Given my long standing fascination with the 1966 World Cup and in particular the manager and captain who guided the tournament hosts to victory, it was with no shortage of curiosity I sat down to watch the episode featuring England in the Netflix documentary series ‘BECOMING CHAMPIONS‘ – the sentimentalist in me leaving it as close to July 30, the date on which Bobby Moore lifted the Jules Rimet trophy 53 years ago.
Having already watched the instalments on France, Brazil and Germany and being interested without unduly impressed (the series is based on those countries who have won the World Cup and how they fared at tournaments before and since), any credit afforded me for not being parochial and just watching the England hour, was quickly dispelled.
From the television screen I found myself being described as ‘arrogant‘ when writer John Carlin expressed some forthright views on my fellow countrymen.
During the episode entitled ‘England – You Only Win Once‘ he states:
‘There’s an arrogance, an imperial arrogance that is always there, part of the English soul – to a greater or lesser degree depending on the individual – but that helps explain the Brexit vote and the referendum in a certain sense, however irrational, of cultural superiority over the rest of Europe. This is extended in people’s minds to football, hence: “What do we, the English, have to learn from you Europeans or the Argentinians or Brazilians?” Nothing. We invented the game. Shut Up.’
Clearly not enamoured by the English or history of the national team, (Carlin was actually born in London and of an age to remember England winning the World Cup), to this apparent malcontent July 30 1966 would not seem a happy day in his young life.
Critical distance is all well and good – but the Netflix producers would have been better served by allowing someone without the slanted (and often misinformed) views of Carlin, to set the scene for 1966.
‘In the 50s when the English still thought they still held their Empire, they had a sense of being. They had just won the Second World War, with the help of the Allies. They felt on top of the world – and in football terms they were on top of the world. And then they suffered the tremendous humiliation of being beaten first by the United States in 1950 and then more crushingly by the Hungarians in 1953 and 1954.’
Nobody would dispute defeat against the USA was embarrassing and that England were given two painful lessons by the Hungarians in how football was advancing – but references to the Empire (in every history book I have ever read it is called the ‘British‘, not ‘English‘ Empire) and England being ‘on top of the world‘ after World War Two are frankly, ridiculous.
The common feeling among people in Britain was relief at surviving rather than any lasting euphoria. For goodness sake, rationing of some food stuffs lasted twice as long as the war.
At this point it was hard not think the documentary was being tailored to emphasise the views espoused by Carlin. World Cup winning full-back George Cohen offers some insight into 1966, but whereas the France episode dwells for half an hour on their 1998 triumph, England’s glory year is dealt with in ten minutes – with more time given to the 1986 quarter-final defeat by Argentina, than when they became World Champions.
In fact the whole take on ’66 is baffling to say the least. The quarter-final victory over Argentina is mostly told from an Argentinian perspective, one writer in Buenos Aries suggesting their 1-0 defeat was down to the referee being German – which as a conspiracy theory is up there with the Moon landing being faked. Naturally, Carlin has a theory:
‘London had become a real sort of cultural centre of the world. It was in the vanguard of developments and particularly in music with The Beatles and Rolling Stones being the great phenomenon of international music of that time.’
Sounding suspiciously like an arrogant Englishman, Carlin omits Bob Dylan from that list. Most fair-minded people attribute England winning the World Cup to having an outstanding manager in Alf Ramsey and three world-class players (at least) in Gordon Banks, Bobby Moore and Bobby Charlton. As for the tenuous link to pop music, it had never occurred to me that England not retaining the World Cup in 1970 might be down to The Beatles breaking up the same year.
Goalkeeper Peter Shilton gives the England version of what happened at the 1986 and 1990 tournaments. The 1986 ‘handball’ goal of Diego Maradona in the last eight defeat against Argentina clearly stills rankles (‘You basically rely on the referee and linesman to do their jobs,’ Shilton growls, adding: ‘Maradona was a great player, but not a great sportsman’).
But as the victors, Argentinians are given license to wax lyrical – writer Horacio Pagani giving an assessment difficult to disagree with:
‘The 1986 World Cup was won thanks to him (Maradona) – if any other team would have had him at that World Cup, they would have been world champions.’ He also goes for balance in appraising the brace scored by Maradona in the quarter–final against England:
‘Diego scores the vilest goal in history – and also the most beautiful.’
Such is the delight surrounding Argentina’s victory – or England’s defeat, by this stage of the programme it is hard to tell – the producers put an incorrect final score on the screen (did Gary Lineker not pull one back for England late in the game?)
In discussing Italia 90 Shilton loses out, for screen time on this time occasion, to Jurgen Klinsmann, Andreas Brehme and Lothar Matthaus.
While Matt Dickenson of The Times contends, ‘In 1990 England had a very good team,’ Carlin, naturally, has a view to the contrary: ‘They lost on penalties to Germany in 1990 and that game could have gone either way, but at the same time that wasn’t a great English team. Not even the English would say that.’
For once I would tend to agree with him (despite it being ‘West‘ Germany who England were beaten by) although there was more exasperation in my armchair when Dickenson remarked, ‘Sven Goran Eriksson was a good manager‘ – undercutting his own point almost immediately by saying how badly Sven handled the Lampard/Gerrard situation, ‘basically leaving it for them to fix themselves and it became a muddle.’
There is no doubt a better manager than Eriksson would have sorted out that conundrum and with the top class players they had available in the 2002-2006 era, a coach with sharper tactical awareness than the Swede would have taken England far closer to winning a tournament.
There was no such muddled, haphazard thinking in 1966. With a clear mind to exactly what he wanted, Alf Ramsey selected his best team as opposed to his best players – a concept lost on most of his successors who have simply picked the most talented individuals and hoped they could work the rest out for themselves.
In fact the programme hurries quickly through later tournaments, the irony not lost on this observer of no clips from the 2002 group stage win over Argentina – although, perhaps we should be thankful for it not probing too deeply into England World Cup campaigns of 2006, 2010 and 2014.
While the French episode ends with them winning the competition again last year, there is no reference to England reaching the semi-finals in 2018 – instead we are left with Carlin pontificating on a lack of ‘English humility,’ and how all (all?) the best players in the Premier League are foreign.
While there is not much to recommend about the ‘England’ edition of ‘Becoming Champions,’ it at least made me realise I was still capable of getting a bee in my football bonnet – not least when Carlin closes the programme by saying:
‘A lot of new influences in the game have not been absorbed – influences that have shaped the game in France, in Spain, in Germany, in Holland.’
You won’t find an episode in the ‘Becoming Champions‘ series on Holland, Mr Carlin, as they have not won the World Cup.
Which is a statement of fact – rather than pre-conceived English arrogance.
This article was first published on 30 July 2019.
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