Today in History: England wins the 1966 World Cup
Geoff Hurst remains the only player to score a hat-trick in a FIFA World Cup™ final, to this day.
Fifty-two years on from England’s greatest footballing triumph, we look back at the day that secured Geoff Hurst and the 1966 England national team their place in football folklore.
The 1966 FIFA World Cup™ was hosted in England, and naturally there was a ton of hype around the national team, placing a fair amount of pressure on Booby Moore and his charges to make history. England’s run into the final was an impressive one. Playing all of their games at Wembley Stadium, England won two and drew one in the group stage and did not concede a single goal until their semi-final clash with the team from Portugal, whom they still defeated 2–1.
England came up against a strong West German side in the final. They had also won two and drawn one in their group stage matches. They had defeated Uruguay and the Soviet Union in their knockout matches before reaching the final.
It took only twelve minutes of play in the final before West Germany took the lead through a Helmut Haller goal. It would take only seven minutes before the would-be hero, Geoff Hurst, levelled the score with a header from a free-kick.
The game would stay deadlocked until the 77th minute, when Martin Peters scored to give England the lead following a deflected Geoff Hurst shot. Just when England thought they had taken the cup, Wolfgang Weber levelled the score at 2–2 in the 89th minute, forcing the match into extra time.
England would draw first blood in extra time when, with 11 extra time minutes gone, Geoff Hurst scored what is arguably one of the most debated goals in World Cup history.
The ball hit the underside of the crossbar, bounced down and was cleared. Referee Gottfried Dienst was uncertain if it had been a goal and consulted his linesman, Tofiq Bahramov, who indicated that it was, and the Swiss referee awarded the goal to the home team. The crowd and the audience of close to 400 million television viewers were left arguing whether the goal should have been given or not.
Modern studies using film analysis and computer simulation have shown that the ball never crossed the line – Duncan Gillies of the Visual Information Processing Group at Imperial College London and Ian Reid and Andrew Zisserman of the Department of Engineering Science at University of Oxford have stated that the ball would have needed to travel a further 2,5 – 6,0cm to fully cross the line.
Regardless, England took a 3–2 lead and in the final minute of extra time, with supporters streaming onto the field already, Geoff Hurst completed his hat trick with a strong shot into the roof of the net after a run which rounded off a pacy England counter-attack.
Hurst later admitted that his blistering shot was as much intended to send the ball as far into the Wembley stands as possible should it miss, in order to kill time on the clock.
Relive the goals from the final here:
You can also relive Geoff Hurst’s hat-trick and controversial goal with him, here:
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