1966 World Cup Best XI

Discussion in 'Soccer History' started by Once, Sep 14, 2014.

  1. Once

    Once Member+

    Apr 16, 2011
    I kinda stumbled upon this and was not sure where I could share it. Its an article from Mundo Deportivo of August 1, 1966:
    http://hemeroteca.mundodeportivo.com/preview/1966/08/01/pagina-4/931548/pdf.html#

    It says that the agency Associated Press designated the following as the Best XI of the tournament:

    Banks
    D. Santos, Schulz, Moore, Marzolini
    Beckenbauer, Charlton, Voronin
    Bene, Eusebio, Simoes

    It also says that a referendum organized by L'Equipe and France Football regarding the best player of the tournament gave the following result:

    1- Bobby Charlton ----- 17 votes
    2- Franz Beckenbauer - 8 votes
    3- Eusébio -------------- 7 votes
    4- Valery Voronin ----- 4 votes

    Doest specify anything about the poll, like how many votes there were in total, how it was conducted, who voted, etc.
     
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  2. Gregoriak

    Gregoriak BigSoccer Supporter

    Feb 27, 2002
    Munich
    Interesting! I have been looking for a vintage Best XI for the 1966 World Cup for a while. Djalma Santos making it into the team surprised me at first but I must confess the only game I saw of him in 1966 was vs. Hungary and that was a while ago. Who would be the other contenders for right back that he beat?
     
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  3. Once

    Once Member+

    Apr 16, 2011
    George Cohen I guess, since he is often included in 1966 WC teams of the tournament. Cant think of any other contender right now.
     
  4. msioux75

    msioux75 Member+

    Jan 8, 2006
    Lima, Peru
    Maybe the RB and LW positions are the ones with the less strong choices for a Best XI?
     
  5. PuckVanHeel

    PuckVanHeel Member+

    Oct 4, 2011
    Club:
    Feyenoord
  6. Once

    Once Member+

    Apr 16, 2011
    What performances by German players were seen as particularly good back then besides Beckenbauer and Schulz? Haller maybe? He scored a bunch of goals and I remember had a very high Castrol rating. How about Lothar Emmerich? For what I can see he had a spectacular season with Borussia Dortmund, yet he was not a starter in the WC. The first game he played he netted an impressive goal that would prove key for West Germany (that win meant no England in the first elimination round) and started in the rest of the games after that. Was his contribution seen as relevant back then or not so much to say about it?
     
  7. Real Ray

    Real Ray Member

    May 1, 2000
    Cincinnati, OH
    Club:
    Real Madrid
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I wonder how much better Marzolini was vs. Facchetti at left back. I wonder if the N. Korea game may have changed opinions or if Marzolini was better. I haven't really watched many of the 1966 matches.
     
  8. Gregoriak

    Gregoriak BigSoccer Supporter

    Feb 27, 2002
    Munich
    Here you can see how "kicker" rated German players for the second half of the 1965-66 season (which included the World Cup).

    https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Etmot/Rangliste_des_deutschen_Fußballs/Chronik#Sommer_1966

    Apart from the already mentioned players, Wolfgang Weber was considered one of the best German players in England '66.

    Emmerich's performances in the World Cup were considered a let-down by the German press. While he scored that magnificent goal (see below) he didn't offer much else. The thing with Emmerich was that he scored a lot of goals for his club Borussia Dortmund between 1965 and 1967 and was a darling of the German tabloids who lobbied constantly that Emmerich should get a call-up by Helmut Schön (who had ignored Emmerich until short before the World Cup). Schön eventually gave in to the media pressure and played Emmerich in a March friendly at Rotterdam vs. the Netherlands where Emmerich scored 1 goal in a 4-2 win. However the next four or five games he didn't use Emmerich despite scoring on his debut as Schön didn't see much that Emmerich could offer to his team. Emmerich's football skills weren't that outstanding. His main weapon was a terrific left-footed shot but that was it basically. On the ball, he was a bit clumsy and he wasn't the best of crossers either. After the disappointingly toothless performance of the German attack in the 0-0 vs. Argentina in the World Cup the media again pushed for the inclusion of Emmerich in the next decisive game vs. Spain. Schön gave in, Emmerich scored his second goal in his second international game and due to the nature of that goal, the media in German were delirious with joy because "their boy" had proved them right after all .... Schön now was stuck with Emmerich for the rest of the tournament, and one may criticize him for sticking with Emmerich for the rest of the tournament because after the Spain game, Emmerich's weaknesses (losing the ball too easily, not being able to participate in fluent combinations) started to outshine his strengths again. More sober journalists than the tabloids pointed out already during the tournament that Emmerich had become more a liability than an asset.

