

which I think is a very sensible way of picking a team.

I believe it was a way of putting Jack down at the same time!

Cos Jack could be a bit lively and I think that was Alf's way of saying,

"You're not the greatest footballer in the world, Jack, shut up."

As much as the South provided the setting for England's cup campaign,

it was the North and one pit village in particular

that would provide the spirit of the team.

I was so proud of Bobby and Jackie Charlton.

One son who's the star

and the other one's hard and coming up the hard way,

you know, like Jackie had to.

And then you see them walk out of the tunnel playing for England,

that was the happiest day of me life.

One had reached the other then.

It's only when you try to get your head round the adversity

that the family faced, that you begin to understand their passion.

Mum, Cissie Milburn,

well, she came from a famous football family herself.

She watched as her sons, Jack and Bobby,

went off to backbreaking work at the pit, or...

almost to an early grave.

Here is the news.

So far, we know there are 23 survivors after

Manchester United's air crash at Munich this afternoon.

-I'd like to say a few words to me mother, I hope she's OK.

-Yes.

-And taking it well.

-Look at her while you're doing it.

She hasn't been down to see me, you know,

-but it's a bit of a long way and I'm all right.

-I know.

I could have been a bit worse off like some of the others.

Bobby lost eight of his Manchester United team-mates

in the 1958 Munich air disaster.

He was all of 20 years old.

He, like his brother, Jack, were the kind of men

that Alf wanted to make up his final squad of 22 -

strong, dependable and loyal.

'The England players arrived in good mood,

'roused by the confident words of their manager, Mr Ramsey.

'On top of the world, they seem,

'with Bobby Moore ready to lead them to their first success.'

The biggest thing I think that I felt was that Bobby,

about 18 months before, in November '64,

had been diagnosed with testicular cancer.

We didn't know if he was going to ever play again.

We didn't know if he was going to live or die, come to that,

but to see this man fight to get back into the team and get fit

and overcome the terrible, terrible mental scars that he must have had

because, I mean, he felt it affected him as a man.

His living, his whole life was turned upside down...

And then to see him go out captaining England

during the World Cup,

it was like..."Wow."

It was time to deliver.

It now gives me great pleasure to declare open the eighth

World Football Championships.

TRUMPET FANFARE

When we played, there was no such thing

as a friendly.

You know, internationals, getting beat off another country,

you're playing for England...

That was unheard of.

-COMMENTATOR:

-Bobby Charlton... Oh, and the goalkeeper...

You were proud because of one reason -

all them boys that you kicked a ball about with

when you were a little lad,

you know, they would have LOVED to have been in our position.

I know with Bobby, he was so unbelievably proud.

He loved the big occasion, he loved playing for his country.

He was so thrilled to be captain of England.

We knew how we were going to win the World Cup, and then,

when everybody was really, really happy,

it was a bit of a damp squib - we didn't win the opening match.

"Oh!"

-COMMENTATOR:

-It's a corner to England...

-REFEREE BLOWS WHISTLE

-Dying seconds...

And the whistle has gone, it's all over.

-It is all over.

-CROWD BOOS

Uruguayans are as happy as sandboys with that result.

They booed because they were

very disappointed that we finished up with a goalless draw.

All the headlines were, you know, "England flop."

'But, oh, how the moods of the moment change in this game of ours.

'Oh, how quickly the world seems to spin over.'

With the bad draw and the press being what they are,

they slaughtered us.

Do you expect to qualify now?

-We make England and Uruguay first.

-First?

'So, the mood of the moment favours Uruguay.'

It was the best thing, probably, that happened to us.

We got shook up badly,

we were maybe thinking that we were a little bit better

than other people thought.

Others certainly DID have an opinion on what Alf should be doing.

It led to a difficult relationship with the press.

-He didn't have a relationship...

-HE CHUCKLES

That's a bit unfair, I guess, but it was a difficult one,

very difficult one.

But I think Alf's policy was to keep everybody guessing.

Are you going to cling to the idea of using a true winger, Mr Ramsey?

I suggest you wait and see until the next team is selected.

I mean, he could be bloody-minded, Alf.

I suppose he might have thought,

"This is a way of getting back at the press.

"Sod 'em, let 'em wait." You know?

We had to try and explain to the foreign journalists that we had

to live with this, so unfortunately, they'd have to live with it.

Cos they used to get onto us and say,

"Can't you have a word with him?" and, "No, we can't, it's...

"You'll just have to put up with it."

You couldn't tell if he was angry, happy, upset, emotional,

miserable, whatever.

He was just Alf, stone face.

The trouble was, Alf hadn't even made up his own mind.

In Jimmy Greaves,

he had one of the best forwards in the world at his disposal,

but readily admitted his mind wasn't made up on his striking duo.

I certainly didn't feel that I'd have a chance of playing,

absolutely not.

The team did well, the team got a point.

We had a lot more to do.

