The Debut of Jack Charlton

Welcome to It was What It Was I'm Rob Draper. I'm the co host of the Football History podcast with Jonathan Wilson and with the World Cup underway we've got a special four part series on England's nineteen sixty six World Cup wines. six Yty years, of hurt. We're going into the origin story of that. Coming up for you on the channel is part one where we discuss England's World Cup winning manager for Alfred Ramsay and how he prepared the team for what would become the finest day England's football in history. And in other further episodes we're going to go more depth why on earth did he drop Greaves? What was the controversy around that? How did they celebrate and also the tactical genius that was Ramsey that won them this World Cup . We go into proper depth into a story you might have heard before but hopefully there's going to be a load more detail and if you enjoy it please do head over to It was what it was and if you sign up to our Patreon channel you'll get everything all four episodes straight away on demand you won't have to wait for them but if you want to wait for them just head over to It was what it was listen to them on there. If you go on to it was what it was for . There's almost two hundred episodes now of all sorts of histories from Colombia's nineteen ninety four World Cup to Arsenal Liverpool nineteen eighty nine title climax. Everything you could think of is on there. But also if you go onto a patreon, there's a whole history of the World Cup on there from nineteen thirty to twenty twenty two and lots of bonus episodes on football hooliganism, on why Brazil are not doing well in the twenty first cent ury, all sorts for you to enjoy . So do check those out and we hope you enjoy this episode. What was Alf Ramsay like ? I don't know. I was only with him for six years . Well welcome to It was what it was We're on the cusp of the W Coruldp F inals. I'm here with Jonathan Wilson. I'm Rob Drape. We're all very excited. We're looking forward to USA, Cando and Mexico and everything that's going to come this year, but we are a history podcast at Heart and we want to look back at some of the most significant World Cups ever and forgive us foreign listeners, forgive us Scotland, Ireland, Wales . We do think that nineteen sixty six, probably sixty years on is worth a look back at and not least because it has because of the central character involved Sir Alfred Ramsay, who is an extraordinary figure and Jonathan, I think a little bit underrated by many people gets a bit of a hard time. He's sort of dealt with by caricature and this is part one of four parts where we're going to go through England's World Cup triumph sixty years on . And this one is very much looking at the background. We're doing the pre history, aren't we before we get onto all the World Cup stuff? But I think that in itself is fascinating. Yeah, we'll basically finish today in a summer of nineteen sixty five . So we will look at Ramsay look at his background, look at the situation he inherited . I really I really enjoyed your effort at a Jack Charlton impression . I mean think of the hours I spent in makeup , voice coaching, trying to get my Allen Hansen or my Kevin Kegan right . I knew, you know, not that nobody has ever spoken like that in Ashington. But anyway, never mind. Ashington via Watford . I mean, it's just Watford, Watford via Watford. See, I think it's fairly clear the England's road to Walker Glory begins with the appointment of Ramsey's England manager in the October of nineteen sixty two. Although of course because he's Ramsey and he's awkward and he's difficult and he's principled. He doesn't actually take up the job until the March of sixty three because he thinks it would be unfair on Ipswich. And he's just won the title with Ipswich in nineteen sixty two, a remarkable achievement. They had only been promoted the previous season and they were struggling in the October of ' sixty two. They'd lost to spurs they could see of five in the charity shield was a sense they'd been worked out, I guess really , and he didn't want to leave them in the lurch until he was pretty sure that they would survive. So he stayed on the Ipswich through till the following March . I mean, I think that reflects very well on him that he doesn't leave them in the lurch, but also I mean remarkable maybe doesn't quite cover it. I mean the Ipswich title win under Amphy is one of the most astonishing things in football unmatched until Lester, is it not? I guess Forest is the other one you might add in. And again, a team who get promoted and then that gets straight into momentum, you know, carries them through to the title and people haven't seen them. I mean, we'll talk later on about why they were tactically innovative and what it was they were doing that confused teams . But yeah, an Expert shows a small club , you know, they obviously They obviously had this great period. They had a great period under Bobby Robson the end of the seventies , but they're not by any stretch of imagination, one of the historical giants of English football. So Ramsey replaces Walter Winterbottom . Walter Winterbottom has had to deal with a selection committee. One of the things Ramsay demands is autonomy. He wants control over selection. Let's explain where a selection committee is because I think a lot of younger listeners will have no idea that this happened . It's a series of FA Mandarins who in theory are going round the country looking at games watching players and then they gather together and they decide what the England eleven is going to be. The manager doesn't pick it, then the manager's just the coach to pick the eleven is it or I think certainly by the end Windsorbotton probably effectively was controlling that process . But of course one of the problems with this is the assumption that you can design a team by committee and equal the famous joke that a camel is a horse designed by Cittommee. People have different ide as about how you play. There's no thought of internal balance, but English football is so convinced that the W M is the only way to play. Well, okay, well if we pick the best right back and we pick the best center back and we pick the best left back , that would be the best back three . There's no thought that maybe you want one side to be able to get forward and then the other one took across or you know he's got pace therefore you know we can afford a slightly slower play who's better in the air . That is just not part of the equation. There's a committee and their horse trading, okay, you can pick your left back if I pick my right winger . It's really not conducive to the incre asing tactical sophistication, the idea of the game has been systematised you see in the sixties . And this is why Ramsey absolutely lays it on the line. I get to pick the team or I don't do the job . So he's inheriting pretty conservative old fashioned situation and he's trying to modernise that , but he's also inheriting an England team whose world cup record really is not good at all . So England didn't play in the World Cups of