    On the other hand though, Schön didn't have many options to replace Emmerich with in his 4-3-3 system. There was Cologne's left winger Heinz Hornig as well as Frankfurt's right winger Jürgen Grabowski, while Grabowski would turn out to be one of the best German players of the next 14 years, he had just one professional season under his belt before the World Cup and was deemed too inexperienced. Hornig was a seasoned professional (28 at the time) and may have been a more useful winger in terms of sending in crosses but he too was rather inexperienced on the international stage. There was also Albert Brülls but he was more of a midfielder (also right-footed like Grabowski) and way past his peak.

     
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  9. Once

    Once Member+

    Apr 16, 2011
    #9 Once, Sep 25, 2014
    Last edited: Sep 25, 2014
    Thank you very much for such great answer, Gregoriak. Indeed, all I was able to find on him was prolific scorer and remarkably powerful left foot, period. But I was wondering, maybe he had a bit more quality in him than that after I saw the Borussia Dortmund vs Liverpool Cup Winners' Cup final of 1966, where he produced a rather nice assist for Held at 3:20



    Needless to say, one single action in a single game is not really indicative of a player's real skill.

    EDIT: Thanks for the very interesting link too.
     
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  10. Gregoriak

    Gregoriak BigSoccer Supporter

    Feb 27, 2002
    Munich
    We see that "Emma" had it in him skill-wise but unfortunately he didn't show that kind of skill in the '66 WC games.
     
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  11. Titanlux

    Titanlux Member+

    Barcelona
    Spain
    Nov 27, 2017
    The Chilean magazine "Estadio" published two ideal teams from the 1966 World Cup:

    XI mundial.jpg
     
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  12. Titanlux

    Titanlux Member+

    Barcelona
    Spain
    Nov 27, 2017
    Sport, the monthly supplement of El Gráfico also published two ideal XIs:

    XI 1.jpg XI 2.jpg
     
  13. Gregoriak

    Gregoriak BigSoccer Supporter

    Feb 27, 2002
    Munich
    Two excellent finds!
     
  14. PDG1978

    PDG1978 Member+

    Mar 8, 2009
    Club:
    Nottingham Forest FC
    I clicked the link today to have a look back at this Puck, after seeing Titanlux's new posts about teams of the tournament, and it didn't seem to be working, so I'll quote your post from that thread here instead (the original thread does still exist and was started by schwuppe, for everyone' info...and Puck's post was indeed on page 5 of it)

    There weren't really more English players in their XI compared to with the XIs of the foreign sources we have seen so far, given Banks, Moore and Charlton are pretty much automatic inclusions.

    Surely there are loads more XIs from various worldwide sources that we haven't seen, but from what's been posted on this thread it does seem like a concensus core of a best XI would be formed, with general agreement between those sources at least (and probably in most of the cases it would remain so with more sources I suspect).

    Right back seems up for grabs, and possibly Schulz can be rivalled for a place, but Marzolini less so it seems. It's possible to place Albert in midfield rather than Voronin if going with a more attacking (typical all-star team?) balance, although Voronin did come 4th in the press voting referred to in this thread for best player anyway - Albert did get in ahead of Eusebio in team 1 in the selection from Argentina so surely he's borderline (or a prime candidate as sub or HM anyway), and maybe Bene could cede his place to his countryman even depending how other votes would go (the ones we see do seem to give Bene a place, and positionally that fits well if the formation would contain someone who played on the right wing...which he did because of Albert being in Hungary's team probably!). Similarly Simoes does seem to have a place based on XIs we see, even if the British TV panel did leave him out to credit Pele for how he played while on the pitch.
     