Against Mexico, the stakes could not have been higher.

England needed a win, and that meant goals.

He wanted to play with wide players and it didn't really come off

to the extent that he had hoped it would, and which is very difficult.

Now you're thinking to yourself,

"Well, we're not getting this right."

Both teams had drawn their previous games and this was England's chance

to prove they could pierce the Latin Americans'...

No-one was really coming forward and playing very well.

And Martin Peters, who certainly would not have expected to

have been in the line-up, came in as a midfield player.

And Alan Ball was in and out of the side,

he played the first game, Alan, and got dropped.

So, it wasn't a foregone conclusion

as to how Alf was going to play this.

I think, to be honest, he winged it.

CROWD YELLS

The Mexicans were defending,

but there was space in between, and I got the ball and I carried it.

-COMMENTATOR:

-Now it's Charlton, Bobby Charlton, Hunt on the right...

What do you think about Bobby Charlton?

We all think that he is a great player.

He is one of the world's greatest players.

Also, he is a very dangerous player who can win any match with one shot.

He could switch a game from...

In fact, sometimes it didn't work out very well

because you'd be over here and he'd sort of do a dummy and switch the...

You'd think, "Thanks, Bob." You've got to run all of 40 yards now...

In my opinion, in 1966, in the World Cup,

he was the best player in the world.

So fit, it was very, very difficult to stop him.

Great finisher, great finisher.

The ball just was running smoothly.

Glided over the pitch.

If they're not careful, I'm going to be close enough to shoot.

-COMMENTATOR:

-Maybe a shot from Charlton...

And I smashed it.

-It's worth trying...

-CROWD ERUPTS

Great goal, what a beauty!

30 yards, top corner!

And smack!

# England! #

Afterwards, people used to tell me they wanted...

They wanted to back us, but they needed a little bit of something,

you know, and they said, "This goal just sort of got us on a path."

Unless you actually went to football,

and I was very lucky that my dad took me and I knew about it,

and I so appreciate the fact that he took me, even though I was a girl...

But they were just a team, they were the English team,

they were England.

But I think everybody, once they won, everyone went...

sat up and thought, "Hello. These must be really good players.

"Who are they? Let's find out."

-COMMENTATOR:

-Charlton trying to tempt them out.

And it's Greaves, there's a chance...

Hunt will put it in... Yes!

I had an easy job, really, to just side-foot it into the net.

But Jimmy Greaves had made that goal.

Good evening.

Well, that goal by Bobby Charlton against Mexico tonight

really was perhaps the most important goal

of the whole of this 1966 World Cup competition.

Well, let's start with you, Joe. Happy about all this?

The Charlton goal, of course, was a dream.

I feel personally that either a Greaves or a Hunt should be

a taller man, over six feet or six feet, and very good in the air,

because with packed defences, this is one of the ways

in which you can get goals against them, even if they do crowd you.

England's blood was up.

A good win in the next game

would see the boys into the quarterfinals,

and speculation was rife about

who did or did not deserve to be part of this great adventure.

Two roommates would become crucial in Alf's struggle for control

of England's destiny.

-COMMENTATOR:

-Stiles...

Greaves... In comes Jack Charlton...

And...

To Alf, Nobby and young Alan Ball

were vital organs in the body of his team.

If Bobby Moore was its head, then they were its heart.

But Nobby's heart was that of a lion that sometimes roared too loud.

And that is Simon... He's rolling in agony.

And I went for the tackle and he was slipping...

He was a good player and I was committed

and he had knocked it and I couldn't stop, and I hit him.

-COMMENTATOR:

-Number 20 for England is Callaghan.

-And Hunt! A goal!

-CROWD ROARS

And the French don't like that

because they say they had a man injured.

The referee is quite right.

And there's...the number 20, Simon...leaving the field.

Now, this ends all hope for France, one man...

It would be a card today, it was a nasty tackle,

and it was suggested by one or two of the FA International Committee

that Alf might think about or might even be told to drop Nobby.

A lot of muttering going on about Stiles,

and whether Stiles is an England player or not. Billy.

I don't think he's playing well enough to maintain the game...

You know, his position in the side.

A player like that is rated on how nice it is to play against him,

and I don't know of any forward who can look forward

to playing against Nobby Stiles.

Oh, he was there for a reason.

But he doesn't get the credit he deserves, you know.

Nobby Stiles was a very, very good footballer, you know.

Everybody thinks Nobby was stuck in there,

and he was, to win it, because Nobby was very quick.

Afraid of no man,

no matter what size they were, he would get into them.

I mean, I got hammered off the press,

I got hammered off the first time they had a panel, and...

on the Thursday, when we were training,

I was just going through the motions when we were playing a five-a-side

and whatever, cos it was always great fun with England.

And...Alf pulled me to one side and said...

"Nobby, did you mean to do that?"

-And I said, "No, I didn't mean it."