thirty thirty four, thirty eight, it just they weren't part of FIFA. They saw it as beneath them foreigners having a competition. Clearly the home championship is the real test of football Now in fifty when they do turn up, they get this horrible shock where they lose to the USA, also lose lose to Spain, eliminating the group stage . fifty four they're a bit better. They get through the group but they lose four to two year ago in the quar ter final, fifty eight they finished level on points where the Soviet Union and the group have a playoff lose that. So again, they go out in the group stage and sixty two they actually have it's an okay welcome for them. They beat Argentina in the group, they get through the quarterfinal, and they're beaten a Brazil inspired by Garincia, and that of course is a famous game where a dog runs on the pitch Jerry Grieves. I don't know you were going to go to this story get sound at all. Well we talked about in one of the bonus episodes, didn't we? So sign up to our Patreon and you can listen in far more detail to how Jimmy Greaves crawled about on all fours perade a dog leave a pitch then it urinated on him and then there was a raffle which Grincha won way more detail in the patreon. Literally Brazil was taking a piss or the dog was taking a piss anyway. I wasn't taking it. He was very much giving this anyway. Let's move on from urination issues . So yeah, so Alpha Ramsay I mentioned at the top of this that often portrayed as dour , repressed , maybe a bit backward, a traditionalist, not really open to modern ideas or certainly at odds with the swinging sixties of sort of London and Liverpool. I suppose that's why that is the counterpoint is that Britain is opening up and England is at the center of sort of cultural phenomenon and we've got this rather gruff sort of middle aged man in charge of a football team. It's in many respects an unfair caricature. No, I don't think it is at all. I think he is quite reserved and he is quite difficult. He is quite cuts and he has but not backward looking . Not backward looking. That is traditionalist. I mean, I'm not sure he's in traditionalist to be honest. I mean, he's the fact that he kicks out a committee shows he's not a traditionalist. I'd say he's probably socially conservative . He's emotionally repressed , but in football terms, he's radical. Yeah, I think that's the sort of is it even a paradox? That's the makeup of him . So there was a great interview I found when I was researching I think this was for the book I did on the Charltons . His wife, Victoria gave an interview in which she said that she wished Alf would let his head down occasionally. It would do him a power of good. I'm sure. I'm sure Ramsay hated this thing in public. By the way, he didn't have any he didn't have much hair either. Did he? So she said, Whatever problem he was wrestling with, whatever satisfaction you might feel, he just hides it behind this brusque facade, so in that sense he's very much of an Englishman of a particular generation . And Sir Victoria goes on, I'm the one in the household who hits the ceiling. I think it's a good thing to get out of your system, but not Alf. He's the rock of Gibraltar. I'm not saying he doesn't feel it, but he doesn't show emotion. He has a will like iron. I mean that's also that's certainly all true and as we'll see in his player interactions, I mean there's a certain strength to his lack of emotion. I think ultimately that does cost you as a man manager in the long term, but there are key situations such as if you've just chucked away in a golden last minute of the world cup final where staying calm and not getting over emotion al is quite important and probably a key strength to him . Yeah, and being very single minded, he knows what he wants tactically and he's not going to let any of the outside noise , any of the press, any fans , your players talking to him. He's not going to let any of that distract him. I mean, I think the other thing about Ramsay is he is massively xenophobic and there's no real way to sugarcoat that he just doesn't like it's not even that he doesn't like foreigners. He doesn't like anybody who's not English. He's very dismissive of the Scots . He really hates South Americans . He's he's a xenophobic. That is just true. The welcome to Scotland story. Yeah, exactly. Why did you tell that It turns up for it must be home international, doesn't it? I guess at Glasgow Airport and one of the journalists, Welcome to Scotland, Mr. Ramsey goes, you must be yefing joking which, is yeah , yeah, a great response I suppose which I probably wouldn't get away with these days . And yeah, he's introverted. He's stubborn . I think it's also true his reputation suffers because of England's failure to qualify for the nineteen seventy four World Cup and I think by then the fact that his football is not necessarily the easiest on the eye, his refusal to bow to the will of the media and the fans to pick some of the more Maverick players of the seventies all that sort of creates the idea of he was a very stern, boring man . And I think England are unlucky to lose sorry to draw that game against Poland in nineteen seventy three that means they don't qualify for seventy four World Cup . But at the same time, I think it's obvious that by then England football is lagging behind the best at West Germany or the, best of the Dutch are producing. And so Ramsay follows the familiar path of managers or revolutionaries that eventually what was sparkling anew a few years later is old hat . And I think unfortunately it's the end of his England career that often dominates his reputation or shapes his reputation rather than the glory is. Yeah, well, I suppose that was getting at. I mean, it's like great boxes all all you your careers end on the canvas in the end, don't they sort of knocked out and whatever your past glories are? I mean it is a little bit like that. Here's a man of I mean okay we've talked about his he dislike clear dislike of foreigners . But the new Grant Beigebook has been really interesting. I mean, you've talked about one of the things that Grant talks about, which is that he's probably of Romani stock and that he's teased for this really, and his nickname Darky is basically because he is seen as dark skinned and of Romani sort of heritage , which of course wouldn't be acceptable today, but was seen I think even some of the players would call that bagine behind his back, wouldn't they? Yeah, I mean, there's a story. I think it's Bobby Moore and Jimmy Greaves on a on the bus going to training or to a game and they see a Romani camp and they sort of go, oh look out there's some of your people over there and yeah he's really not having that. He doesn't find that amusing at all and I think it's maybe his self consciousness about his origins that lead him to have elocution lessons, which is why he speaks in such a bizarre way. This very strangled his attempt to sort of speak a sort of form of BBC English but keeps on slipping up because the old vowel sounds not quite right and it's just unnatural. So the whole thing