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  15. Pavlin Arnaudov

    Juventus
    Bulgaria
    Oct 21, 2017
    I found this from France Football , it's not good quality, but it's still something :) s-l1600.jpg
     
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  16. Pavlin Arnaudov

    Juventus
    Bulgaria
    Oct 21, 2017
  17. PDG1978

    PDG1978 Member+

    Mar 8, 2009
    Club:
    Nottingham Forest FC
    Nice finds Pavlin - I guess one more France Football issue (for the Final, and the final top ratings) would be pretty much enough to get the full overview now.

    I'll put a link here to the posts I made about the average ratings from the People newspaper, which started with this one:
    https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/1...riedebert-becker.2004460/page-2#post-40100841

    These were therefore the final top average ratings from that source, for players that played at least 4 games
    8.3 - Bobby Moore
    8.0 - Jack Charlton, Pedro Rocha
    7.6 - Franz Beckenbauer, Helmut Haller, Eusebio, Valery Voronin
    7.5 - Mario Coluna, Ferenc Bene
    7.3 - Willy Schulz, Ray Wilson
    7.2 - Silvio Marzolini, Oscar Mas, Julio Cesar Cortes
    7.1 - Gordon Banks, Antonio Simoes, Jose Torres, Uwe Seeler


    Interesting to compare and contrast the France Football ratings with the ones from the People, after the quarter finals (obviously they use a different system: 1 to 6 stars vs 1 to 10 merit points, but in terms of the order and general level of ratings):
    France Football (if I read correctly - it is slightly tricky to see but definitely much better than nothing)
    4.75 - Marzolini (Argentina), Vicente (Portugal), Onega (Argentina), Bene (Hungary), Eusebio (Portugal)
    4.5 - Jack Charlton (England), Hilario (Portugal), Meszoly (Hungary), Bobby Charlton (England), Rocha (Uruguay), Beckenbauer (Germany), Overath (Germany), Sipos (Hungary), Albert (Hungary), Farkas (Hungary), Rakosi (Hungary), Torres (Portugal), Pak Seung-Zin (North Korea)
    4.25 - Banks (England), Moore (England), Weber (Germany), Goncalves (Uruguay), Graca (Portugal), Pak Doo-Ik (North Korea)
    The People
    8.0 - Eusebio (Portugal), Haller (Germany) *3 games played (might be on 4.0 exactly with France Football at that point with 12 etoiles?), J.Charlton (England), Moore (England), Rocha (Uruguay)
    7.6 - Voronin (USSR) *3 games played (might be on 4.33 with France Football, with 13 etoiles at that point?)
    7.5 - Bene (Hungary), Coluna (Portugal), Simoes (Portugal), Seeler (Germany)

    Also after 2 group games we can compare:
    France Football
    5.5 - Albert (Hungary), Farkas (Hungary)
    5.0 - Gilmar (Brazil), Vicente (Portugal), Hilario (Portugal), Burgnich (Italy), B.Charlton (England), Beckenbauer (W.Germany), Bene (Hungary), Rakosi (Hungary), Torres (Portugal)
    4.5 - Jack Charlton (England), Moore (England), Diaz (Mexico), Schulz (Germany), Sanchis (Spain), Lima (Brazil), Sipos (Hungary), Sabo (USSR), Hausser (France), Seeler (Germany), Onega (Argentina)
    The People
    8.5 - Florian Albert (Hungary), Jack Charlton (England), Bobby Moore (England), Helmut Haller (Germany), Pedro Rocha (Uruguay)
    8.0 - Ferenc Bene (Hungary), Janos Farkas (Hungary), Paulo Henrique (Brazil)
    7.5 - Ray Wilson (England)

    *Obviously Gilmar should be on 5.0 with France Football at the end too, but with just 2 games played. Does it look like Pele is on 5.0 from his two games too (6 stars vs Bulgaria, 4 stars for his semi-injured display vs Portugal in the 3rd group game of Brazil)? I can't quite be sure myself.

