England: When Wembley Wept with Joy

Alf Ramsey had promised England would win the World Cup before the tournament began, a prediction received with scepticism that was partially vindicated by the team's uninspiring group stage performances. The Wingless Wonders — a 4-4-2 without orthodox wingers, relying on Charlton's driving runs from midfield and the industry of Ball and Peters — were efficient without being beautiful, winning without commanding admiration. The neutrals preferred the Hungarian flair of earlier rounds.

The final against West Germany was legitimate theatre regardless of the disputed goal. England led; Germany equalised in the final minute to force extra time. Then Hurst's shot struck the underside of the bar and bounced — down, onto or across the line, depending on your nationality and the resolution of the film footage you have access to. Roger Hunt, closest to the action, did not follow in the rebound; he wheeled away in celebration. Swiss referee Gottfried Dienst consulted his linesman and awarded the goal. Germany protested. The goal stood. The debate has not stopped.

Hurst's fourth goal — struck in the final seconds with German players already drifting off — completed the hat-trick and the match simultaneously, with Kenneth Wolstenholme's commentary entering the lexicon of every language football is played in. Bobby Moore, already singled out as the tournament's finest defender, received the trophy from the Queen in a moment of such composed elegance that it looked arranged rather than spontaneous. Moore wiped his hands on his shorts before shaking hers; the gesture became a thousand newspaper photographs.

England have not won the World Cup since. The fifty-eight years that separate the Wembley final from the present have made the 1966 tournament larger and heavier in the national imagination than it might otherwise have been. Every subsequent England side has been measured against the standard of Ramsey's pragmatists, and every subsequent England elimination has added another layer to the mythology of that July afternoon — when, for the only time, it did actually come home.