Sir Alf

Despite never having competed before, England were one of the favourites for the World Cup, largely because of the lustre of their name. But it was obvious, almost as soon as the party had gathered, that the preparations were inadequate. Instead of heading to South America a few weeks early to acclimatize, the England team held some practice sessions on the ground of Dulwich Hamlet FC at Dog Kennel Hill. ‘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 had to face,’ said Alf, adding ruefully that the FA’s finances did not stretch to this. In fact, England flew out barely a week before their first game. The Lockheed Constellation took off from Heathrow early on 19 June at the start of a journey lasting 31 hours, with stops on the way at Paris, Lisbon, Dakar and Recife, before landing in Rio on the 21st. ‘The whole thing was a farce really, a shambles. We had a week’s training in Dulwich, then the journey to Brazil seemed to take for ever. By the time we stepped off the plane, everyone was knackered,’ recalls Alf’s Spurs team-mate Eddie Baily, who was making his first England trip. Baily was also disturbed by the absence of any proper medical support. ‘Can you believe it? All that way across the world and no bleedin’ doctor.’ Exhausted, the players made their way to the Luxor Hotel by the Copacabana beach, where they were shocked by the conditions they found, as Winterbottom later recalled:

Probably it was my fault because we should have gone into things more thoroughly but the Luxor was hopeless for our needs. As soon as we arrived, I knew there would be problems. When I inspected the kitchens, I was almost sick; the smell went up into the bedrooms, the food was swimming in oil and it was practically impossible to arrange suitable meals. Nearly all the players went down with tummy upsets at one time or another.

As Stanley Mortensen, one of the team’s wits, put it, ‘Even the dustbins have ulcers.’

The players encountered further difficulties as they practised in the South American heat, as Alf, who prided himself on his fitness, wrote:

During our training spells two things quickly impressed themselves upon me. The first was that during practice matches, I found it very hard to breathe. Secondly, at the conclusion of even an easy kick-around, I felt infinitely more tired than after a hectic League match at home.

But for all their problems, England did not seem to face a difficult passage to the next round, having been drawn against Chile, the USA and Spain. And progress seemed assured when England defeated Chile 2–0 in their opening game. Next came the apparent formality of beating the unknowns of the United States, a country that had no more interest in soccer than England had in baseball. For this game, the team had to fly 300 miles inland from Rio to Belo Horizonte, a modern city whose layout impressed Alf from the air: ‘such a beautifully planned city with “baby skyscrapers”, much loftier than any buildings we have in this country.’ Alf was not so enamoured by the coach-ride from the airport to the team’s base at the British-owned Morro Velho gold mine 16 miles from Belo Horizonte. According to Alf, this involved ‘the nightmare experience of being driven around the 167 hairpin bends on a road which seemed to cling to the side of the mountain’. Nor was the accommodation, a series of chalets on a miners’ camp, a great improvement on the Luxor Hotel. ‘They stuck us in wooden huts. It was really primitive. We couldn’t sleep at night,’ recalled the goalkeeper Bert Williams. Even so, on the eve of the match, the players were in high spirits, enjoying a sing-along led, inevitably, by Eddie Baily, whom Alf often compared to the cockney comic Max Miller. No one doubted what the outcome would be the following day. One old miner at the camp asked Alf, ‘Tell me, how many do you think you’ll win by?’ Back home, the Daily Express argued that the American team was so hopeless that England should give them a three-goal start. Double figures were possible, thought John Thompson of the Daily Mirror. Arthur Drewry, the Grimsby fishmonger who added to his duties as President of the Football League by serving as the chief selector for the England XI in the World Cup, was so confident that he decided the US game should be treated as little more than a practice match before the real contest against Spain. With barely a word of explanation, he overruled Winterbottom, who had wanted Stanley Matthews picked.

But the mood of optimism was dampened when the players reached the Belo Horizonte stadium, where they found a narrow pitch with coarse grass and a sprinkling of stones; ‘I’d known better playing as a kid on the marshes,’ says Eddie Baily. The dressing-rooms, which had only just been completed and reeked of building materials, were so dingy that Winterbottom took the players off to change at a local athletic club, ten minutes’ bus ride away. On their return, the England team were greeted by a large hostile crowd of 20,000 gathered behind the 12-foot high concrete wall that surrounded the pitch. The atmosphere was intimidating, claustrophic. ‘This is the first time I’ve ever played in a prison,’ said Bert Williams to Alf.

