When England visit Belo Horizonte tomorrow, they will do so as a team humbled by their Brazil 2014 experiences. Two defeats in as many games have consigned them to certain elimination, and no-one in Roy Hodgson's squad would dare rule out Costa Rica inflicting a third.
It was all very different the last time the Three Lions touched down Minas Gerais. That team of 1950 arrived proud as a proverbial peacock, wondering not whether they would beat USA, but simply by how many. England saw themselves as the undisputed kings of football. If they hadn't won the World Cup yet, that was simply because they had declined to enter the first three editions. Brazil 1950 would bring official confirmation of their pre-eminence.
As for USA's team of amateurs and part-timers, they merely represented the smallest and most insignificant hurdle to be negotiated en route. “Their players had day jobs," explained Tiago Costa, a Belo Horizonte historian. "Joe Gaetjens, for example, worked in a restaurant [cleaning dishes]. The goalkeeper helped his family in a funeral parlour." As England's Daily Express newspaper wrote in the build-up to the game: "It would be fair to give them three goals of a start."
The Americans, in truth, felt the same. Frank Borghi, that aforementioned goalkeeper-slash-undertaker, later admitted that his ambition ahead of facing the English had been "to hold them to scoring five or six.” Even the Stars and Stripes' Scottish coach, Bill Jeffrey, declared that his players had "no chance" and were "sheep ready to be slaughtered".
There was ample justification for believing this to be the case. The US had lost their last seven matches, while England went into the game on the back of a 10-0 thrashing of Portugal and a 4-0 victory over the holders, Italy. A mismatch appeared inevitable, and the 13,000 fans who packed out the newly constructed Estadio Idependencia did so expecting to see an English exhibition. As it was, they were treated to one of greatest upsets in World Cup history.
0 comments:
Post a Comment