sounds like he's really trying to squeeze the words out. We did a whole episode, didn't we on the demise of Sir Alphramsay? Jonathan was one of yours. I can say it's a brilliant episode. So do you go back and listen to that and the class issues of the Posh, the Roxbridge FA committees and , you know, this guy from basically Daggenham in East London who is of Romanes at heritage and a huge gulf between that. But the other thing that Grant discovered, which is a genuine revelation that there was a player playing for Ipswich in the nineteen fifties who had been convicted of gross indecency with another man, basically a homosexual who had had some homosexual encounter with another man, which in the nineteen fifties was illegal. That wasn't made legal until the late sixties in England and Ramsey goes into back for him basically says I want to sign him. I want him to stay at the club and he takes the ball on and he gets his way. I mean, who can say why he did that? I mean, maybe because he was a really good footballer and all he was thinking of his football team, but it shows a degree of open mindedness in an era where it really wouldn't have been the done thing to be open minded about homosexuality. Yeah, I mean that was a remarkable story. It's a very good book that. So people should look it up . I mean, I think we've been quite fortunate in the last three or four years that there's been a lot of good books about Ramsay in ' sixty six , Duncan Hamilton's book, Michael Calvin's book. So there is a lot more information there than there was even five years ago . So yeah, there's plenty plenty of further reading you can do I think was one I'm going to call it a myth because I just don't think it's true. One myth, one argument that we probably should deal with now before we get into the weeds , which is the idea that Ramsay somehow stunts English football that winning the World Cup was a bad thing for England because it's a David Downing who's a historian who's written very good books on the England Argentina rivalry, E thengland Germany rivalry . And he writes Ultimately The real loser in nineteen sixty six was English football. Ramsey's success reinforced English insularity and reduced what willingness there was to learn from abro ad, thus condemning the national game to the status of a backwater. The old values of toughness, speed, and never say diatitude had been reinforced, but the insistence on fair play which had always accompanied them would weaken as the game became more thoroughly professional . Now I'm not sure that when you've only won one world cup you've got any business saying it was a bad thing . I think you've pretty much got to celebrate that . And also, that seems to completely ignore quite how radical Ramsey's solutions were . And it's not his fault if people who followed him ended up sort of getting stuck in a rut and couldn't see what the Dutch were doing what the West Germans were doing. I guess it is by the early seventies his fault but many old manager or aging managers end up reproducing what sports success rather than looking for further innovation. I think Guadiola is very unusual in that respect. He does keep evolving. Alex Ferguson kept evolving , but those are the rarities to blame Ramsey for the fact that England' havent won the World Cup for sixty years seems to me extraordinary because without Ramsey, England would never have won the World Cup anything to talk about. I mean, I think the point is that Ramsey wins the World Cup and obviously we're building up to this because of specific tactical interventions which changed the course of modern football, you know, almost as much as total football will do in nineteen seventy four and that's often overlooked. It wasn't that he was relying on sort of old fashioned British values. He was reframing how the game was played with a back form without wingers and everyone's going to follow him. And as you say, it's not his fault that we don't build on that success. It's true that England doesn't build on that success . there And is n't anyone who I mean, it's interesting that Revi doesn't build on it because he is a very obviously very talented manager, but there isn't anyone who can incorporate the Dutch style into that Ramsey style and maybe mold something uniquely for English football in the seventies or for the England team in the seventies and eighties . But yeah I think it's wanting to see always see England as backward and regressive and not open to foreign ideas. I mean, certainly, as you indicated, Ramsay wasn't particularly open to foreign ideas, but he had really good ideas of his own. Well, hang on, he I think he is open to foreign ideas. Okay, just doesn't admit it. Yeah, okay. Well, it just doesn't work on us, but he likes those ideas . Weather even admits that to himself, I think is a fascinating thing . But as we'll find there's a tournament in Brazil there Mondolito in ' sixty four, which I will talk about that later in this episode. It is key. But let's have a look at Ramsey's background, shall we? And we've done we've talked about this in previous episodes, so we'll do this fairly quickly. I think one of the key things about Ramsay, you're a full back is a right back. He played for Spurs, played for England, and he played in the two great post war humiliations of English football. He played in that one little defeat against the USA in Belarus in nineteen fifty in the World Cup and he played in the sixth three home defeat to Hungary in nineteen fifty three. So the two games that really make England start to doubt hang on, of maybe we're doing this wrong. Maybe I mean nobody thinks the USA doing it right, but it is an embarrassment. Losing to Hungary in ' fifty three really does make people think yeah maybe, maybe we have somehow implausibly the foreigner has got better and we need to improve to catch him up. Ramsay doesn't think that though, does he ? No , because Ramsay plays for Spurs. Spurs have his push and run tradition . Arthur Row was his coach won the league with him in fifty one. Arthur Rows had been in Hungary in the late thirties . There's a lot of similarities between Arthur Row's thought that he brings to Tottenham or that he continues the Tottenham because McWilliams actually the person who's instilled it and the way Hungary are doing things . So Ramsey's viewpoint is, well Hungary's football is just spurs football. It's just they have push gas and cocesition, boss sick and they're just a bit better than us . So Ramsey's view is Hungary are not revolutionary, they're just better at doing something we're already new about . So this really that defeat confirms to Ramsay that the Spurs way is the right way. Now he retires as a player in nineteen fifty five , aged thirty five , or is he ? Because he's actually he's lied on his registration and taken two years off his age. So every thinks he's thirty three, but he's actually thirty five. Not that a threshold. Well , again, it's a man who's very concerned or very aware how perceptions can shape your career and he's trying to just, you know, if he looks two years old