    There does look to be a number of 6 out of 6s with France Football, not unexpectedly, including Bobby Charlton vs Mexico, Eusebio vs both Brazil and North Korea I think....

    Eusebio is the only one with a definite 10 out of 10 from the People verified (vs North Korea), but it is feasible from what is known that Albert vs Brazil (another 6 out of 6 from France Football) or maybe Beckenbauer vs USSR in the semi-final (France Football grade not revealed yet of course, but he has a 6 vs Switzerland doesn't he) could have 10 out of 10 too potentially. Bobby Moore has 9 in the Final vs West Germany, and apparently an international press Man of the Match award (but that's not a guarantee of a France Football 6 out of 6 necessarily).
     
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  18. carlito86

    carlito86 Member+

    Jan 11, 2016
    Club:
    Real Madrid
    Why did England win the World Cup in 1966?



    Was it down to stamina, ability or just good luck? And why has it never happened again?





    "More than in any other mainstream team sport, luck matters in a short football competition"



    Ee-aye-addio, we won the cup!” sing the crowd. England’s captain Bobby Moore climbs the steps to the royal box at Wembley, where a yellow-clad 40-year-old Queen Elizabeth hands him the little gold Jules Rimet trophy. She, he and it all look gorgeous in the London sunshine.



    The Technicolor moment in 1966 when England’s football team won their only World Cup is a high point of postwar English history. It also serves as a constant reprimand to the nation’s present. National decline is a powerful notion in modern English history, and England’s failure to win a football tournament since that July day seems to sum up that decline. That’s why the English often turn 1966 into a symbol. The argument then goes that Moore’s “greatest generation” won because they were better men than today’s spoiled overpaid lot. However, if you want to understand why England won then and have lost since, symbolism doesn’t get you very far. In an attempt to demystify 1966, I read the history and crunched data.



    Moore’s team obviously benefited from home advantage. But from today’s perspective, we struggle to grasp just how big that advantage was. Sports economist Stefan Szymanski and I calculated that since 1980 home advantage has been worth about two-thirds of a goal per game in international football. That’s enough of an edge to propel a decent team like England — typically about 10th best in the world — to the title.


    However, in 1966 home advantage was even greater. Travel then was arduous, referees easily swayed by home crowds, local fans often hostile, and conditions alien. Argentina, a serious contender for victory in 1966, tried to fit in a training session at the England team’s camp in the Shropshire village of Lilleshall but, writes Jonathan Wilson in Anatomy of England (2010), “the plan turned into farce as the Argentina bus got lost, taking two hours to cover the 30 miles from their base near Birmingham”. Then, the evening before their quarter-final against England, Argentina weren’t allowed their mandatory 20-minute practice session at Wembley “on the grounds that it would have interfered with the evening’s greyhound racing”, writes Wilson. (He calculates that they could easily have been fitted in ahead of the dogs.)

    Many players who visited England that summer were unused to foreign travel. Argentina’s captain Antonio Rattín told Razón, the local Buenos Aires newspaper, that he listened to a cassette recording of his wife and children 10 times a day. “If I could draw up my own contract for football at this level, I assure you I would put in a clause that said I could only play in Buenos Aires and would never leave my country again.”



    The very organisation of the tournament favoured England. The Portuguese star Eusébio always believed that the organisers had illegally moved the England v Portugal semi-final from Goodison Park in Liverpool (where Portugal had come to feel at home) to Wembley (where England had played all their previous games). In fact, Eusébio was wrong: Fifa was free to decide which semi-final would be played at which venue. However, this was exactly the sort of decision that went the hosts’ way.



    Most refereeing decisions did too. In England’s 2-0 victory over France, the first goal was “blatantly offside”, writes Niall Edworthy in The Second Most Important Job in the Country (1999), his history of England managers, while the second came after Nobby Stiles “crunched Jacques Simon right under the nose of the referee with a challenge so late that it beggared belief”. The ref ignored the foul, allowing England to go upfield and score, whereupon Simon was stretchered off. A subsequent cartoon in the French newspaper L’Equipe showed England’s midfielder Bobby Charlton driving a Rolls-Royce while referees dressed as British bobbies cleared opponents from his route. Latin American media were less polite.



