JUNE 17th 1954

There were a number of challenging international matches for England during 1953 and one of them was at the Moumental Stadium in Buenos Aires against Argentina. Having drawn with the Scots at Wembley in April 2-2, a month later the England team was on tour, playing ambitious matches once a week starting with a tempetuous game against the Argentinians (0-0), which seems to have continued as a feud since....including the Falkland conflict! Torrential rain  brought an early end to the game, just as well by all accounts.

Next England were in Chile, where Tommy Taylor, a Barnsley lad, who had transferred to Manchester United, scored one, with Bolton's Nat Lofthouse, fresh from the FA Cup Final, on May 2nd, and a defeat by Blackpool, getting the other. An old fashioned centre-foward if ever there was one.

There next came a 1-2 defeat by Uruguay in Montevideo, which wasn't helped by food poisoning in the England camp and then there was a final farewell to the Americas with a 6-3 win at the Yankee Stadium. Only 14 players were used on that tour.

Walter Winterbottom, the England "manager" and Stanley Rous, the FA Secretary were up against a selection committee, full of stuffed shirts. Considering their position in  the FA hierarchy, it was not easy to make efficient changes to the "selection committee" an independent body who did not ask their manager for help!

There were World Cup qualifiers to play (v Wales and Ireland) in late 1953 and then a match to celebrate the centenary of the 90th Year of the Football Association founding in 1863; The FA had lined up "The Rest of the World XI" in October 1953, a friendly that ended 4-4. Entertaining stuff but?

Having beaten Wales (4-1) in October and Ireland (3-1) in November, England's last game of the year was against the Hungarians on November 25th. These were the famous Magyars, with Puskas to the fore and at Wembley with 100,000 watched England soundly beaten 3-6. Before the game the Hungarians, paying attention to fine detail, aranged for a fog machine to be used at their training ground at Lake Bulaton to simulate weather conditions in "foggy" London on November.

Scotland in April 1954 put up little resistance at Hampden despite a huge crowd of 134,544, England winning 4-2 with goals from Broadis, R. Allen, Nicholls and Mullen.

A month later the England team was on tour again to Yugoslavia (0-1) and Hungary (1-7) warming up before the World Cup Finals.

In the World Cup qualifiers, England (pictured below) and Italy were "seeded" and so it was deemed that they would not play each other. So England only played two matches in a group of 4, drawing with Belgium 4-4 aet on June 17th and three days later, beat Switzerland at the amusing Wankdorf Stadium in Berne 2-0.
That was that for World Cup "Finals" group matches with 3 points to England, a win and a draw.
Curiously Italy flopped with only one win.
Then on the 26th the English played their  Quarter-final v Uruguay, a seasoned World Cup team, with another defeat 2-4, despite playing some of their best football but after some erratic goalkeeper by Birmingham's Gil Merrick, their tournament was over.
Uruguay lost to Hungary in the semis 4-2 and West Germany beat the Magyars 3-2, again at the Wankdorf!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm9CxBKQtnw almost certainly no sound!
How many can you name?