-"That'll do for me. You're playing."

That was great, those three days. There was no worry,

there were no pressures on me, and I went...

Going along that morning...

Funny enough, I think the British are the same,

they're always the same.

When your backs are to the wall, the crowds were brilliant.

As we're driving along, it was, "Nobby for Prime Minister," you know.

"You show 'em," and, "Bugger the panel," and all this type of stuff.

It was great.

I totally fell in love with Nobby Stiles.

And he used to take his teeth out when he played!

And he was such a wonderful, wonderful character.

I think everybody fell in love with him.

Do you have any injury problems after tonight's match?

Yes, Greaves will have to be stitched

on our return to the hotel...

Alf had confounded his critics at Ipswich by breaking

the traditional mould of the English play.

-COMMENTATOR:

-The two backs are coming up to make extra forwards.

With England, it developed into,

uh, the so-called "Wingless Wonders".

The first three games he played a natural winger.

He gave Terry Paine a game, he gave Ian Callaghan a game,

and he gave John Connelly a game.

So, it wasn't written in the stars that he was going to play that way

and then, of course, Greavsie got injured.

In fact, Greaves has had two stitches in that wound

and it's too early to say

whether he will be fit to play on Saturday against Argentina.

Dad said he was a genius.

He said he was so far ahead of his time...

He said when we played against Spain,

we were going to play this system with the wingers withdrawn.

He said Spain were a good side, but they won convincingly,

and Dad said it could have been six or seven.

And they couldn't understand how they got beat.

And the next time...

Dad said the next time Alf used that formation was against Argentina.

He put it away.

'Football was introduced to Argentina by Thomas Hogg, an Englishman.

'So the present squad are looking forward to playing in England.'

It's tempting to judge the events from half a century ago

through modern eyes, but the attitudes of players

and the public alike were very different.

Hm!

Especially from countries where the temperaments were...

difficult to comprehend.

Oh, even then!

-COMMENTATOR:

-It's an incident and a penalty.

A very brave decision by the referee on this Buenos Aires ground.

-CROWD ROARS

-There's a rebound, Boca scores.

There's an appeal by the River Plate team,

but the referee lets it stand, and...

onto the pitch come the photographers.

The linesman in a little bit of trouble with the spectators.

More policemen than you can imagine...

I wonder whether we shall see scenes like this

repeated at Villa Park or Hillsborough?

It was a bit more of a man's game in those days than it is now.

You don't get the weeping and wailing.

-COMMENTATOR:

-Antonio Rattin, one of the greatest players in the world...

The tactics used by Argentina in the quarterfinals were to make

Nobby's misdemeanours pale in comparison.

CROWD BOOS

-COMMENTATOR:

-And England appealing for a penalty.

And that's Rattin.

In and...

Could he go off? He might well go off.

It was the...

What we called the snidey things that happened.

You know, if you were... If an attack broke down

and you were running back to your goal...you probably

had your Achilles raked or something like that.

And Rattin's in trouble... He's off!

Rattin is sent off.

That is the second Argentinean sent off in the competition.

And Rattin, the captain, is sent off.

And somebody wants them all to go off.

Juan Carlos Lorenzo, the coach, is...

thinking of approaching the touchline...

And they're all going to go off, I think.

If Rattin goes, they'll all go.

One out, the lot out, I think.

And...

They didn't play well, and they didn't behave well,

but that's the result of the way that the referee yesterday...

There was a reaction against something that was absurd,

ten minutes after the match started, our captain,

one of our best players, has been sent off the field.

In the dustup that followed Rattin's sending-off,

the Argentines played on and lost.

Geoff came in after three games, when Jimmy Greaves got injured.

In fact, we gave them a West Ham goal, because I knew exactly where

Geoff would be when I crossed it and Geoff came across and headed it in.

And there's a goal!

By number 10, Hurst from Peters.

There's an appeal by the Argentinians.

Even Banks is up congratulating Geoff Hurst.

And the whistle has gone, England have won it.

England are in the semifinal of the World Cup.

There is the goal scorer, Geoff Hurst.

It's the only time I saw him get really annoyed...was when...

After we beat Argentina, you know,

people were talking about changing shirts and he was...

"We're not having that," you know.

I'm not going to tell you what he said, but he said,

"You're not changing your shirt with this so-and-so," and, of course...

I'm trying to get it back, Rodriguez is trying to get it that way,

and I ended up with a shirt with an arm about four-feet long, you know.

A chair came through the glass panel window,

they wanted to fight us in the tunnel, and all he said to us was,

"Look, I've had a word with the officials," this does not

go out of this room.

He says, "All you lads have got to remember is

"they are on the plane home tomorrow,

"you're in the semifinal of the World Cup."

He says, "Just leave it."

We are afraid of no-one, no matter where we play...

We have still to produce our best, and this best is not possible

until we meet the right type of opposition, and that is the team

that comes out to play football and not act as animals.

