Tuesday 23 July 2024

OF COURSE...THE DAY OF THE WORLD CUP WIN BUT DON'T FORGET JIMMY!! Alf did!

 

The 23rd July 1966.....World Cup Quarter-Final, when
Geoff Hurst replaced the "regular" but injured Jimmy Greaves, in the England side for the World Cup quarter-final, against Argentina at Wembley. Geoff scored the only goal! The Argentine captain Antonio Rattín was sent off and England manager Alf Ramsey refused his players to exchange shirts with their opponents at the end of the match. They were quite "lively". I watched on TV.

On this day, at Wembley, Alf, one of the milder managers in charge of English football, was so incensed by the behaviour of his Argentinian opponents, in our World Cup Quarter-final tie, that he prevented his team from swopping shirts after the game.
He called the Argentinians animals and as you can see, it went into one of "theirs" joining in a shirt stretching competition, with Fulham's, George Cohen (a more mild mannered footballer you could not find).

England were also much bettered prepared for this home competition, with eight internationals prepared under the flag of St George, in the 6 months before the big kick off.

In 1950 and 1954, England had just 3 warm up games leading up to the tournament, in 1958 and 1962 they had 4. Against Poland (1-1 on January 5 at Goodison Park), Bobby Charlton was unfit, so Burnley's  Gordon Harris took his place, but it was Bobby Moore who scored his only international goal.
Nobby Stiles scored in the next warm up game, beating West Germany 1-0, but the Wembley crowd..75,000 of it! booed the England team off the pitch.
Playing 4-3-3 was Alf's plan and against Scotland the team won 4-3 with Bobby Charlton, scoring, making all the difference on his return. Hunt 2 and Hurst scored the others. (Crowd 123.052)
After a match against Yugoslavia with Greaves and Charlton a 2-0 win, scoring in front of 55,000 at Wembley, the squad went on tour to Scandinavia, scoring 11 goals to 1 in three matches at Finland (3-0: Peters, Hunt, J.Charlton-12,899), Norway (6-1: 4 for Greaves*, Connelly and Moore:29,543) and Denmark (2-0; Charlton J and Eastham. 32,000)) with a 1-0 win over Poland on the way home at Chorzow with 93,000 in the stadium! Hunt scored.
*Four goals against Norway was the sixth time that Greaves had scored 3 or more goals for England in one match: 3 v Luxembourg 1960, 3 v Scotland 1961, 3 v Peru 1962, 4 v Northern Ireland 1963 and 3 more v N.Ireland in 1964. (Greaves also scored 4 v Norway in Oslo June 29th.)

Back home, the first group match was a dull draw against Uruguay 0-0 on July 11th. Then came Mexico 2-0 (16th July-Bobby Charlton and Hunt)) and France 2-0 (20th July-Hunt 2)) making this, the first time England had won two World Cup games in a row!
Greaves had been gashed in the leg against the French and Hurst jumped at the opportunity to take his place for the next game. This cost Jimmy his place in the World Cup team.

Journalist, Hugh McIlvanney described the Argentina game as "not so much a football match, but an international incident".
Captain Rattin* was sent off, for "violence of the tongue" as stated by the ref, who spoke no Spanish.
Rattin tried to take his team with him, it looked as though the poor inadequate referee, Rudolph Kreitlein, ironically, a German, would abandon the game.

If you look for Ken Aston in a past blog, you will soon see how this game eventually led to the use of Yellow and Red Cards!

England had committed 33 fouls during the afternoon, and their opponents only 19! The anarchy went on after Hurst's wonderful glancing header and Alf, did not help matters by referring to his opposition as "animals". over 98,000 watched the game unfold!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbCuTGF29Qw Rattin's side of things in English.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq0nxUlgXm8

Alf's strategy was to bring in Geoff Hurst in place of Jimmy Greaves who had played in the previous qualifying ties, a Hurst scored the winner. It was 1-0 but of course against 10 men and no subs. Was the start of the "rivalry" between the two countries?

Three days later England had to meet Portugal and Eusebio in the Semi-finals.

https://baileyfootballblog.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-falklands-v-england.html

In 1978, *Rattin was employed by Sheffield United as a scout in the South American market and he brought Alejandro Sabella to the club. Later, Rattin entered politics and joined the Federist Unity Party, led by alleged torturer Luis Patti. Rattin was the first footballer to enter Congress.

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