Still, they were only playing the USA. And within minutes of the kick-off, England – wearing blue shirts to avoid a clash with the white of the Americans – were already on the attack, scything through the inexperienced American defence. It seemed only a matter of time before there would be a goal from England’s front line, which included such legends as Tom Finney, Stan Mortensen of Blackpool and Wilf Mannion of Middlesbrough. But, after half an hour of missed opportunities, the scores remained level. Then, in the 37th minute, came the truly unexpected. A long, speculative shot was hit towards England’s penalty box. There seemed little danger, for Bert Williams had it covered. But just as he was moving for it, the American centre-forward Joe Gaetjens – who later died in a prison in Haiti after taking part in the attempted coup against the corrupt regime of Papa Doc Duvalier – burst forward instinctively. As he dived, the ball appeared to hit the back of his head, took a wicked deflection and flew past Williams into the net. The English thought it was a freakish goal; the Americans praised Gaetjens’ heroism.

England went into half-time still 1–0 down. Winterbottom reassured them that the goals were bound to come, but as one of the forwards, Roy Bentley, commented, ‘It had begun to feel as though we could play for a week and not score.’ It was the same sorry story in the second half. England squandered a wealth of easy chances, frequently hitting the woodwork or blasting over the bar. ‘I was sitting alongside Stan Matthews, and he kept saying, “Bless my soul, bless my soul,” remembers Eddie Baily. England captain Billy Wright later recalled how frustrated Alf became: ‘Even Alf Ramsey, who used to be expressionless throughout a game, threw up his arms and looked to the sky when a perfect free-kick was somehow saved by their unorthodox keeper.’ The England players even felt the referee was conspiring against them, especially when, in the dying minutes, another of Ramsey’s free-kicks was met firmly by Stan Mortensen’s header and appeared to cross the line, only for the referee to disallow the goal. There was to be no reprieve. After 90 minutes, England had lost by that single Gaetjens’ strike. ‘I 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 or powerful delivery. ‘I don’t think he took kindly to public speaking. He was not very good at it; he was very clipped,’ says the journalist Ken Jones. Alf confessed that, at that 1950 banquet, ‘I was extremely nervous. I would rather take a penalty at Wembley than again go through such an experience.’ He managed to get through it, however, with ‘a few words of thanks’. Fortunately for Alf, he would give up this ambassadorial role, when Billy Wright returned to the captaincy in early 1951, having recovered his form.

Ramsey showed no signs of any decline in his. He had become so cool that even with England he would retain the Spurs approach, often trapping clearances deep in his own half, inviting a challenge from his opponent before pushing the ball to a colleague. One of his increasingly important gifts was his deadliness at set pieces, as Nat Lofthouse recalled in 1954:

Another of Ramsey’s intelligent moves, developed because of his beautifully controlled kicking, has brought many goals from free kicks. Ramsey and I have practised this move for hours before international matches. He possesses an uncanny knack of being able to place a football almost on a pinhead. Such accuracy is, of course, the outcome of years of hard work, a factor people are inclined to forget when they see the master soccer-man in action. It is, however, only when you have been out on the pitch with Alf Ramsey that you appreciate his greatness.

In 1953, Billy Wright wrote of Alf’s quest for perfection:

For hours Alf Ramsey and Nat Lofthouse practised this move. I have rarely known Ramsey to be completely satisfied with his efforts and although early on he was placing the ball on Lofthouse’s napper eight times out of ten, Alf, we all knew, would never be content until he could do it ten times out of ten.

Alf’s manager, Walter Winterbottom, in a BBC interview in 1970, emphasized his importance as an England player, praising him for being ‘so consistent’. Winterbottom went on:

We always felt confident in him. He was a thinking full-back, one who believed in precision passing. He was good with his drives; he could hit the ball very true. He was also precise in those long, floating lobs, about forty yards up the field. He could put an absolutely precise centre which would allow someone like Nat Lofthouse – who was a bit like Geoff Hurst – to run in at an angle and meet the ball at the right moment to outwit the keeper. Alf was already then forming opinions around this idea of concentrated defensive work, of never losing the ball when you had possession and of this all-round playing and hard working of the team. The things coming through now I could see when he was playing.