if everything's two years younger, that can only help him. If people think he's maybe not as working class as he actually is, no maybe that'll help him as well. He's a man who defines his own myth. I know pros dying their hair black basically keep your hair because any grey hair is just perception is everything. And so obviously people know your age, but I know professionals have said no I dye my hair because I don't want people to think I'm old because I want the next contract . Yeah, yeah, makes sense . So he doesn't get the spurs job, which I think he thought he might have a chance of he ends up going to Ipswich in the third division. But we talked about that in our Bill Nixon episode. It's extraordinary. He's not considered for that, isn't it? Given he's part of the whole tradition. Yeah, I mean, I don't know whether they think he's just a bit awkward, a bit difficult. It's also extraordinary that Bill Nickson's maybe was considered for the England job, but because there's certainly a period where getting an England job is seen as a pinnacle and that Alf gets it over Bill Nicholson. Well, I guess Nicholson No he had won the double by then, hadn't he? So yeah, I mean yeah it is that is interesting but here goes which nobody really thinks much is going to happen there. s Thequad's aging not, there much's av moneyailable for investment, but Ramsay slowly imposes the structure and in his second season he leads to promotion. So they're now in the second division. Then sixty to sixty one they go up again . And so what you're seeing here and I think we see this with England , there's a slow improvement, there's a slow movement towards a model. He's not someone who comes in and says, Rip up what you've been doing. This is it . He does it incrementally . And he's begun to develop a system with well with A withdrawn wingers. So Jimmy Leedbutter is a left winger. He's not quick. And Ramsey realizes there's no point having taking on his fullback because even if he beats him he hasn't got the pace to get away from him. So he has butter so he has Leedbutter sit deep. So that gives the fullback a problem. Does he follow Leedbutter which then leaves space behind him, which Ted Crawford can move into that space or does he sit off , hold this position, but then Leedbur can dictate the game unopposed from deep . So Ramsey's starting to experiment with what do we do with wingers? Do we actually need traditional wingers ? And this, of course, he will take much, much further with England. Yeah, I just think his willingness to, I think all football tactics is trying to scramble the brains of the opposition and go what on earth they do. And if you get a team to that position, you've got a really good chance of winning the game and there are very few thinkers in English football who match Ramsay in this regard . Yeah . And this is so successful that when he does it in the first division, it works again and they win the league the first season up. It was a really incredible achievement to take if league time at Cher and notwithstanding and Bobby Robson will go on to do great things at pswich. Ipswich is on the periphery of English football, isn't it? I mean, literally, it's like right on the east coast. So it's not a central harbour, it's not a massive football place. It's only really, I guess, Ramsey and Bobby Robinson and of course now at Cheering that has put Ipswich as a significant football player, but prior to this, they're kind of nothing really, aren't they? Yeah. I do wonder if Kirin McKenna might think of something to do with him rather than a cheering, but I think it's definitely Ed's singer alongs that has , you know . So winning them appoint Ramsay , what they're getting is a very, very modern tactician. They're getting somebody who is messing around with the backforce. He's messing around with wingers, he's messing around with mobile centre forwards. This is all incredibly modern. Do you think the FA actually knew what they were pointing? Because I can't believe any FA committee would have gone for that. They've probably just seen the league title win, haven't they? Yeah, I think I think it's entirely possible a couple of our committee knew exactly what they were doing, but I think the majority of them probably he's a good coach, he's inspirational, he's done his incredible thing of taking IP switch from the third flight to win the title, and he's cheap. He's probably also knowing how the FAA worked in those days . That's probably on their mind as well . Ramsey's also his own marking system . So he's moved to a systematized approach . So the old individualistic style of Matt Blossby being so successful with 's fading away . What Ramsay's doing is similar to what Shanky's doing, similar to what Ruby's doing . And I think this is the thing that is often overlooked. Ramsey's triumphant sixty six is fundamentally a triumph for tactical radicalism . Yeah, absolutely. I mean it's not I don't think it's necessary England has some vague players in this team and obviously Bobby Charlton and Bobby Moore and Golden Banks but, I don't think necessarily they have they are the best team in the competition, but you could break down other teams and say they have as good individuals during that competition . Well, arguably better if you look at Portugal, for instance, of the Soviets, better even Hungary . But where does this come from? So Rob, I want to take you back to the ideal home show at Olympia in West London in nineteen fifty six. It's where I always want to go, Jonathan. There's an exhibit there entitled The House of the Future . And if you look at the photographs now, it's it looks like a set for an early sci fi film. It's all bare walls and hexagons . There's a woman with sort of very sort of hair's twisted like she's a gorgon or something snakes on her head . There's a man dressed in a very strange sort of one piece suit very, high waist, and it's a weird little short jacket and these big sort of like trailermen's waders . It's very odd. It's almost like I thought fashion was going to get weird in the future and they can summon a table to rise to the floor by pressing a button on a large cube which also sits on this slightly slightly frightening looking hospital trolley next to this really uncomfortable looking plastic chair . But really the really striking thing is the aesthetic . Ignore their clothing which is preposterous. Everything else in a room is cold, it's hard, it's functional. The design's incredibly spare. The only decoration is a single line that just runs a few inches from the edge of the table on the floor . And the media think this is amazing . So this is from the Daily Mail. So it must be true. This must be the Daily Mail have a finger on the pulse of Middle England. Absolutely. This is Patricia Kieran in the mail . We still have very nearly the same inconvenient, inefficient pattern of living as our parents and even our grandparents , but consider the progress in other fields . And there's this growing willingness to look at these inefficient patterns and to start to consider brutalism, which Jonathan