Very strong words in that interview, with Alf Ramsey there,

about the Argentine team players, calling them animals.

Well... I believe that Mr Ramsey didn't behave properly.

So unusual for Alf Ramsey to come out with this, I think

this is the exceptional thing.

Alf, you know, doesn't commit himself to these types of outbursts.

I'm not asking to punish him, but judge him, at least.

The statement issued tonight

says that in the opinion of the committee,

such remarks do not foster goodwill

and international relations in football.

The committee desire the Football Association to take

appropriate disciplinary measures.

For Alf to have to apologise to any foreigner would be...

It would be difficult, he was totally...

I think he went to bed with a Union Jack around him.

That's how English he was.

MUSIC: World Cup Willy by Lonnie Donegan

My main task is to get them together as a team, and probably

the most important thing - that they are playing for England.

The '60s were very, very special.

I mean, it was like the happening era.

If I were to go back, I would probably plop back there

and relive the experience because it was so exciting.

The Beatles and the music scene, and then there was the pill and tights!

It was a really fun time to be young,

and, I mean, it was the miniskirt and the crepe boots

and Vidal Sassoon came out with the geometric haircut.

I was doing Ready Steady Go! and all that, and things like that,

Thank Your Lucky Stars, and we were all having a great time.

And Bobby got me tickets for every game.

They started to do features on the players and their wives

and their children, their families,

and the game of football had become so glamorous.

And the other thing, of course, which put it on the front pages,

was not the football, or Alf Ramsey's team selection.

It was the fact that the trophy had been stolen from

Westminster Central Hall in an exhibition

and, "Well, we've lost the World Cup already, we're not even in it yet."

Well, of course, it was found, as everybody knows,

in the undergrowth in south-east London by a dog called Pickles,

who has remained famous ever since.

It was hilarious. An absolute gem of story, isn't it,

that they should find it in the back yard of somewhere

and the dog brings it back?

The country hadn't gone wild before the World Cup very much,

nobody knew quite what to expect, we'd never had one before.

I don't remember there being that many flags out

until England started to do well.

People thought, "Oh, the first game, England opening the World Cup."

You could walk up to Wembley and buy a ticket on the night.

It wasn't even a sell-out.

So that's how long it took

for the World Cup to grip people's imagination.

But when it did, it did.

Helped by a massive TV and press campaign, the visiting teams

and their poster boys found themselves at the centre

of a phenomenon taking hold of the viewing public

right across the world.

Everybody wants to speak to Pele, photographers crowd round him,

journalists crowd round him.

He is pushed, he's harried, but still he keeps that

smile on his face, still he will answer anybody's questions

HE SPEAKS PORTUGUESE

He's only seen the goals of the Mexico-France game.

He hasn't seen anything else, he says.

-LAUGHTER

-Thank you very much.

The Lymm Hotel, which we considered so posh,

you'd never dream of walking through the gates,

people were wandering in just to go to the loo, hoping they might...

LAUGHTER

..cop off with a player.

But it wasn't like now, there weren't Wags, there was

none of that.

It was just that they were famous and it was exciting

because it was so real, it brought it to your doorstep.

People not used to being in the spotlight found their lives,

habits, even their meals be examined and broadcast.

Now, he used to be a drummer in a dance band,

now he's termed to be a masseur.

Now, Mario, can you speak any English at all?

No speaky, more or less...

LAUGHTER

Pele, of course,

had been kicked out of the World Cup by the Portuguese.

Again fouled... I thought, twice, actually.

The referee let it go the first time.

The tackling on Pele was brutal.

I mean, there would have been red cards all over the place these days.

The Portuguese got rid of him very quickly.

Which was one of the worst fouls I've seen in my life.

I don't even think he got booked, the guy,

he just crippled him for about eight weeks...

This, a really sad sight.

The world's greatest footballer off the pitch.

The North Koreans found themselves in the middle of a media storm

after first sending Italy home

and then going 3-0 up against Portugal.

He must score, he must score!

Well, this is ridiculous...

The Portuguese are torn apart.

And no-one could believe it, Portugal were just on the ropes,

and Eusebio revived them.

Eusebio... Number three.

He scored four, I think, in that game, they won 5-3.

Now, from then on, people were into it.

The only people not partying were Alf's band of brothers.

But at least they were all in it together.

Oh, dear!

There was no cliques.

On the odd night out that we had, which wasn't very often...

If you could sneak a couple of hours somewhere,

it would be anybody.

Everybody got on so well, there was nobody who stood out,

who thought they were better than anybody else or whatever.

And I think that's one of the reasons Alf Ramsey picked that...

You know, there was no what I call prima donnas.

We were all together. You touched one of us, you touched us all.

Whoever could escape, did. Whoever went over the wall,

"Come on, over we go, lads."

It's been most helpful being together for so long.

