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One
of football’s greatest attractions is its propensity to throw
up shock results, to stun the watching world with a scoreline that
defies belief. At World Cup level, such surprises are few and far
between, not least because any team that actually makes it to the
World Cup finals can obviously play a bit. Even so, there are still
upsets - Costa Rica's win over Scotland in 1990 and North Korea’s
victory over Italy in 1966 were astonishing reversals of expected
fortune. But the daddy of all upsets was played out in 1950, in
the Brazilian mining town of Belo Horizonte when the USA, unheralded,
unfancied, anonymous, overcame the might of England, favorites to
win the entire competition.
That 1-0 victory has become as celebrated as any giant-killing feat
in the annals of the game. England, fielding a side that included
giants such as Tom Finney, Billy Wright, Alf Ramsey, Wilf Mannion
and Stan Mortensen, the hatrick hero of the Mathews Cup Final three
years later.
Indeed, Stanley Matthews was the only notable absentee from a powerful
England side.
When the 1950 tournament came round, England were in a transition
period. They were dealt a vicious blow with the loss of Neil Franklin
just weeks before the World Cup started when he left the English
game to play in Colombia, therefore forfeiting his right to play
for England under FIFA’s complex registration rules.
Finney rates Franklin as “the best center-half I ever played
with“. For him to up and leave was terrible for the side. It
took us a fair time to replace him - we tried so many people to
replace him, and that was why Billy Wright came across to center-half
later on.”
Equally problematic was the amateurish nature of English preparation
in those days. The FA blithely continued in the blinkered view that
England were the masters and that all the side needed to do was
turn up in Brazil, pick up the trophy and not damage it on the flight
home. So ingrained was their view, this was the first time England
had gone to a World Cup.
The FA had previously believed that we didn’t need a trophy
to prove England were the best! Small wonder that things descended
into chaos.
The players were equally frustrated by the FA’s antiquated
methodology. Alf Ramsey wrote that “the thought of hanging
around at the end of the season waiting for ‘cup time’
to come around was in my view rather a waste of time. I would have
preferred to have gone to Brazil, got accustomed to the conditions,
and of course, had a series of trial matches under the conditions
we should have to face - and of course, overcome.”
This was wise counsel. Remember that just after the war, the only
experience England Internationals would have for foreign travel
would have been into Europe for occasional friendlies - this was
long before European club competition. Few, if any players, had
ventured as far as South America.
Manager Walter Winterbottom notes that “the players are worried
about the atmosphere they’ll be playing in, scared to death
of supporters when if you’d been there before you realized
it was simply crowd’s having fun!”
Not only would they be encountering new terrain and a different
culture, they would be thrown into a completely different climate.
As Tom Finney points out, “nowadays a team would be in South
America for two or three weeks to get acclimatized, where we went
there three days before our first game! We went from a mild English
summer with temperatures around 65 or 70 degrees to something in
the 80’s or 90’s, to a country that was three hours behind
us!
Then there were those oxygen masks laying around to help players
breathe before and at half time and this was just foreign to us!”
England set up their HQ in a normal tourist hotel in Rio de Janerio.
Big mistake as Winterbottom concedes: “the accommodation was
hopeless - we were stuck on Copacabana beach. Arsenal had put us
up to it, they stayed there the year before, but they were on an
end of season tour, so the beach was uproarious for them!
We were there for a more serious purpose!
The kitchens were dreadful, the smell used to go up into the bedrooms,
there were other guests there and of course the players were always
wanting to go and enjoy the beach!”
Players were forbidden from doing so after 10:00am, since the medical
advise decreed that “the sun on the sand gives off rays causing
lethargy and sapping energy.”
Having had just four days training in London prior to flying out,
England were not in the peak of condition so no further chances
could be taken. They were permitted to see the opening game between
Brazil and Mexico however.
Tom Finney remembers just how that game exchanged the atmosphere
within the side: “we never knew much about South American teams.
We hadn’t really seen them because there was no TV, and all
we knew was what we’d read about them in magazines. We were
fortunate enough to see Brazil v Mexico, which Brazil won 4-0. We
were really in awe of what we saw - I hadn’t seen anything
like the skills they produced. We knew then we were in for a hard
time against the South America sides.”
The 1950 tournament had perhaps the strangest organization of any.
Winterbottom describing it as ‘disastrous’. A side could
get through by playing just one game where others had to play three!