A profile in the Daily Mirror in February 1951 called Alf ‘the soccer intellectual’. It stated that

to Ramsey, football appears as a succession of chess problems, an exercise of the intellect. For all that, he can produce a lustiness and strength in the tackle when needed. He passes the ball with supreme accuracy and precise pace. He spends as much time in practice as any inside-forward might. These are the qualities of Ramsey’s game reflected in himself. He dresses quietly, immaculately. In conversation, he is reflective. He said one very significant thing to me: ‘I don’t care too much to be told that I have had a wonderful game. I prefer it when someone points out a fault. Then I can do something about it.’

Alf was particularly impressive in the match against Argentina, when England looked incapable of breaking down the South Americans until his calm assurance pulled them through to win 2–1. Bernard Joy of The Star described Alf’s performance as

the finest full-back display I have seen in many years. Ramsey played as though there were no Argentinos within miles. He refused to be stampeded into helter-skelter methods and particularly in the second half sent forward a stream of precision passes. Ramsey it was who realized that the only way to draw the Argentine defence from goalmouth was to start short passing bouts in midfield. And his brainy free kick with the ball to the far post instead of into the centre of the crowded penalty area won the match.

Alf’s authority was even more crucial in the match against Austria in November 1951, when England’s unbeaten record against continental sides came under its most severe threat yet. Led by their brilliant attacking centre-half Ernst Ocwirk, Austria were one of the most powerful teams in Europe at the time, and with only 25 minutes to go, as they led 1–0, they seemed to be on the verge of a famous victory. But then Eddie Baily won the ball, weaved his way through the Austrian defence and was about to shoot when he was brought down. The referee instantly gave a penalty.

The eyes of the huge Wembley crowd instantly turned to Alf, whose unflappable temperament had made him the chief penalty taker for Spurs and England. As he walked up to the spot, Eddie Baily said to him, ‘I’ve done all the fuckin’ hard work for you, Alf, now make sure you score.’ A silence descended around the stadium, everyone knowing that England’s long cherished record depended on the ‘The General’. Preparing to take the kick, Alf exuded his usual steadiness, behaving as casually ‘as if he were taking a stroll along Bournemouth Front,’ said Billy Wright. But Alf was always good at covering up his feelings. Inwardly, recorded Alf, ‘my heart was beating madly and the goal appeared to have shrunk to about half its normal size’. The tension grew while Alf placed the ball slowly and deliberately on the spot. As in everything else in football, he was a master of detail when it came to penalties. ‘In the course of practice I have noticed that if you kick a football with the lace facing the sky it invariably rises high and, after making some experiments, I discovered that the best way to place the ball for a spot kick is to make the lace face the keeper.’ Finally satisfied with his placement, he took a few steps back and then, on the referee’s signal, moved towards the ball. Just as his right foot was about to make contact, he saw the Austrian keeper move slightly to his right. ‘At once, like a boxer going in for the kill, I side-footed the ball into the other side of the net.’ A vast, echoing roar went round the terraces as the ball sped across the lush Wembley turf into the corner.

Three minutes later England took the lead, again thanks to Alf. All the hours of practice with Nat Lofthouse paid off, as one of his perfectly flighted free-kicks sailed over the Austria defence and straight onto the head of Nat Lofthouse, who knocked it down into the net. But Austria refused to give up and late in the game scored the equalizer through a penalty. To England’s relief, the score-line finished 2–2. The unbeaten home record against Europe remained intact. With little sense of perspective, the Daily Mail praised England for ‘a glorious fighting display that completely rehabilitated the reputation of English international football, threadbare since our World Cup defeat’. This may have been an exaggeration, but Alf certainly deserved the plaudits. He was, according to the Mail, England’s ‘ice-cool hero’. Alf himself described the game as ‘my greatest international’.

One England player making his debut in that historic game was the young Arsenal winger Arthur Milton, who also played cricket for Gloucestershire and England; indeed, he was to be the last ever double international. Today, Milton has interesting memories of playing alongside Alf:

Alf was very quiet in the dressing-room, very quiet. But I was the new boy, so he came and had a chat, telling me to go out and play my game and enjoy it. I found him reassuring, comforting. Walter Winterbottom, the manager, was not all that forthcoming. Billy Wright was the captain, but I found Alf the most reassuring of those three. I could see that he was very in control of himself. He did not make a fuss. To be honest, I got lost a bit in the game, not having had much experience, but I got no ball from Billy Wright. I always felt that Bill Nicholson was a much better wing-half than Billy Wright. Now Alf, he was a real class act. He stood out. Not perhaps such a good defender as a distributor of the ball. He was good in defence but nothing exceptional. But his use of the ball was always fantastic. Lovely mover he was.