In the past England matches,

we've only had one or two days to prepare for each game,

but we've had a fortnight's hard training at Lilleshall,

where we lived, ate and slept together.

And we've virtually done the same for the last fortnight here.

It's helped us to get to know one another much closer.

Oh, Bobby and Jimmy were... Well, Bobby and all the boys...

Bobby and fun were like one and the same thing.

He and the boys used to get up to some real games.

I'm not sure if I know them all, but...

LAUGHTER

We went to Pinewood Studios for a television interview.

It was... James Bond was making this movie.

That's right, Pinewood Studios, yeah...

In fact, I've got a nice picture of Bobby, myself, Sean Connery

and Yul Brynner.

Again, it was Alf giving us a little change, you know what I mean?

Rather than just...training

and, you know, being beaten down and everything.

Stuck in the hotel when we weren't training.

He was giving us this little change.

CHILDREN SHOUT AND CHEER

They all knew their jobs, there was the foot soldiers

and there was the generals.

Bobby Charlton understood his responsibility,

to create and be that great player he is.

Bobby Moore knew his responsibility to captain

and lead.

And my dad and Nobby knew that they had to run around

and snort and rat and fight and scrap and occasionally bite,

as me dad would say about Nobby.

And if everybody does their role together, then you have success.

And that's what Alf made them believe.

You need people round the dressing room who are funny,

make you laugh...

But you also need people who've got their feet on the ground,

rock-solid, you know what I mean?

And you look round to the right, or you look to the left,

and you think, "Well, if we get in trouble, he's going to die for us."

You know what I mean? You need those as well. And I think Alf did that.

They weren't the only team taking time to bond.

But really, the boys' opponents in the semifinal

boiled down to one man and one style.

Well, I don't think Portugal really know any other way to play

than attacking-wise,

with players in their side such as Eusebio,

who everybody's talking about at the moment.

Eusebio! Oh, my word!

Have you ever seen anything like that?

Eusebio, the European Footballer of the Year,

and tonight has looked the greatest footballer in the world.

It was very rarely Alf picked a particular man to mark,

but that day he said, "Take him out."

Apparently, me dad said, "Do you mean literally?"

To which the reply was, "No, no, just take him out of the game."

What exact orders did you give Nobby Stiles about dealing with Eusebio?

Dealing with him? This is a bad word.

You know, I have to watch the words that I use.

On television and also to the press.

Dealing with him - Nobby Stiles was instructed to play his normal game.

About ten minutes in,

Nobby's hit Eusebio with another absolutely crunching tackle.

And the little Portuguese players come running over and pushed Nobby

and said, "Stiles, you kick Eusebio one more time,

"we kick your teeth in."

And Nobby said, "You'll have a job, pal.

"They're in a hanky in the dressing room."

Yeah, he broke his heart, really, I think.

The Portuguese players have been reported as saying after,

they were disappointed, because Eusebio...

he got disenchanted, he just couldn't get the better of my dad.

He wouldn't give up, Dad, would he? One thing he'd never do is give up.

Keep going and going and going.

Nobby Stiles is a great player.

And I'm proud that he is an Englishman, and I'm proud

that he was in the England team.

The trouble with having stars is that they have to shine.

Alf didn't really believe in stardom.

He believed in teamwork.

And England's second goal in their 2-1 semifinal win

would prove to be fateful for one of their best players

and a new boy who didn't need to shine.

Just to have a hand in the victory would be enough.

Yes, I had more of a hand.

I made it for him. What do you mean, I had a hand in it?

I... Yes...

I wasn't sure whether to shoot or not, and I saw Bobby coming in,

and I just rolled it nicely in his path and he did the rest.

That could be the goal that puts England in the final.

England are in the final of the World Cup. It is all over.

A great victory by England.

Against magnificent opponents.

So, no final for Eusebio, the tournament's top scorer.

To have tried and failed to have reached the pinnacle

must have been, well, crushing enough, but...

to be denied the opportunity...

What must that have felt like?

Jim, things not quite going right for you up to now.

No... Well... You know... It's not for the want of trying.

Or preparation.

It's just that the ball doesn't seem to be running right at the moment.

But then, I think, looking at the World Cup,

this is happening to a lot of players.

-Were you at Wembley on Saturday night?

-Yes.

Did you hear any comments about Jimmy among the crowd?

Well, they always have a go at Jimmy if doesn't score.

You know, if he scores, they don't say anything.

Jimmy Greaves, to me,

was the best goal scorer that I have ever played against.

He was a tremendous player.

I can't tell you what a good player Jimmy Greaves was.

Hurst... And a beautiful goal by Greaves.

And probably the best finisher, I think, I have ever seen,

I would say.

There's a certain arrogance that is very hard to avoid

if you are the best.

I mean, it doesn't make you an easy man to manage. I mean,

no-one could dislike Jimmy, no, he was too nice a guy, but...

to Alf, he could be annoying.