    In the 1966 final, the Azerbaijani linesman Tofiq Bahramov was wrong to award England their third goal when Geoff Hurst’s shot appeared to bounce on the West German goal-line. The point isn’t that later scientific studies showed the ball probably never crossed the line. The point is that Bahramov couldn’t possibly have seen whether it crossed or not. Given the uncertainty, notes Dave Bowler in his 1998 biography of England’s manager Alf Ramsey, Bahramov “had to give the benefit of the doubt to the defending team. His decision was incorrect.” But it’s the kind of decision a linesman makes with a Wembley packed with Union Jacks behind him.



    There’s a broader sense in which hosting favoured England. In 1966, two different ethical codes were fighting for dominance in international football: the Latin American and the northern European code. In Latin America, play-acting, shirt-pulling and bullying the ref were considered acceptable but violent fouls weren’t. “In northern Europe, the reverse was true,” writes Bowler. “Histrionics were frowned upon while heavy tackling was part and parcel of a man’s game.” Fifa had said before the World Cup that referees would crack down on violent fouls. However, that didn’t happen. Northern Europe’s code triumphed, probably because the region provided the vast majority of spectators and referees. And so Stiles was free to foul against Uruguay and France, while other Europeans kicked the great Brazilian Pelé out of the tournament.



    Latin referees might have given Pelé more protection, helping the bookmakers’ favourites Brazil win their third straight World Cup. Moreover, a Latin referee at England v Argentina might not have sent off Rattín for “the look on his face”, as the West German Rudolf Kreitlein reportedly did. After that match Fifa fined Argentina £85 (the maximum permitted) and threatened to bar the country from the next World Cup. Outraged Latin Americans met while still in London to discuss breaking away and founding their own tournament, wrote Dutch journalist Hans Molenaar in his contemporaneous book on the 1966 World Cup. The Latins must have been particularly irked that England’s cheating (as they saw it) was accompanied by much pompous hot air about “fair play”. In truth, most English people of the day, certain of their moral superiority, probably couldn’t have imagined their team might be cheating. Happily, from the 1970s the game’s two codes converged again.



    After the 1970s, hosting lost importance. From 1930 through 1978, hosts won five out of 11 World Cups, while three of the other winning countries shared a border with the host. Since 1982, hosts have won just one trophy out of nine. That is partly because some modern hosts have been weak football nations. But even taking that into account, hosts have done poorly. No post-1978 host, except winners France in 1998, has even reached the final. Spain, Japan and the US didn’t make the quarter-finals, South Africa in 2010 fell in the first round, and Brazil in 2014 were beaten 7-1 by Germany in the semi-final in Belo Horizonte.



    The decline in home-field advantage has probably been starkest in international football but the Columbia University psychologist James Curley has identified it in the English domestic game too. His data, written up by the statistical website Fivethirtyeight, show that home teams won about 60 per cent of their league games in the late 19th century but only just over half in the 1960s, and about 40 per cent today.



    England, of course, still deserve credit for winning in 1966. Whether or not they were the best team that summer, they were probably the fittest. Before the tournament, Ramsey had gathered his players for a training camp in Lilleshall and asked them for two months of sacrifice. “Gentlemen,” he added, “if anybody gets the idea of popping out for a pint, and I find out, he is finished with this squad forever.” When the team’s habitual drinkers did hatch a plot to escape “Stalag Lilleshall” for a pint (or more), Ramsey forestalled them. After 11 gruelling days in isolation, England went on a rapid four-match European tour.



    Ramsey thought of everything. “The players were even given lessons in how to cut their toenails for fear that a poor clipping technique would lead to a septic toe,” writes Edworthy.



    Most other teams in 1966 weren’t so professional. The French team stocked up for their training camp in Scotland with large quantities of French wine. The Argentines on their warm-up tour of Europe smoked straight after friendlies and training sessions, wrote Molenaar. The Swiss midfielder Philippe Pottier actually asked for a week’s leave from training camp to go on holiday. (This was considered a bit slack even for little Switzerland, and he was left at home.)