Meade, the great cultural commentator, he calls the most extreme strain of late modernism . Now I can see it in your eyes, Rob, you said, why is he banging on brutalism ? It's because football, just like any other discipline , follows cultural fashion. I would argue that football follows architecture more closely than it follows any other sphere. And you see that in Total Football Total Football is about architecture and urban design . Ramsey's football is brutalist football . So football sort of before the First World War being very concerned about doing things the right way. It becomes much more pragmatic after the First World War . By the late fifties , nutrition and diet have improved, partly because ration came to an end in ' fifty four. I think there's a greater understanding of sports sci ence , better developments in terms of boots, kits, players can run faster can run for longer. People have seen that the strict mountain band market of the WM doesn't work anymore Even England has begun to lose faith in the traditional winger . And so that gives you far greater flexibility of approach. Post fifty three, post a defeat to Hungary , there's a lot of experimentation , people are trying different things . British culture is inherently conservative at this period . And so if you look at the great brutalists, people like Licobusier or Your Bauhaus , they seem sort of overt ly foreign . So the cultural historian Ben Himal writes brutalism was meant to have a whiff of Golois and existentialism, but it was also meant to echo the jive talk and jukeboxes. So it's somehow continental but it,'s also American . You know, even the name brutalism is French. It doesn't come from brutal . It comes from Beton Bruce, raw concrete . So whatever is happening elsewhere, this is Barnabas Colder in a book called Raw Concrete, which I would heartly recommend. So stone faced classicism seem better to represent the timelessness of empire and the solid grandeur of world power status. But that's exactly what is being challenged. That is what Hungary defeats at the Empire Stadium in nineteen fifty three . And you can say that stone faced classicism is represented by Stanley Matthews by Wingers, byack Blpool winning the Epic Open in nineteen fifty three . And yeah, after this defeat to Hungary, as the old certainly fall away , and English football enters this period of experimentation and you've got Don Reviers deep line sent forward in Manchester, which you talked about . And you see, I think, this recognition that the mood of a time is about stripping away these inconvenient, inefficient patterns. So you see that in for instance, the destruction of Euston Station , which we now look on as this act of cultural vandalism, but it's very ornate, it's very grand. Now knock it down, build it in a very functional way out of concrete . We're knocking down Sanny Matthews and we're re building him out of raw concrete. That is exactly what Ramsay is doing . And so Elaine Harwood, another cultural critic , she writes brutalism as prioritising pragmatism, te amwork, and an emphasis on efficiency . So she's talking about the building style of that period. And obviously it's partly conditioned by economics that a lot of people building to do after the war, there's not much money. You have to make it simple, you have to make it cheap. Pragmatism, teamwork, emphasis and efficiency. That's Ramsey's football. That's exactly what he's doing. So there is this brutalist urge in English culture that is represented in the architecture and also Ram sey . Just a couple of points to pick up on before we go to break. As you say, brutal brutalism coming from the French way, it doesn't mean brutal as in they're over aggressive. It's more functional, would probably be the better expression of it in pragmatic football that he's going to do what it takes to win. I think it's really interesting. We talked in one of our Patreon editions about nineteen seventy being the end of something for Brazil. The nineteen fifty three cup final actually, you know, it's meant to be as great for cupfinal wingers. It's actually, as you point out, the end of Wingers really. I mean, it's kind of its last great hurrah before people start experiment with other ideas. And I can imagine I remember my say my grandma's home, architecture would have been very fussy, like sort of and everything was very ornate and obviously that my grandma wasn't particularly moving for the time sort of in the seventies her home was still reflected the valleys in her forties and fifties and it was fussy and ornate and such like and that the new era , the new post war era and as you say, new towns were being built in places like Harlee, aren't they to sort of house people being bombed out by the war? It's much more functional and much more sort of strategic, maybe. Yeah, and I think what we see from the moment he takes the job, Ramsey knows where he wants to end up. Now that's not to say he doesn't have new ideas on the way, but he has a blueprint. He knows where he's going and you can see between march nineteen sixty three and the summer of nineteen six ty six, this very slow incremental development towards his vision of a brutalist England. I mean, he would not have called it that because it's a French word and he hates foreigners. But that's what he was doing. He's a patient English empiricist. He's absolutely in that tradition. And so should we go into the break with some more words from his wife Victoria ? Let's stress. This is an indie very much of its time. He weighs everything in the balance, whether it's a tiddy little problem of my own or one of his own much bigger worries . Then he gives his considerate advice. Sometimes I still go my own way I think if only he'd be wrong just once , but he never is, you know , we'll see you after the break . So welcome back to it was what it was in second half of part one of our series on England winning the World Cup in nineteen sixty six, sixty years on and particularly on Sir Alfred Ramsey. The architect, one might say Jonathan, see what I did there of win. That is liquid podcasting. It just came to me in that moment. And Jonathan, he's got the England job . He is seen as this repressed , slightly difficult character. How did he get on with the players? How does he introduce himself to them? And what sort of overshows does he make to them? So his first game is the second leg of a preliminary match for the European Championship of nineteen sixty four . It's against France. They've drawn the first leg one . So that's a situation he's inheriting . And I think it's fair to say Ramsay lays down his markers pretty early. So before this first game, he gets a group of senior players and he says have any of you got any suggestions on how we can improve things ? And see your players weren't tending not to be asked their opinions. So they sort of glancing around awkwardly and Bobby Charlton feels very uneasy in this silence. He thinks like I've got to say something. Somebody's got to say something is just awful . So he says, you know, we always stay at the Hendon Hall