Because of the withdrawal of Scotland, Argentina and Czechoslovakia,
there were just thirteen teams entered. This led to two qualifying
pools of four teams, one of three and one of just two!
The winners of each pool would lay in a final pool, the winner of
that group being crowned World Champions: 1950 was, therefore, the
only competition not to have an actual World Cup Final!
With the prospect of facing Brazil gnawing away at the back of players
minds, it was crucial that, to maintain morale, preparations went
well. They did not.
Winterbottom
recalls “we were very unfortunate in so many ways. To combat
the heat and humidity, we asked to have some lightweight boots made
for training but when they came they were almost heavy gardening
boots! They were made of heavy rubber Wellington material!”
England captain Billy Wright noted that “the conditions underfoot,
too, were entirely different to those we were accustomed to in Britain.
Our boots sank ankle deep in the thick grass- there was hardly a
footballer from Europe who did not at some time or another suffer
from ‘Rio stomach’ during his stay in Brazil.”
Nevertheless in spite of it all, England approached their first
game, with Chile, in good heart, ready to take on the world for
the first time. In a group that included the USA and Spain, it was
vital to get off to a good start for only the group winners would
progress to the second phase.
Tom Finney points out that “People looked upon our group with
Chile, Spain and America as easy and that we’d have England
and Brazil as the main players in the final rounds.”
Things went according to plan as England beat Chile 2-0, “and
played reasonably well” according to Finney. “Having beaten
Chile, we felt we had a great chance.”
Goals from Mannion and Mortensen saw England through, but it was
not the convincing victory they had hoped for in conditions that
were considerably more helpful than might have been the case. The
game was fought out in torrential rain, deep puddles quickly appearing
on the playing surface. At least this was more like home!
In the light of that, Billy Wright’s comment gave cause for
concern: “we all knew in our hearts that the team had not ‘clicked’
as we had hoped. For the first time in my life, I felt tired long
before the end of the game.” Failing to note English lethargy
and the fact that the players had been gulping down oxygen at half
time, London’s Daily Mail signed off it’s match report
with comforting words for the folks back home:
England came through the first test fairly satisfactorily considering
the strange conditions and the hostility of the crowd- all things
considered England should take the game against the U.S. in their
stride as a preparation for the stiff test against Spain.
One can hardly blame the Daily Mail for over-confidence. Having
beaten South American opposition at altitude in Rio’s Maracana
Stadium, the opportunity to come down to a lower altitude at Belo
Horizonte would surely help England. And who were America in footballing
terms?
They were little more than an amateur side that would normally be
dismissed by any self-respecting professional team. This was pretty
much the team who had been beaten 9-0 by Italy in the 1948 Olympics,
the same Italian side which England had beaten 4-0 in Turin that
same year. And yet - in their opening game, the USA had led Spain
by a goal to nil until ten minutes from the end when the roof fell
in and Spain banged in three goals.
With the selection of the English team in the hands of a committee
rather than the manager, the sole selector who had made the trip,
Arthur Drewry, decided not to recall Stanley Mathews who had arrived
late in Brazil, and instead put out an unchanged side.
After the splendor of the Maracana, England had flown down to Belo
Horizonte to be faced with a tiny stadium and a rutted pitch that
would have served a non league club well, but which was a long way
from the splendor of Wembley or Highbury - the dressing rooms were
so poor that the Englishmen got changed at a local athletic club
and were bussed to the ground.
Perhaps it was then that the first seeds of doubt were sown, for
this was exactly the sort of circumstances in which FA Cup upsets
flourish. But England remained outwardly confident, looking forward
to what would surely be the group decider against Spain.
It was an outlook the American team shared for several of them enjoyed
a riotous party that raged into the early hours of the day of the
game. Certainly there was no tension, nor expectation, in their
camp!
England however had a duty to fulfill. Not only was victory essential
from a World Cup point of view, they were representing their country
in front of their hosts, the Morro Velho gold mine, which employed
2,000 British workers. Eager to please, England set out as though
the only doubts they had was whether they would reach double figures
or not. For half an hour the ball scarcely broke out of the American
half as the goal was placed under siege. Billy Wright was the first
to realize that all was not well however, commenting on “the
feeble finishing of our forwards who time and time again tore the
ponderous American defense wide open only to fail lamentably with
their finishing. Naturally with the passing of the minutes, we in
defense became rather annoyed.”