    No wonder England’s left-back Ray Wilson told Bowler: “We were fitter than most teams . . . In the last half-hour we’d generally overcome most sides.” Wilson noted that fitness mattered especially at Wembley, where players often cramped up on the springy turf. Playing every game in London also meant that England didn’t waste any energy travelling.



    The statistics seem to confirm the team’s superior fitness. Five of the nine goals that they scored in normal time at the World Cup came in the last 15 minutes of matches. And their fitness must have helped them score those two extra-time goals in the final. George Cohen, the right-back, recalled: “When Alf came out at full-time, he said, ‘Look at the Germans, they’re finished.’ And they were all lying on the floor. Alf made us stand up to show them how fit we were.”



    Ramsey himself identified the physical as England’s USP. He said in victory: “We were the fastest and the strongest side in the World Cup, but I do not think we can ever match the individual techniques of the Latin Americans or the Latin Europeans.” Contrast the fitness of 1966 with England’s modern summer fatigue. Now that the Premier League is the most physically demanding league on earth, with 10 months of non-stop football, English players typically arrive at World Cups exhausted. Wayne Rooney, for instance, flopped in South Africa in 2010 after being squeezed like a lemon by his club Manchester United that spring. England’s manager that year, Fabio Capello, later explained why England don’t win summer tournaments: “They’re the least fresh of any of the competing national sides, because their league doesn’t have a break. It’s like when you’re driving a car: if you stop halfway to put fuel in, then you’ll definitely get where you want to go, but if you don’t, there’s always the chance you’ll be running on empty before you reach your goal.”



    Other England managers and players this century have offered similar explanations. Angry fans typically dismiss these as excuses. However, Capello’s analysis is backed up by modern England’s unusual scoring patterns. Most goals at World Cups come after half-time. That is natural: in the second half players tire, teams start chasing goals, and gaps open up on the field. But England, in their eight big tournaments from 1998 through 2014, scored 28 of their 45 goals before half-time. England teams nowadays perform like cheap batteries.



    England’s fitness in 1966 was to Ramsey’s credit. So were his brave decisions to dispense with wingers mid-tournament, and to pick the relatively obscure Geoff Hurst ahead of the established star Jimmy Greaves in the final. Hurst scored a hat-trick; Ramsey made a difference.



    But his side also needed luck. More than in perhaps any other form of mainstream team sport, luck matters in a short football competition. In a football league, played over 38 matches or so, luck tends to even out. One week a referee will mistakenly give your opponents a penalty, but the next week he’ll give it to you. In the end, the best team usually finishes first. But shorter World Cups offer greater scope for randomness. The 1966 tournament lasted just under three weeks. As Arsenal’s manager Arsène Wenger has said about international football tournaments, any team in a league can top the table after three weeks. Over such a brief run, a few inches here and there on a couple of shots can be decisive. England in 1966 beat Argentina in the quarter-final and Portugal in the semi-final by one goal each, and won the final only after extra time. Victory hinged on a few moments. As Jonathan Wilson writes: “One moment can shape a game, and one game can shape a tournament, and one tournament can shape a career. Football is not always fair.”



    It’s even less fair and more random than other ballgames. In Test cricket, each batting side has 20 wickets to fall, so an individual dismissal is rarely decisive. Tennis Grand Slams are played over five sets, so a favourite can lose two and still triumph. In basketball and rugby, the team with territorial dominance usually wins. That’s not true in football. Nonetheless, we tend to tell the story of any World Cup with hindsight as if the winners were destined to triumph



    Next, any analysis that compares England in 1966 with later England teams must address the issue of penalty shootouts. Penalties, rather than any lack of moral fibre, may be the single biggest reason why modern England lose. From 1990 through 2014 England played 11 tournaments and were knocked out of six of them on penalties. But in 1966, shootouts didn’t yet exist. If they had, the exhausted West Germans in the final would surely have “parked the bus” in front of their goal in extra time, aiming to hold out for penalties. We can all guess who would have won the shootout.



