#1 World Cup 1966 in England (Part 1, Group A)
Wingless Wonders, The Rise of Eusébio, Disappointing European Powerhouses, furious South Americans and a historic World Cup Debut
When you think about the 1966 World Cup, the first thing that undeniably will fill your head is the “Wembley-Goal” which to the day is still origin of one of the most popular occuring debates between German and English people. No one would think about a Hungarian winger or an Argentinian playmaker or a compact Uruguay side that caused the eventual winners a lot of headaches. Nobody talks about how the Brazilian reign seemed to end here and why France and Italy crumbled under their expectations.
In my summaries of the single teams it is not my aim to make high-standard tactical analysis but rather to mention a few interesting aspects of their game and their key players. For the knock-out games, I want to go more into detail to see how the systems clash and what might have been decisive factors in these games. So, to make it clear, everything mentioned in the group stage part is ONLY about the group stage.
As I mentioned in my pinned article, it is quite difficult to figure out some things correctly with the old video material as you sometimes can’t tell apart individual players or must deal with camera angles that are not ideal, which is why there might be that much variance in perception of what has happened but I’ll do my best to paint a picture of patterns for all the teams.
Before I start getting stuck into the groups as aforementioned in my introduction to this project, I want to give some additional information regarding the circumstances around the tournament.
The tournament format was quite simple with four groups of four. Out of the 16 particpating teams, ten (including the hosts) came from Europe, four from South America and one from North America, while Africa, Asia and Oceania only got one place between them. English FIFA-Boss Sir Stanley Rous, who was also in charge of organizing this World Cup including the starting places for the different confederations, earned a lot of criticism for this distribution because of his favourism to the European nations. In fact, all Asian, African and Oceanian nations boycotted the Qualification stage with the exception of Australia and North Korea with the latter of the two easily winning their two-legged play-off encounter.
Furthermore, this tournament set landmarks as it was the first one that employed obligatory doping controls and the first that forbid short-term nationality naturalization which often has been the case pretty often in further tournaments (most prominently with Alfredo di Stéfano and Ferenc Puskás in the Spain squad in 1962). Substitutions were still not allowed, although they have already been very common in most competitions. (most of this information comes from “1966. Süddeutsche Zeitung WM-Bibliothek”, if you speak German)
Group A
Group A already offered a nice mix of teams. The hosts had to compete with historical arch-rival France, two-times World Cup winner Uruguay and the Mexicans, who always seemed a bit unlucky in their World Cup performances until now, as they never reached the second round until this point. To be fair, the last draw in 1962 gave them Brazil, star-studded Spain and eventual runners-up Czechoslovakia in the group stage where they didn’t seem that far off but came last nonetheless.
If you search for England’s 1966 World Cup winning team on the internet, you will encounter a healthy amount of analysis about how they played, what their key aspects within their system(s) are and a bit of additional information.
Interestingly, the observations seem to differ quite a bit and the famous description “Wingless Wonders” doesn’t exactly fit their playing style. In the group stage they always played an out-and-out-winger on the right (who occasionally switched sides) and often attacked from wide areas with flexible rotations from the full-backs (overlaps), the midfielders or strikers who liked to drift wide.
The system:
After starting with sort of a 4–2–2–2 with Bobby Charlton coming off the left, the system morphed into more of a flexible and mostly asymmetrical diamond with Martin Peters coming in from the second game on, giving the playmaker more creative freedom. Charlton still would drift wide a lot, especially on the left. But he could get involved in more areas of the pitch without the concern of leaving vacuums elsewhere. He could come deep and burst forward with the ball, receive in the number 10 area, or cut inside (and sometimes cross) from wide positions. Peters would also clean up a bit behind him while he was also getting involved a lot in the left half-space. That led England to seemingly creating more and making more use of the playmaker’s individual brilliance.