That irritation was to flare into genuine anger when, with 37 minutes
gone and a goal-less first half in prospect, America broke free
of the stranglehold and scored. Winterbottom recalls watching in
horror as “they had a shot from well outside the box, it struck
an attacker on the head as it was going through, and our goalkeeper,
Bert Williams, had to change direction to try to stop it. He was
on his hands and knees trying to stop it rolling over the line!”
At the half time whistle, Joe Gaetjens goal still separated the
two teams.
Even now, few believed England would fail to turn things around.
As Tom Finney explains “there was no question of the players
taking it easy, it was just one of those games where the longer
it went on, the more desperate we became. They pulled everybody
back behind the ball and made it very difficult for us. We had more
than enough chances to have won comfortably but I think to a degree
the way we played, the 2-3-5 system, meant that we were behind the
times. There were lots of goals in English football because there
was nowhere near as much thought going into defending as attacking
- we had two backs, three midfielders and five attackers. We stood
still while other countries passed us with 4-4-2, deep lying center-forwards
and so on.”
Throughout the second half England pressed frantically as the American
goalmouth came to resemble the Alamo. With goalkeeper Frank Borghi
displaying the kind of heroism that John Wayne could only dream
of, the minutes ticked by at alarming speed for the Englishmen.
In those pre-substitution days, all England could do was to keep
trying with the eleven men they had on the field, but even that
was to trouble them. Winterbottom pointing out that “our players
get worse when they have to fight like that, they put too much into
it, expend too much effort.”
The harder England tried, the more obvious it was that they would
not score. Billy Wright described the game as “a musical comedy.
On three occasions the American goalkeeper unwittingly stopped fierce
drives with his face!”
Eventually, the final whistle came and England, pre-tournament favorites,
had been beaten by America, rank outsiders. According to Brian Glanville's
“Story of the World Cup,” “newspapers burned on the
terraces, a funeral pyre for England, and the spectators rushed
on to the pitch to carry the brave American team out shoulder high.”
Tom Finney sums up the feeling in the England dressing room when
he recalls, “America were no hopers and to lose to them was
a catastrophe. They were a mixed nationality side, players that
were there to make the numbers up. We knew we were in for a lashing
from the press because to lose to the USA made us the laughing stocks
of the game and really it was dismal.
Rightly, the press were incensed - when it was over, as a player,
it was one of those times where it doesn't seem to dawn on you that
you've lost to a side like that. How could you possibly lose to
a side as poor as that?”
The press were pitiless in their reaction. The daily Worker called
it “probably the worst display ever by an England side,”
while the Daily Mail was hardly more understanding, saying ‘England
played ridiculously badly-the USA eventually got on top and on the
left wing, the Sousas, Eddie and John, played a victory march against
Wright and Ramsey- England were beaten because of bad shooting,
over anxiety in the second half and failure to settle down on the
small pitch- (which was) unsuitable for a match of World Cup importance.”
With the benefit of hindsight, its clear that those reports were
a little exaggerated. The American side was clearly better than
it was given credit for, with Bill Jeffrey’s excellent organization
critical to their success. Even so, England should have won and
would have done so nine times out of ten.
The poor quality of the pitch leveled things dramatically as did
England’s woeful preparation, for which the FA was solely to
blame. Added to that, as Alf Ramsey pointed out “we had a year’s
bad luck.” Walter Winterbottom recalls the statistics with
a grimace, “we hit the woodwork eleven times! I’ve often
wondered why that game wasn't filmed. If we could have had any film
of it, we could have shown people what sort of game it was, that
England played fairly well but couldn't score. Instead, we’ve
had to suffer ever since. I’ve been round the world on tours
with FIFA and so on and everywhere I went, they wanted me to go
on T.V. The first question was always ‘what happened when you
played against America?’
For the future of English soccer, it was as well that such humiliations
were heaped on our heads, just as they were to be three years later
when Hungary won 6-3 at Wembley and 7-1 in Budapest - it’s
from painful defeat that vital lessons are drawn.
Tom Finney concedes that “some of the foreign nations had really
gone into the game, trying out different formations, thinking there
must be a better system to try than the 2-3-5 we always played with
our clubs in England.
This competition was the first glimpse we got of South Americans
who were really well organized in attack and defense. As a professional
it was obvious to me that we had a hell of a lot to learn from these
so-called youngsters of the game.”
It is a process that goes on to this day. Such has been English
insularity that it’s only now that we are really taking on
the continental philosophy of the game. But will the English lose
to the USA in May? Stranger things have already happened.
Read
the USA players perspective here...includes player interviews.
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