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The meaning of 1966: Does England’s only World Cup still carry the same relevance?
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- The meaning of 1966: Does England’s only World Cup still carry the same relevance?
On the day Thomas Tuchel announced his World Cup squad at Wembley, one chat saw him wander in front of a picture of Bobby Moore with the Jules Rimet trophy. The England manager had, of course, been talking about winning the tournament, but there wasn't even a nod to the image beside him.
Why would there be? At Wembley, something is related to 1966 everywhere you turn. It's part of the furniture. The achievement is always there, hanging over proceedings, but not referenced as much as it used to be.
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Geoff Hurst driving in the fourth or Nobby Stiles dancing aren't as pervasive in the English football consciousness.
England captain Bobby Moore with the Jules Rimet trophy after the victory over West Germany at Wembley in 1966 (Central Press/AFP/Getty)
Tuchel was naturally asked what 1966 meant to him on first taking the England job, but that question is more pertinent for the population he now represents.
England's sole World Cup win has weighed on every tournament since, but carries an extra resonance for this summer now that it's 60 years on. If ever there was a moment to emulate it…
But does it even carry the same relevance?
The 4-2 win over West Germany is now closer to the sinking of the Titanic than to this 2026 World Cup.
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That wait for victory actually feels heavier than the weight of that trophy , which has since vanished. At the same time, the very numbers have also added to its mythos.
It's not just the quantity of years ticking by, or how that's been immortalised in song. We're now 30 years from "Three Lions" first singing about 30 years of hurt.
There was always a unique symbolism to the year, since it was 900 years after the most famous date in English history: the Norman conquest of 1066.
Its nature as a historic monolith is only hardened by something else unique about 1966. That World Cup remains England's only trophy in senior's men's football, the only great victory to actually look back to for the men's team.
England are the only winner of the men's World Cup to have not gone on to lift another major trophy (PA Wire)
That in itself is unprecedented. England are the only World Cup winner to have not gone on to lift another major trophy. No other country that has won a Euros or World Cup has gone so long without a trophy, outside of one that no longer exists: the USSR.
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The 1966 World Cup is consequently this singular event that takes many forms in the psyche of the nation.
It is an aspiration and a piece of lore, a blessed memory and a burden, a ghost and an inspirational source of spirit, the increasingly distant past and something always in the present.
These impressions are further clouded by how, like the Second World War, there are fewer people around who remember it. Geoff Hurst, whose immortality was most deepened by that final through his hat-trick, is the sole member of the starting XI still alive.
Talk of memory meanwhile carries a tragic edge, given the number of the squad that suffered from dementia. That is now increasingly viewed as another product of their football age, with its heavy balls and crunching headers, and another illustration of how the game failed them.
England's Geoff Hurst heads the equaliser in the 1966 World Cup final (PA)
As with many historical moments you have grown up just "knowing" after the fact, the mind can trick you into thinking their course was always predetermined.
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It only takes a moment speaking to someone at Wembley on the day, like the now 79-year-old Arthur Devereux, to realise the folly of that. There was wonder at the team's achievement.
"It was an absolutely magic feeling," Devereux says now. "There was a little uncertainty as to how it was going to go, but it was just exciting for England to be in a World Cup final."
Duncan Hamilton's superb book, Answered Prayers, offers important context that's easy to forget.
The rubble of the war was still being swept up in some cities. It was otherwise everywhere in culture, dominating TVs, cinemas and popular literature.
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Hamilton writes how the war was "ever-present, shadowing nearly everything, even when no one talked about it".
Devereux says he was too young to be thinking about that, and Alf Ramsey never countenanced mentioning it for his pre-game speech against West Germany.
More innocent details further emphasise how this was a different world. Devereux had "a full package of tickets" for every match, which his brother got him as a present. It was that easy.
Franz Beckenbauer shepherds Bobby Charlton away from the ball (PA)
On delving further into books like Hamilton's and Michael Calvin's excellent new 1966: A Moment in Time, it's striking how little is even relevant to today. Too much has changed.
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Hamilton cites Gordon Banks saying 1966 showed the "simplicity of how football used to be". And there is indeed a quaintness. You don't even need to get into how different the actual football was.
Among the tactical instructions that Bobby Charlton received was to not place a shot because "if you don't know where it's going, how can the goalkeeper?"
The players themselves were burgeoning stars but still living like ordinary working men. They earnt less from their victory than some of the T-shirt sellers outside Wembley. Franz Beckenbauer had Sunday lunch with a local family. Pele was often seen playing in goal on local Cheshire parks.
Pele at Goodison Park during the 1966 World Cup (PA Wire)
England would go out for a pint – when Ramsey allowed.
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It was actually 1966 that created the very culture of watching football in the pub, since landlords realised they needed to get TVs in for the games, or even regulars might not come in.
In the actual celebrations, there wasn't even an open-top bus or any of the other modern trappings.
Other differences were starker.
The "wags" – not that they were cast as such at the time – were excluded from the players' victory banquet. The squad was meanwhile all white, in an era where immigration was being met with increasing racism.
Ramsey spoke of "accommodating" Jimmy Greaves, although it's forgotten that he felt the same about the "individualist" Bobby Charlton until the Manchester United great finally evolved into a complete player. Jimmy Armfield was meanwhile seen as an essential pick for his "knowledge and nous" – in echoes of Jordan Henderson now.
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On walking up to Wembley for the final, though, Devereux talks of "just excitement" rather than "expectation".
England's dreaming: fans are still waiting for a sequel to '66 (Getty)
Perhaps that's inevitable when England had only been entering the World Cup since 1950. It didn't yet have decades of lore.
That's still one way 1966 has changed things. There was a feat to live up to. The psychology around the team transformed.
Within the team, it took them a while to even register what it meant to be world champions.
It wasn't like what Iker Casillas radiated on winning with Spain in 2010, where he spoke of the assurance that came with the status.
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Such accounts are more relevant to Tuchel's squad than those of 1966.
Most of Ramsey's team duly remembered "a blur" in the moment of victory, "numbness".
Little wonder the debate about whether Hurst's second crossed the line is so clouded.
While some of the players eventually enjoyed the commercial opportunities that came with being world champions, Hamilton writes of how "England's triumph seemed a little dated" by the mid-1970s.
Hurst and Alan Ball celebrate England's fourth (Getty Images)
The great hero of Moore perhaps personified the victory, in how he never again enjoyed a day as glorious. That was it.
Devereux is one of many who believe this might have been different had England immediately followed with victory in 1970.
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The 1966 triumph not being unique might have actually made it more special, as the country could instead have built up the kind of extended legacy that Brazil or Germany have.
"I obviously know it as a remarkable moment," says Thomas Concannon of the Football Supporters Association. "We've all seen the highlights, and something I wish I was alive to witness. It just feels so long ago, and the game has changed so much since, and even the trophy, and because it was a different era it's difficult to have a direct connection to it."
But it's still there, a feeling always ready to be revived, a picture ready to be emulated.
Elizabeth II smiles after presenting Moore with the Jules Rimet trophy (Getty)
Devereux remembers staying at his seat waiting for the Queen to present the trophy to Moore.
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He wasn't one of the people on the pitch for Hurst's famous fourth, mind. And to touch on Kenneth Wolstenholme's famous commentary, the country will never truly be over it.
It just needs a new meaning now. It needs something to sit alongside it.