It’s not wrong to claim that England were predominantly a ‘crossing-side’, but they also dominated the wide areas brilliantly. Thus, it does not do them justice to reduce them to that. The attacks especially came alive via wing rotations and overloads. As it was common to have a man-marking approach in the defensive line, The Three Lions were often able to create numerical advantages in wide areas which led to one player having enough time to pick a moment for a cross (admittedly, often with little hope for success as the box was packed with defenders).
Even the two center-backs looked for opportunities to push up very high and to even support on the wing to gain numerical superiorities and to create structures making it hard for the defending (man-oriented) team to pressurize the ball-carrier. Most notably, you could even see Bobby Moore sometimes shrugging off team-mates off the ball to take things into his own hands, but not in a selfish way. It was his way to integrate his strategic abilities as he knew which move he wanted to see and he was respected enough to receive this kind of freedom.
For those overloads to happen, there were always attacking players drifting wide during build-up, offering themselves for a wall-pass, especially the strikers. Another possibility if there was a lot of space on one flank was that the ‘target player’ in that wide position dropped a bit deeper to receive open to the field to make a further progressive action. Bobby Charlton was the main person doing that though, even after Peters was brought into the squad. In these situations, he could use his passing range and ball-carrying ability to create danger. He was also someone who could spot gaps in the defensive line and carve it open with a slicing pass (as before the 2:0 against Mexico).
Other players would then arrive late in the final third for lay-offs or to pull defenders away from the ball carrier. Especially the full-backs overlapped consistently, and teams did not know how to deal with that as the defending full-back was already occupied. In fact, the England players were tremendous at creating space for each other because they understood how and when to pull opponents effectively away.
Defensively, the team was sound as well. It stood out to me subjectively that the pressing intensity was enormous for that era. During their attacking press you would see three players waiting for the opponent to build up short. The sheer intensity was often enough to force players into long balls that would be intercepted more often than not.
Something that seemed to work at times was to get behind England’s midfield. At that point you would often see attacking players making decisions too slowly though. Therefore, one of the highly anticipative and aggressive center-backs could step in or the midfielders would press backwards relentlessly when players on the ball took too long for their decisions. That confirms reports that say that this team was prepared very well physically ahead of the World Cup. A lot of recoveries were in the number 6 area.
Summary:
The high intensity, overloading wing areas and the high individual quality probably were the main reasons why England dominated this group and why they let nothing happen defensively. Their opponents were forced into a rather reactive approach which also made it harder to take initiative with the ball. While dominating the pitch and being able to play a lot in the opponents’ half, they worked themselves a lot from cross to cross during phases where they struggled to break a defence down. It might be interesting to see what more talented teams are able to do to the English defence.
Six of the twelve players that featured on the field in the group stages played for Uruguayan giants CA Peñarol who were one of the greatest clubs in the world of the 1960s. In that time the club has won the league seven times, the Copa Libertadores three times and twice the Clubs’ World Championship.
With that spine you surely could expect something from The Celeste during the peak of these players regularly featuring for this side that just recently has won the Copa Libertadores in this year’s final against CA River Plate and therefore, the players were likely to gel well in the national team. Three further players played for Peñarol’s big rival Nacional.
In terms of World Cups, there are certain aspects historically and culturally associated with Uruguayan football: defensive toughness, individual brilliance in attack and here and there sheer shithousery with some bits of individual brilliance. If you expected to see that in this tournament, you wouldn’t have been disappointed. Moreover, they had a clear tactical structure that differed significantly from the other teams in this competition.
It doesn’t come that surprising that the Uru’s finished the group besides their 2:1 victory against the French with two goalless draws and within those they especially did an exceptionally good job in denying the hosts in the opener.
Uruguay played with a clear sweeper behind their defensive line throughout the tournament with Horacio Troche who noticeably orchestrated the defence a lot. That was necessary because the Celeste often defended very deep with a back five. He allowed the markers Manicera and Goncalves to defend more aggressively and man-oriented and to then contribute to the build-up phase. They were not afraid to carry the ball over a big distance, to arrive late in the opponents’ half and to pick a cross or shot from distance. Both also covered for the roaming Cortés and Viera.