Jimmy was... He didn't really want to train hard.

Because he didn't think he had to.

He would jog round and he was... He was a comedian, he was funny.

But he was a lovely man.

But he had to learn to live with Alf, it wasn't easy.

But there was a sort of armed neutrality between those two.

They understood each other.

And it may be that they were trying it,

and Alf would push it a bit, Jimmy would push it a bit...

Really, I don't think Jimmy's got a bad word to say about Alf.

If he has, he's kept it to himself all these years.

Unfortunately, I don't know if Jimmy was fit.

I would rather like to think that he wasn't fit,

because Jimmy was a great goal scorer,

he was a fantastic goal scorer.

But, unfortunately,

I don't think he'd scored in the first three games he'd played.

I knew I wasn't playing, cos...

Harold Shepherdson, who I got on quite well with, sort of tipped me

the wink, he didn't say I wasn't, but he more or less, you know...

Er...

He found a blend of two players.

Which was Roger Hunt and Geoff Hurst.

A different type of player,

it wouldn't work with Jimmy, and Jimmy was the best goal scorer,

without a shadow of a doubt.

Jimmy was the best goal scorer - he was so unlucky.

Poor old Jimmy, who was such a fantastic player,

but tactically, Alf Ramsey thought

we would be stronger if Geoff Hurst was brought into the team

and he was going to be the target man.

Alf made a big step.

It turned to be an even bigger one than maybe he thought.

You didn't go to Alf and say, "What about Jimmy Greaves?

"He's the best player." You don't say anything.

You just stand there, and Alf used to come in and say,

"This is the team that will play."

Poor Jimmy couldn't get back into the side.

And as I said, I couldn't...

I haven't, to this day, mentioned it to him,

because I can't bring myself to do it.

No-one's ever talked about it.

Nobody has.

What can you say?

It's what you feel.

It's what you feel for each other,

and I don't know what other players felt. I know what I felt.

But, I mean, you can't turn round

and justify the...decision

of not being picked to play by saying,

"Oh, well, never mind. Bad luck!"

It's not on! Not for a World Cup final. So you live through it.

And, you know, they talk about Geoff, and, of course,

it was Geoff that came in, and he seized the day, you know?

-That was it, really.

-I know his record.

I mean, 160 games for Chelsea, 130 goals in four years,

16 to 20 years of age. 57 games for England, 44 goals.

Three in four at Tottenham. And you use the word "genius" occasionally.

He was a genius at the art of scoring goals.

And so it was a big decision for Alf to stay with this kid

that's only played five or six games now against the great Jimmy Greaves.

In terms of the sympathy, I don't think there was any,

certainly not from me. It's part and parcel of the game.

I think I was just ready to take my chance.

Your chance will come and you've got to take it.

-ALL:

-# ..so gerne anschauen... #

"Sympathy" was not a word much spoken in any language

during the days leading up to the final,

certainly not by the Germans,

who thought little of Alf's team-building approach to the game.

Obviously, you do not believe in having your team together

for a very long time for training sessions,

as some of the other countries may do.

Because if we are too long time together,

it's possible that the players can't see themselves.

-You feel they may get stale.

-Yes. Yes.

-Yes.

Well, he had a point.

The boys had been together for almost two months without a break.

The relentlessness was beginning to take its toll.

It's not like a normal getting to the cup final, for instance.

I mean, a cup final, you've got three weeks to live it.

In this game, it's a case of you get over one and you're into the next.

Very nice.

-What did your mum have to say about it all?

-Delighted.

-Everybody's delighted. As I say, it's tiring.

-Yeah.

It's been tiring since Tuesday.

I'll be glad when it's tomorrow and it's all over.

Here in the studio are three people with very special interest

in England winning, three of the wives of the English players,

Mrs Peters, George Cohen's wife, here next to me,

and Mrs Jimmy Greaves.

Jimmy, of course, has been away from home for quite a long time.

Seven weeks. Four days in seven weeks I've seen him.

-You've only seen him four times in seven weeks?

-Yes.

How's this going down with the children?

'Alf, I think, was understanding, but he just felt

'we were two separate worlds and we should be kept apart.'

Football was their job, they were paid to do their job,

they should do their job,

and wives and girlfriends should stay at home.

And most of us - I think, in fact, all of us -

actually were in agreement.

I don't think any of us ever sort of rebelled or said

that it wasn't right, and I don't think we gave the boys a hard time.

One of the problems for wives is they watch matches,

and the spectators around them don't know that they're the wives.

-No, they don't!

-What's it like? What kind of comments do you pick up?

-All sorts, really.

-What kind of things do you pick up?

Well, I don't think that I should say, really!

'The era was different.'

There was no pill, to start off with,

so everybody was terrified of getting pregnant or whatever.

There were lots and lots of early marriages.

There wasn't the glamour before 1966 that is around the football now.