Hotel, we train at the Bank of England ground in Rohampton here in South West London They're an hour apart. You know, maybe we could find a different hotel, or maybe we could train somewhere different . And Ramsay's reply , I've listen ed to what you have to say. I will leave it as it is. That's like all corporate consultations, aren't they? Please put your suggestions in here. Yeah, we've listened to what you said. We won't be doing anything . And there's o anotherccasion when Bobby Chonarlt, he sort of gets cajoled by the other players and can you ask please? They've got these sort of official suits. He's got heavy suits from Simpsons and Piccadilly, famous tailors. We've got this summer tour c ofentral Europe, but it's going to be really hot. And yeah, these suits are just too warm . And Bobby Charlott is sort of forced to go to I was like, Is there any chance we get a more lightweight suit? No No . So yeah, he's he's the boss. You can have your ideas but he's not going to listen to them. I mean I don't think this is a style of management that sustains you weren't long term, but at least you know where you are with him . He was blunt to the point of being rude, Bobby Charton said Bobby Charlotte has to be said. I think he quite likes that strong man leader. He's not he's not bothered by that. He knew the game, he knew players and most of all he understood what they needed and how they should be led . And I think that seems to be in the sixties , what the vast majority of players think by the seventies that attitude will have changed. I don't think it's untrue today though as well. I mean , I think you'll put up with a lot if someone's leading you in the right direction. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, obviously people like Rodney Marsh really chafe against a stuff. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and we should say the cultural backdrop of , you know, everything we said about ruthlism is true, but the swing in sixties is also happening and people free expression and free love and enjoy yourself, you know, these are not things that Alf Ramsay particularly stands for. Yeah, so this first game he's not actually in charge fully. So this is a final game where the FA selection committee picks the team. So it's a Ramsay still working with Ipiswich . You can see he's clearly got an influence because Johnny Haynes is left out. Johnny Haynes hugely gifted Fulham inside forward. He'd had a car crash a little bit earlier and I think there's a sense he hasn't quite got back to his best application. A bit of a course celebrate the sort of I, don't know, Jack Greelish prior to your twenty twenty? It's more than that though. Much more central thing. It's more like dropping gathering in it's not even that it' muchs a more central figure. It's like Steven Claren dropping Beckham. Yeah, yeah, good analogy. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks very much. Bobby Charton because Bobby Charlon believes in individualism and individual talent he can't believe that the Haynes has been left out and he sort of thinks because he's not fully fit. He'll be back as soon as he's fit . But Ramsey wants teammen. He doesn't really Johnny Haynes is a bit individualist . This game goes disastrously badly. So one spring at the Gold Keep gets kicked in the chest early on and that's maybe a little bit of an explanation, but it's not really an excuse English get beaten five to. So this great experiment with this new manager who's doing things his way , it starts with a five two defeat to France. And this is not the France of the eighties, nineties or now . This is a France that nobody really rates at all . So this is this is a problem . The one advantage is it means Ramsey has three years to prepare his team with no competitive fixtures. You have no qualifies because of the hosts of the World Cup and they don't have to play in the Euros in nineteen sixty four, which much smaller tournament anyway. But Ramsey can set things up as he wants. So okay, five weeks later they're they're playing Scotland and home championships. I mean, you think if he's got radical new tactical ideas, he would try and get them introduced quite early. Why does this not happen ? I mean, that's a really interesting question. And one of the problems with Ramsay is and one of the reasons why I think he is slightly underestimated is he never explains anything. He never there's no Ramsay autobiography. He's not giving press conferences with giving huge amounts of detail on his thought processes . I wonder whether he thinks he doesn't want to do too much too soon, that he has to get used to the players players have to get used to him before he starts introducing really different ways of playing. I wonder if he's maybe a little bit uncertain about his revolution because sixty two three had not gone at all well for Ipswich . You have a sense they'd been found out. So maybe he's lost a little bit of faith in that . Maybe he thought at the international level this wouldn't work . But anyway , England don't really play very well in this game as if there is a clamor for Hames to come back, he resists it and England lose two one and I think there is a bit of a sense of have we done the right thing? Is he really the right man for the job ? And then they repeat Wales for Neil, though. I mean, I don't know. I mean, losing Scotland was quite a big deal back in those days England Scotland matches were huge . They beat Wales four in October. I mean, yeah, it's significant and we would have thought you know Wales would have been considered quite a good team for England to beat, but yeah, does it feel like the corner's turning at that stage? I think you're probably saying we should just say of Scotland team. Look down the list of players. This is a really good team. Jim Baxter , John White Instant John, Dennis Law . It's a it's a side with a lot of great creative talent there. Dave McKay as well in that side . So yeah, it's a good Scotland team. Is Dave McCarth cyreative talent or is he? No exact but he 's yeah he's a good passer England and Scotland are quite well matched sides in this year so you know it's fair to say but you know still losing it's kind of a bit like a cup final play in Scotland so losing it is significant. Yeah, and it's it's at Wembley and losing at Wembley's never good. But yes, you 're right. By the time they beat in Wales for October, I think there is an acceptance Johnny Haydn isn't coming back that you know, we now know what Ramsey's way is and it is beginning to get results , but I think it's a trip to Brazil the following summer summer ninety four. So they do this rather than playing the Ears because they haven't qualified for years because they like to visit France . And this tournament called the Mundi Lito and it's specifically designed to help with local preparation . You have Brazil, you have Argentina, you have Portugal. Now we'll come back to this later on actually when we get to I think it's going to be in part three when we talk about the Argentina game at the World Cup but this really I think is