    None of this is to say that England in 1966 were a bad team. Indeed, they were probably slightly better than most subsequent England teams — but only very slightly. The fact is that England in almost any era pretty consistently win about half their games, drawing or losing the rest. Contrary to all popular opinion, it appears that since the 1960s the strength of the England team has barely changed (which would make the vast apparatus of punditry attached to the team redundant). Since the late 1950s, the win percentage has not risen above 70 per cent, and it has never fallen below 67.5 per cent.



    The overall picture is one of steady but extremely slow decline, punctuated by two eras of exceptional performance. One of those eras was the late 1960s. The other period of clear improvement runs from the early 2000s through to today.



    It seems that only one period in England’s modern football history can match the late 1960s: namely, the present, as shown by the win percentages of all permanent postwar England managers. Match for match, the only postwar England managers whose stats compare with Ramsey’s (in charge from 1963 to 1974) are the two most recent incumbents: Capello (2008-2012) and current boss Roy Hodgson. It seems that today’s England are unusually strong, perhaps because English internationals now spend their club careers competing with top-class foreign players in the world’s richest league. (This would blow out of the water the popular belief that all those foreign imports have ruined the England team.)



    Admittedly the differences between the top few managers in our table are small. In addition, it’s hard to compare eras. Since the break-up of the USSR and former Yugoslavia, England play more small countries such as Estonia and Slovenia. But then Ramsey’s England spent a lot of time playing the little home nations Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Moreover, most of today’s stronger European teams — Spain, France and even Germany — weren’t yet world-beaters in his day. Best practice in football wasn’t nearly as widespread then. In 1966 no German side had ever beaten England. The Germans have outperformed England at every World Cup since.



    Ramsey’s supporters will object that he’s the only England manager who (at least in one tournament) won the big games that mattered. It’s true that 21st-century England teams have disappointed in major tournaments. Possibly they lack the never-say-die English spirit of Moore’s men. Alternatively, it may just be that by the time June rolls around, today’s England players are more tired and are playing away.



    Perhaps the men of 1966 really were a generation of giants who put all future English footballers to shame. Or perhaps what happened is simply that the fittest, luckiest and most sober team of that summer squeaked a narrow victory in a three-week tournament at home.

    https://www.ft.com/content/f5228f5e-11ab-11e6-91da-096d89bd2173
     
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  19. peterhrt

    peterhrt Member+

    Oct 21, 2015
    Club:
    Leeds United AFC
    The article makes several good points.

    Home advantage counted for much. England had only ever lost three home matches to opponents from outside the British Isles.

    Nor was it simply a matter of coming good for a few weeks at the right time. Between November 1965 and December 1971, England played 65 matches, recording 45 wins, 6 defeats and 14 draws.

    Many of the players, including those not selected, believed that the key factor was Ramsey. The manager received little credit from the FA or the press, with whom he was on poor terms. But after some experimenting he had worked out what was required. Once he had decided on a system Ramsey picked the players who would best fit it, without their having to do too much different from what they were used to at their club. They were not necessarily the most gifted or popular players available, but they were a team.

    The main reason it has not happened again is because England as a team has generally not been good enough. Penalty shootouts might have been a better excuse had they been practised from the start.

    Club has become increasingly more important than country. Inter-club rivalries have intensified. The media exerts more far more power and pressure. Before 1966 the British media had not shown much interest in the World Cup. Even a few months after the tournament Eric Batty did not include a single English winner in his annual World XI for World Soccer magazine. He would not get away with that today.

    Within the English game it is in no one's interest to accept that 1966 might just have been a one-off.
     
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  20. msioux75

    msioux75 Member+

    Jan 8, 2006
    Lima, Peru
    How much time, Ramsey had been practicing his system before WC?

    I mean, even at Group Phase, he lined-up players such as Greaves, Connelly or Callagham, whom fit better into a classical 4-2-4.
     