I mean, it didn't attract big money,

so therefore it didn't attract all the dollybirds.

People just never bothered you. We'd go and stay at Hendon Hall,

and if there were more than two or three kids outside

looking for autographs, even during the World Cup...

It only seemed the last day that the locals,

cos they knew we stayed there,

and I think they got accustomed to us...

Well, I think when we set off, there only seemed a handful of them,

perhaps waving a little flag, waving us off.

And if you could imagine that two of the lads who were playing

in the match in the afternoon could go down into Golders Green

and buy a pair of shoes and actually go on the bus and do it...

I mean, you just couldn't imagine that today.

We knew we were going to see the family again after the match.

We said, "Come on, we'll have to get some proper clothes to wear,"

you know? And we went down...

We went down the main street out near Hendon,

and we walked down,

and not a lot of people knew us at all.

We used to go to the cinema before the games, and Alf Ramsey,

like I say, what he used to do, he'd sidle alongside you...

"You're playing tomorrow."

And he said, "Good luck."

And that was it. And he went away.

And I thought, "Ohhh!" I couldn't tell anybody!

This was before we went in the pictures, so, really,

I don't remember what the picture was.

All I could think of - "I'm picked in the team."

The night before, we went to see

Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines, and

I left my favourite cardigan inside. I forgot about it, you know?

So I was a bit worried about that, you know, omens and whatever.

And the Saturday morning, I got up and went to mass early,

-at seven o'clock.

-I said, "Nobby, where are you going?"

So he came back and came up to me, about that far away,

because he's blind...! I don't know what he was doing!

So I said, "Where are you going?"

So he said, "Oh, George, I'm going to try

"and find a Catholic church to pray and confess."

And I said, "A Catholic church to pray and confess? Where?"

He said, "Golders Green."

Now, Golders Green has got more synagogues than the state of Israel.

And he came back about an hour later

complaining about this church didn't give change.

I think he put at least a tenner, you know, trying to

bribe Him Upstairs to make sure that it worked out all right, you know?

The actual World Cup day was, like, unbelievable.

For my dad and my uncles to go to the pub was very exciting.

You knew it must be a terribly special occasion.

I remember thinking I wish I could have gone with them!

I always wanted to be with them.

Well, I can assure you, on my route from Coventry to London,

the M1 was empty.

You wouldn't have seen anybody out mowing the lawn.

Everybody was glued to it.

I was walking up Wembley Way, as they called it then,

up to the ground, to the Twin Towers,

and on one side was this band of ageing buskers,

and they were playing There'll Always Be An England.

CHANTING

How much money are you going to make on this cup final, do you think?

Well, at the moment I'm charging about £20 for a £3 15s seat.

Possibly... Somebody's told me

that there's thousands of Germans coming over here without tickets.

It's all a question of supply and demand,

and outside the ground they'll be fetching £30, £40.

But one of the things that impressed me

was the amount of Germans.

We all intermingled, and it was a wonderful, wonderful atmosphere.

There was just noise all the time.

-HE IMITATES CROWD NOISE

-That's all you could hear.

Time for last-minute tactics and last-minute nerves.

The tension in the players I wouldn't have thought

has been relieved at all.

This is the one thing that I failed to overcome.

I failed to overcome it in myself,

so how could you overcome it in the players?

What was bothering Alf more than anything

was Germany's young wunderkind...

Inside to Beckenbauer. Seeler...

And this is the third one!

Oh, what a goal!

And what do you think about Beckenbauer, for instance?

I think he's a good player when he's allowed to run with the ball.

..so much so that he decided

to sacrifice his star player to try and stop him.

'He says, "I want you to mark Franz Beckenbauer, and don't let him

'"out of your sight."'

And that was it, really. And I thought, "Well, that's it.

"I've waited all my whole life to play in a World Cup final

"and I'm asked to man-mark, which I've never done before."

Unfortunately for Bobby,

the Germans had come to exactly the same conclusion.

I was ordered by our team manager,

Helmut Schoen, to follow Bobby Charlton,

because Bobby Charlton, he was the engine of the England game.

-COMMENTATOR:

-Bobby Charlton...

When the whistle went, Franz Beckenbauer came straight to me.

He came straight to me and stood next to me.

He'd been given the same instruction from his own manager.

So between the two of us,

we didn't really participate much in the final. We didn't.

CROWD CHANTS

So, after all they'd worked for and given up,

here they were in the spotlight. England expected.

But, more importantly, Alf expected.

Time to compose themselves in the sanctuary of the dressing room.

The place was a-buzz, you know, with photographers, camera crews,

journalists, throughout the dressing room.

And, you know, it was just, you know, a big, buzzing mob.

The dressing room was absolutely solid.

But it was more the players that weren't playing coming in

-to wish us good luck.

-This is a World Cup final. You know?