the game where I think this is the trip where Ramsey's ideas begin to crystallize. But before that they have three further fixtures and these are away matches against Portugal, Ireland and the US . And this is again where you see Ramsay's management. So the night before they set off for Lisbon, Bobby Charlt and Jimmy Greed, Bobby Murray, Gordon, Banks, Ray Wilson, Georgie and Johnny Byrne , they look ed at a bit of steam, and they head into the centre of London from the Hendon Hall Hotel , and they wind up in a bar called the Beach Coma off Bayswater Road . And there it depends whether you believe Bobby Charton's version of Jimmy Grieves' version. They either have a couple of gentle pints or they get stuck into a rumbas cocktail called a zombie. I'm guessing which is Bobby Chelten's version and which is Jimmy Creed it's Bobby the one who has a couple of gentle pints in Jimmy Creed and getting stuck into the zombies . Exactly that . And at least five of them now again, accounts vary , but Bobby Choton, Bobby Moore and Jimmy Greaves are definitely all the accounts agree that they're they're three of the five or possibly more than five, they miss the curfew. The curfew is ten thirty PM and they get back late. So Bobby Charlton sneaks back at the hotel. He thinks he's got away with it . But on his bed he finds his passport . The dark blue passport in those days on the white pillow , as he puts it, shouting its reproach . I just think this is brilliant management for Ramsay. Yeah, he's saying I know exactly what you've done. He never mentions it. He never says anything to them until they get to Portugal . And at that he gets the guilty player together and he says look, if I could have got replacement in time, you would all have been sent home . And it's great. He's making those players feel grateful to him, but he's making them feel really small. He's making them know that this is not acceptable at all, but he's not costing himself their use. I mean, you would have been really stupid cutting your nose off the spite of your favorite not to covered it getting rid of that set of players before the World Cup. But equally I'm going to sound like an old man standard standards. He has to lay down a law. You cannot have footballers breaking curfews and going off to London drinking that he has to impose authority on these players. Yeah, and it's interesting Bobby Charlotton's one of those involved who we think of as a very sort of clean living. Anyways, they play these games and they go off to Brazil for Mondolito. And it's sort of disastrous in terms of results. I mean, I think everybody at this point is thinking this world cup is going to be a shambles . So they get there , they play Brazil the day after they arrive, they're clearly not ready used to go a bit jet lag. They get beaten five one , they draw one against Portugal, they lose one nill to Argentina. As I say, I think we'll go into that in more detail when we get to the Argentina game in sixty six because I think that is a very significant game . But what we can say now is Ramsey learns but against really high level sides he can't afford to play forty four which he knew he knows that from Episwich. I don't know why he's 's not applying lessons he's learned at Ippwitch but this convince him convinces him forty four almost doesn't matter how good your players are, it will not work into good opposition . And when he's criticised for going to the Mondolito or doing badly at the Mondolito, his argument is look, we could play Switzerland or Northern Ireland or we could score eight goals whatever. That's not how you win World Cups. That's irrelevant. What wins World Cups is beating good teams and we have to learn how to play against them I think actually that's a it seems obvious, but it's a lesson that even now I think we haven't fully absorbed as a football culture that you know England when a group game in qualifying or in a group game in the tour nament badly one nail every single oh now we've got to be thrashing this lot . It doesn't matter. Being beating a ran six two did not make England any likelier to win the World Cup in Quatar . What mattered was playing France and they lost . I mean, I think it was also innovative and I appreciate they're only going to Mandolito because they haven't qualified for the Euros, but as you say, it seem doesn' crtucial for getting his World Cup plans together and playing against South American opposition. I mean I think you know he probably wouldn't have learned as much by going to European championships and it reminds me of Dan we're going to do an addition on England's reboot, aren't we? But Dan Ashworth when he basically stops the England youth teams from playing in the victory shield against England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales because well, they just play the same academy players playing against each other. They want to go and play Portugal. They want to go and play Argentino and it's similar type thinking. This was done out of expediency, I guess, because they'd failed to qualify for a tournament, but it might prove you, know a, crucial stepping stone to winning a World Cup . Yeah , the press, unfortunately , I mean, I think maybe we're sort of we sort of at least recognise that now, even if in the moment of having to write a match report when England had been dreadful in Liza Wanda to Japan , we perhaps don't remember the purpose of that game . But I think particularly back then and I think even when I came into the profession twenty five years ago, does this sort of almost demand that it's your duty to entertain us. We are the press and we have turned up. These fans have turned up, they've paid all this money to be here and you produce that . But Ramsay doesn't care, he couldn't care less about the press thing. And you see he's slowly beginning to adapt. He's moving from that fourty four to a four hundred and thirty three. So he's pulling one of the wingers back. It's an asymmetric four thirty three . So the next question he has to answer who's going to play at centre back alongside Bobby Moore ? And throughout sixty four, most of ' sixty four, the preferred option is Morris Norman of Tottenham . But Morris Norman is beginning to play at full back for spurs and Ramsay thinks so I need I need a center back and I need a defensive center back because Bobby Moore Brilliant ball player that he is great reader of the game but he is he's not the most physical def ender, so I need somebody tall and combative who can do the dirty work for Bobby Moore . Now there is an obvious candidate we've already heard from him, but he's almost thirty. I think that's what's easy to forget about Jack Chalten. He's twenty nine . Nobody has thought until a couple of years earlier, that he's remotely near the right level. So Don Revvey has seen it. Don Review is I mean you may remember from the episodes we've done on Revi Jack Charlton thinks he's going to join Manchester United he's fallen out with Revi. Matt Busby is interested in him and he then feels that Busby sort of messed him around . And so he goes back to