have never felt worse on a football pitch than at that final whistle,’ said Billy Wright. The crowd erupted in disbelief and ecstasy, setting fire to newspapers on the terraces and letting off a barrage of fireworks into the blue sky. When the result was flashed to newsrooms in England across the wires from Reuters, there was incredulity. It was widely thought that a typing error had been made, with the real score being England 10, USA 1.
But the players were all too aware of the catastrophe. ‘The dressing-room was like a morgue. It felt like a disgrace to lose to a team of no-hopers. I think it was the darkest moment of my career,’ says Sir Tom Finney. In attempts to lessen the shame, a number of legends grew up. One was that England had been desperately unlucky, since nothing more than fate had prevented a deserved victory. ‘I think a fair result would have been 12–1,’ says Bert Williams. Alf Ramsey himself summed up this attitude: ‘So far as we were concerned there was a gremlin upon that football and it was not our day, the United States running out winners by that “streaky” goal.’ Another complaint was that the USA had fielded a team of ineligible players from overseas; the florid, faintly ridiculous Desmond Hackett of the Daily Express wrote that the American eleven ‘seemed to have come straight from Ellis Island because there was not an American-born player in the side’. This is nonsense. Eight of them were born in the US, while the other three, whose number included the former Wrexham midfielder Eddie McIlvanney, were cleared by FIFA under the residency rule. It was, in any case, a pitiful charge. Why should England have had anything to fear from a group of journeymen, no matter where they came from?
From an American viewpoint, however, England were far less dominant than was later suggested. An interesting article in the magazine Soccer America highlighted how poorly England played – and not just the forwards. The US full-back Harry Keough, for instance, felt that ‘England took us too lightly and tried to come in too close early in the game before shooting’. Keough went on, in reference to Bert Williams’ argument that England should have won 12–1: ‘He isn’t telling it all. He had to tip over one from our left-winger, Ed Souza, with 15 minutes to go. And with three minutes left our right-winger Frank Wallace took off on a breakaway and only had Williams to beat, which he did, but Alf Ramsey followed the play and saved it.’ But Ramsey, claimed Keough, ‘had otherwise a bad day, with Ed Souza beating him frequently’. And even the Daily Mail admitted that Souza ‘played a victory march against Wright and Ramsey’. In Talking Football, Ramsey described Ed Souza, with a hint of mournful euphemism, as ‘a truly great player who possessed a pair of educated feet in addition to a pair of broad shoulders which he used fairly and often.’
To this day, England’s defeat by the USA remains the greatest upset in the nation’s sporting history. It haunted the players for years, a stain on their reputations. The supposed champions of the world had been turned into an international laughing stock. ‘I hate thinking about it even now,’ Bert Williams said recently. For Alf Ramsey, the defeat rankled deeply. One journalist, who mentioned the match years later, recorded that ‘his face creased and he looked like a man who had been jabbed in an unhealed wound’. Educated in the days when there was still an Empire, Alf was a ferocious English patriot, one who always described his nationality on official forms as ‘English’ rather than ‘British’. His almost visceral attachment to his country was one of the cornerstones of his existence. And when the chance came more than a decade later, he was determined to avenge this humiliation.
Broken and bewildered, England played their last group game against Spain, needing a win to gain a play-off place. Brought into the side alongside Stan Matthews, Eddie Baily did his best to raise morale:
Walter said to me before the kick-off, ‘Just settle in and give Stan the ball.’
‘Is he going to give it back?’ I said.
There was nothing funny about the result. England were beaten 1–0 and crashed out of the World Cup. Again, there were complaints about the refereeing and the conditions. ‘I have never played in a game so hot. The temperature must have been 105 degrees. At half-time, we went down into the dressing-room and had to put on oxygen masks,’ says Eddie Baily. ‘The referee allowed an unbelievable amount of obstruction and shirt-pulling. I remember Alf, who had this thing about fair play, being furious.’ Alf even claimed that the Spaniards must have thought they were playing basketball, such was their propensity to use their hands. With the kind of patronizing insularity that was to become his hallmark, Alf said in 1952 of the referee’s interpretation of the rules, ‘It is going to take a considerable time for the whole world to see football as we do.’
In truth, it was going to take England a long time to catch up with the rest of the world. Convinced that their team had been the victims of nothing more than bad luck, the self-satisfied football establishment learnt little from the Brazilian fiasco. The illusion was maintained that England were still the best in the world. There were to be no changes in policy or structure or playing style. The attitude was captured by the statement of Bob Jackson, manager of Portsmouth, the club which won successive championship titles in the late forties: ‘What suits Continentals and South Americans doesn’t necessarily suit us. We have a way of playing that has stood the test of time. Given more favourable conditions and a fair crack of the whip, we can beat anybody.’
England may have been failing, but for Alf personally the years immediately after the American debacle were the best of his international playing career. Now in his thirties, he was at the peak of his confidence, his understanding of the game enhanced by experience. It is a tribute to his effectiveness that in an era of fluctuating selection policy, Alf was not to lose his place for three seasons. His own captain, Billy Wright, was glowing in his praise of his right-back. He once described Alf as ‘the coolest player I have ever seen in an international match’ and ‘one of the greatest of modern defenders. He brought with him into the game tremendous thought and initiative.’ Playing in front of Ramsey, said Wright, ‘I have come to appreciate the tremendous accuracy of his passes. He strokes the ball along the grass with radar-like accuracy.’ He went on to refer to Alf’s unique understanding of the game:
I could sit for hours and talk football with Alf Ramsey. He has the priceless ability of being able to put over new ideas in a splendid fashion, encourages his colleagues to reveal their own theories and in every way is a remarkable character whose contribution to the game has definitely helped to improve the standard of defensive play.
As an example of Alf’s thinking, Wright cited his tactics playing for Spurs against the Newcastle and Scottish winger Bobby Mitchell, one of those quick players who always worried him. Before the match, Alf examined the pitch at White Hart Lane, looking closely at the two ends where he would operate. He said little, but proceeded to have one of the best League games of his life, continually forcing Mitchell into the dampest areas. ‘Even the world’s greatest ball-players cannot play in mud,’ said Alf afterwards.
Ramsey had become such a central figure in the English team that when Wright was dropped in the autumn of 1950 because of poor form, Alf was chosen as the England captain for the Home International against Wales, a game which England won easily 4–2. Alf, in the words of Tom Finney, was ‘an ideal captain, very methodical. He studied the game a lot and knew so much about it.’ With Wright still absent, Alf retained the captaincy for the next match, against Yugoslavia. England’s vulnerability was becoming more apparent than ever, as Ramsey’s team were held to a 2–2 draw, the first time that a continental side had achieved a draw on English soil. Making his debut in that game was the brave-hearted Bolton centre-forward and former coalminer Nat Lofthouse. ‘From the start, Alf did all he could to make me, the only new international in the side, feel at home,’ said Lofthouse. ‘His great knowledge of soccer and his ability to discuss the game in an interesting way, made a profound impression on me.’ Talking of his wider qualities, Lofthouse called Alf ‘the greatest driver of an accurate ball I have ever seen. When he makes up his mind to send a clearance to you, the ball invariably finds its target. The tremendous accuracy and faith that Alf has in himself also gives confidence to others.’
After a solid game against Yugoslavia, Alf had a far more painful ordeal: his first major after-dinner speech. To the end of his life, Alf found such appearances difficult. An awkward, stilted speaker, he was unable to enliven his performances with either humorous anecdotes