And the dressing room was tense, and even up till that point,

although we weren't in kit or anything else,

we still felt part of what was going on that day.

I can remember saying to Jackie Charlton,

who was stripping next to me,

"I can't believe this, Jack,

"because, you know, it's probably the most

"important game we're ever going to play in, and the place is chaotic.

"It's so different to your normal circumstances."

So he said, "Yeah, but you've got to realise, it's the World Cup final."

I remember Nobby said to me, "If we win the World Cup,"

he said, "can you get this to me?"

And he gave me a bunch of tissues.

And they were his front teeth.

But when the team were led out by Bobby, that roar as they came

out that tunnel and into the light, it was, like, mind-blowing.

CROWD CHANTS

-COMMENTATOR:

-It's Bobby Moore, England. Cohen, Ball, Banks...

And here we were, on that day, to walk up that tunnel,

believe me, my goodness me,

the old heart was pumping and the nervous system was going!

Everything was going!

And the game itself was like a cliff-hanger, wasn't it?

The Germans scored, and they've scored, and this and that.

I shouted, "Leave it! Leave it, Ray!"

because it was going out for a goal kick.

And Ray - I don't know why - he headed it,

and it dropped straight for Haller.

To Haller... A goal!

West Germany have scored.

We didn't rollick him or anything of that nature.

That was the atmosphere within that team. We lifted him.

"Come on, come on, Ray," to make him play as we know he could play.

In it goes...

Oh, that tremendous, stupid, knees-up jump in the air

was something that was an expression of, you know, "I'm here."

Now it's England with an offensive that must have

warmed Alf Ramsey's heart.

And it's a goal by Peters!

I've got a fantastic photo of me jumping quite high. Geoff's going...

..like that.

And it's a free kick to West Germany.

One minute to go. Just 60 seconds.

Alf said to us,

"Wherever you are, we want you down on the pitch at the final whistle."

We weren't on the sideline. We were up in the stands.

There was no substitutes, you see, for the World Cup final in '66.

I'd looked up in the stand and I'd seen people making their way out,

going out because they thought that was it, it's all over.

And I knew then it was close to the end of the match.

The bounce of the ball suited him, and it came to him.

It could've gone anywhere, but it came to him.

And he knocked the ball in the back of the net, and I went,

"Bloody hell!"

Weber has scored in the last seconds!

"Bloody hell!" I couldn't believe it. All this time...

My grandma got so overexcited, she threw her china cup

at the telly, which fortunately missed the screen and hit the side!

For them to get the equaliser, bloomin' heck.

I was a bit, you know...

I can always remember it. As I sat down, they equalised.

And we missed it. I did not...

Jimmy and I did not see the Germans equalise.

I've only seen the goal on telly.

-COMMENTATOR:

-What a dramatic end!

As they got together, they sat down on the floor.

We're now coming round to Alf, right?

And half of the lads are sitting down on the turf, you see?

And we're just coming...

And as we all now get round Alf, he goes, "'Ey!

"Come on. Stand up. Stand up."

He says, "We don't want them to think we're less fit than they are."

And that was Alf!

I thought it was important that they inferred to all and sundry,

you know, that they were ready for the next half an hour.

It was important that we established some sort of psychological benefit.

The one guy, to me, that was awesome in extra time, that was Alan Ball.

He was... He ran and ran and ran.

Obviously, I felt ever so tired in games, because I'm a human being.

But in this particular game, I can honestly say I was, you know...

..crying to everybody to give me the ball, because I knew that

I had the beating of this chap and I knew I could cause problems.

Here's Ball, running himself daft.

Now Hurst. Can he do it?

What happened next is possibly

the most debated moment in English football history.

Geoff hits the ball, it goes there.

I see the ball when he comes up...

At an angle, up there. I still say it was over the line.

..and I took him over the goal.

Hit the bar, went down, bounced down over the line.

I was fairly close to it.

It was not possible that the ball was behind the line.

-And I went, "Oh, it's over." You know?

-I saw it exactly.

The ball never was behind it!

Are you seeing a pattern emerging?

The Swiss referee consulting a Russian linesman.

Neither spoke the language. God knows what they were talking about.

So the whole thing was a bit crazy.

In truth, only one thing mattered...

-COMMENTATOR:

-It's a goal!

..and one thought counted.

-TRANSLATION:

-I was about seven or eight metres

towards the halfway line,

so I saw very clearly that the ball hit the crossbar

and landed beyond the goal line.

As the player that hits the shot at 2-2, you want to believe -

I want to believe more than anything else in my life -

that ball is over the line.

It's all over, I think. No...

15 minutes later, there was another goal...

along with possibly the most recognised line

that any sports commentator has ever uttered.

And here comes Hurst. He's got...

Some people are on the pitch. They think it's all over.

It is now! It's four!

"They think it's all over. It is now!"

I'll always remember, you know, the pass from Bobby Moore,

where Geoff got onto it.