Revi and says, All right, I'll sign. And Revi says, Look, if you knuckle down, you will play for England. You're good enough to play for England. And this seems an absurd thing to say at the time time , but by the beginning of nineteen sixty five, Jack Charlton has emerged as the outstanding candidate. And so in april nineteen sixty five for the home championship matching in Scotland , Alf Ramsey turned to Drac Charlton for the first time . And I think this is astonishing in those days, particularly to pick a twenty nine year old a year before the World Cup begins for his debut . It's unthinkable to the press at the time. But even Jack Charlton's a little bit baffled by this decision, isn't he? Well and Bobby is as well. I think he's baffled. Do you think Bobby there might be a little bit of sibling rivalry going on there? So Bobby Charlton says I mean, he's talking about Jack at leeds. One minute Jack was a happy golfie character. The next he was a key player and a very hard, talented professional team. But he's bewildered by it. I mean, of course, it's the great story as well that the phone call goes through to Revi just before the Epic Op semi final between Leeds and Manchester United and Revi is told like Jack Darkland has been called up for England for this game against Scotland and Revi decides not to tell him till after the game. He doesn't want him distracted. Leeds win that game one near it's a pretty brutal game as games were united and Leeds tend to be at the time . Revi then tells Jack in the dress room afterwards and Jack's reaction, this is before he had a big falling out with Bobby, is to go straight into the opposing dressing room, having just wore an epic semi final and says, Bobby B,obby, I've been called up for England. Bobby's reaction is brilliant. Bobby goes, Well done, I fuck off . Yeah, it's possible Bobby might have said that even if even if Manny United did win, to be fair, but yeah to be fair , going into gate crash in the opposite dress room when you just knocked them out of the FAQs and fine is probably not good for, even if it is your brother. Yeah, but you're right, Jack, Jack himself is breredoth. So he goes to Ramsay and because he's Jack Charlton, he's very blunt. He says, Why on earth are you pick me? And Ramsay says I have a pattern of play in mind and I pick the best players to fit the pattern. I don't necessarily always pick the best players . And yeah, Jack is not anything like Bobby Miller, he doesn't have his elegance, he doesn't have confidence on the ball, but that's the point. Ramsey goes on, you're a good tackler and you're good in the air and I need those things and I know you don't trust Bobby Moore. So Jack's a straight man, he's a physical enforcer. So what does he mean by that? He means that he will cover for any mistake Bobby Moore might make that because he's such a cautious natural defender , I guess. Yeah, and I think also he'll be shouting him . That where Bobby was sort of casually wandering about looking at his options. Jack will be screaming at him as of course he famously does for the final goal in the six ty six World Cup final. You know, as Bobby Mohlaced that great ball into sort of left channel for Jeff Erst to run through and score the fourth, Jack screaming at him put it out, just put it out because Jack knows these are the final seconds. You put that ball farm off on the stand is not coming back in time to even take the throw . So yeah, it's about that partnership. It's about maximizing your strength and minimizing your weaknesses. How do we get Bobby Moon his passing ability and even encouraging his pass ing ability , how do we do that without compromising ourselves defensively? You bring in somebody like Jack Charlton. And do you know who the other player who makes his debut that day against Scotland is? I'm guessing it was Nobby Styles because it says that in the notes. It was Nobby Styles. But you see a team has now come together. I mean, this is the other great component of Alf Ramsay is that he understands and maybe in a way that English football hadn't understood , as you explained at the beginning, that it is different you need different components in the team and different types of players to make it balance. And that is quite a modern idea. Yeah, it is. And the thing is no selection committee would ever pick Nobby Siles because he's not an obviously great footballer. What he is, Bobby Charlton says, is a real professional, nothing airy fairy, nothing for show, just a player doing his job at the highest level . Ramsay says he's a player you could trust. And I think that idea of trust you can rely on these people. And of course by having Nobby Sales there and just for people who don't know Knobby Sales is a very hard working, very aggressive play who plays the I mean at times he plays a center back he's not tall for United when United finally go to back four but mostly he plays at the back of the midfield'.s He this little terrier . He can barely see he's got these huge thick glasses, has to wear conduct lens when he plays, but I mean, they're always dropping out. He's got a sort of clumsiness about him as well, hasn't he? He's got a sort of normal wisdom quality to Nobby Styles . Well, there's a famous picture of him with the World Cup, isn't there? He's dancing and holding a World Cup but it's yeah it's like a he's like a little comedy character and he was if I say team mascot that seems very derogatory but it's like he was a hard man enforcer but he clearly wasn't on the level with players like Cheltern and More in terms of technical skill . But by having him there at the back of midfield it, gives a bit of cover to Bobby Moore, but it also allows him to play in midfield with Bobby Charlton breaking forward with Alan Bull with Martin Peters. And without Nobby Siles, you cannot have players of that degree of creativity. He was also crucially very influential in bringing through to class ninety two, wasn't he? He was part of Alex Ferguson's setup and Gary Neville and David Beckham will all say how important Nobody styles was to them. Yeah, absolutely. And this game goes way well it's going to be against Scotland . At least it starts quite well . So Jack Charlon flicks on a corner for Bobby Charton to open the scoring. Jimmy Greaves then makes it too nill , but then injury hits and this is the time before substitutes England end up being reduced to nine men and Scotland come back to force of two to draw but people can see that while they've got eleven on the pitch England have been really , really good and you can see the beginnings , the foundations of the World Cup winning side. So you've got Gordon Banks and Goal and you got a backfall of George Cohen, Bobby Moore, Jack Charlton and Ray Wilson. He got Nobby Siles and Bobby Charlton reprised in their Manchester United combination in the centre of midfield . This is the beginning of the side that wins the World Cup. So with a year to go to the start of the World Cup. Let's leave it there and we'll come back next week with part two. 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