  21. peterhrt

    peterhrt Member+

    Oct 21, 2015
    Club:
    Leeds United AFC
    #21 peterhrt, Dec 12, 2021
    Last edited: Dec 12, 2021
    At the beginning of his reign as England manager Alf Ramsey had to work with an International Selection Committee, who favoured the traditional WM system. On securing control over selection and tactics in the summer of 1963 he switched to a 4-2-4 with two wingers.

    Over the next twelve months results were good. The following summer England took part in a mini-tournament in Brazil, facing the hosts, Argentina and Portugal. Two defeats and a draw persuaded Ramsey that 4-2-4 was not suitable against the strongest opponents. The formation made it too difficult to win the ball back, especially when half his outfield players were largely attack-minded. A more aggressive ball-winner was needed in midfield, and with Haynes past his best England had no playmaker to sit alongside him and pull the strings single-handedly.

    Ramsey also came to the conclusion that two wingers were fine when facing lesser opponents, but a potential luxury when up against a team adept at keeping possession. Most English wingers were in the Matthews tradition of hugging the touchline and waiting to receive the ball. They also had less space to work with than in Matthews' day now that many opponents placed four men at the back.

    The next experiment was a 4-3-3, first unveiled against West Germany in Nuremburg in May 1965. Up front were a centre-forward and two wingers, one of whom, Paine, could track back. The three midfielders included the robust defensive left-half Flowers. Ramsey was pleased with the experiment but in subsequent matches alternated with 4-2-4 depending on the opposition.

    A fine 2-0 victory in Madrid in December 1965 convinced him that 4-3-3 was the system for the big games, but cannily he kept his thoughts to himself and reverted to previous formations when the stakes were low. He only picked what he considered to be his strongest side for the last game before the World Cup, a 1-0 win in Poland. It was the same team that appeared in the knockout phase of the World Cup, except that Greaves had yet to be replaced by Hurst. The system was referred to as 4-3-3 but was really a 4-1-3-2 with no wingers. Stiles sat in front of the back four, or marked the opposition's most dangerous player, and the energetic Ball combined the roles of combative midfielder and wide attacker.

    Ramsey did select a winger in each of the Group matches, where he did not anticipate England coming under too much offensive pressure, before reverting to his preferred system from the quarter-final onwards. Hurst suited the plan better than Greaves due to his ability to win headers, hold the ball up and defend from the front. The versatile Peters was another key figure, able to attack and defend. The side's weakness was a lack of creativity where much rested on the shoulders of Bobby Charlton and, playing out from the back, Moore. But the combination was fit, well-drilled, confident, and ultimately successful.
     
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  22. Titanlux

    Titanlux Member+

    Barcelona
    Spain
    Nov 27, 2017
    @Pavlin Arnaudov, Would it be possible to increase the size of the images? Thank you.
     
  23. Pavlin Arnaudov

    Juventus
    Bulgaria
    Oct 21, 2017
    Unfortunately not!
    They have been downloaded from the Internet with such a resolution. Besides, I miss the 1/2 finals and the finals, if anyone finds them, let them post them to make the final ranking of France football.
     
  24. Titanlux

    Titanlux Member+

    Barcelona
    Spain
    Nov 27, 2017
    Good morning. I have managed to find quite a few proposals for the best teams of the 1966 World Championship. In this table I have noted them according to the score of 5, for team A, 4, for team B, etc, and in the last column the cumulative one. From there, my proposal for the ideal A and B teams, with few surprises, I think. Regarding Pelé, he was included in several lists, but I think that with how little he played I should not include him in these proposals.


    Buenos días. He conseguido encontrar bastantes propuestas para los mejores equipos del campeonato del Mundo de 1966. En esta tabla los he anotado según la puntuación de 5, para el equipo A, 4, para el B, etc, y en la última columna la acumulada. A partir de ahí, mi propuesta para los equipos ideales A y B, con pocas sorpresas, creo. Respecto a Pelé, fue incluido en varias listas, pero pienso que con lo poco que jugó no debo incluirlo en dichas propuestas.

    mejores mundial.jpg
     
    Krokko, comme, wm442433 and 3 others repped this.
  25. wm442433

    wm442433 Member+

    Sep 19, 2014
    Club:
    FC Nantes
    Rattin appears twice.
     

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