The first of them was a creative playmaker who sometimes had a very central role in this team but could also drift wide and/or join the attack and brought some dirtiness with him as you could see him at times kicking after players when a challenge was already over. Nacional’s Milton Viera (the coach’s son) was a more balancing player who played on the half-right. He usually played simple passes, helped Ubiña in defence and sometimes attacked down the (half-)right. The ‘wing-backs’ generally stayed rather deep and tried to find the forward players in space (either down the line or diagonally into the centre while the ball-near forward would pull a defender outside). They also swept up loose balls on the flanks or lay-offs by the strikers and were rather secondary options to keep attacks alive.
Rocha and Cortés supplied technical class to the midfield and were also intelligent in their decisions. Especially Rocha as the main creator and individually the best player in the squad would turn up very often in the box but also deeper or on the left flank at times, combining when necessary. While being able to hold on to the ball, he was also very smart and creative, yet also a (too much of a) high-volume shooter.
Of the two forwards, Domingo Pérez normally played more out wide, drifting flexibly out to both flanks (each game he had a preferred side) and looking for 1v1 situations. During these, it sometimes was problematic that he had no teammate to connect with due to being isolated which is why some counterattacks weren’t dangerous in the end. Otherwise, the strikers’ movement matched very well, and you could regularly see diagonal dummy runs by the ball-near player towards the near post before a cross from deep to open up the second striker or Rocha who also liked to join the area.
The weakness of this system was that it allowed the other teams occasionally high up the flanks without any real pressure. In every game you could sense a certain level of danger the Uruguayans seemed to expose themselves to. The opponents were permitted a decent number of crosses which were reliably headed away by the defence around Troche who himself was a rather short player. Moreover, he did a very good job sweeping up balls into space. Manicera and Goncalves proved to be strong in 1on1-situations (whereas the back line was exposed if those duels happened to be lost) and Mazurkiewicz as a formidable shot-stopper and cross-collector. Him and Gordon Banks definitely shared the place as best goalies of the tournament. Those individual strengths led to a solid defensive performance nonetheless that only led to one goal conceded in three games which was from the penalty spot against France.
What made the defensive mechanisms more successful than those of other teams was that the markers didn’t let themselves fooled by diagonal runs in behind. The team could drop very deep collectively and if not, the duties were clear. The stoppers could trust Troche to swep everything up that came behind and didn’t let themselves dragged too far out of position. It certainly helped as well to have additional full-backs/ wing-backs.
Summary:
A clever, skilled and at times dirty-ish team makes the knockouts and will face West Germany. Yes, the style might be a bit pragmatic, but Rocha, Cortés, Pérez and even the half-backs had their creative freedom and were able to integrate their strengths. In the quarters they might still be slight underdogs, but definitely competitive.
Yet again, Mexico fulfilled what would become their own cliché over all the years in World Cup history. We would often see a Mexican side that plays an entertaining brand of football, a team that seems to have the quality to get far in the tournament but in the end, they tragically fail while attracting sympathies all over the world.
As a nice sidenote: History was written in the last group game against Uruguay as goalkeeper Antonio Carbajal became the first player to appear in five World Cup tournaments.That is every tournament since WWII. Despite their exit, the legendary goalkeeper received a warm-hearted farewell after the game. In the first two games he was benched by Ignacio Calderón.
This happened here as well even though they played very defensively against England with five to six players defending the last line. Otherwise, they seemed to have an asymmetrical diamond in midfield, not that dissimilar to England. Isidoro Díaz and Salvador Reyes, “survivors” of the 1962 team, were still key figures in midfield.
Most of the time, Mexico played in an asymmetric 4–1–3–2/4–3–3. While Mercado provided midfield protection and was more of an orchestrator, Isidoro Díaz a hybrid between a number 8 and the right midfielder as he drifted wide regularly as ‘El Tri’ didn’t have an actual winger on the right side. With his ball-carrying abilities and good sense for tempo-altering combinations he was the main ball-progressor in the team. When he decided to speed things up, he would combine very well with Salvador Reyes, who was the central figure to create in the final third. On the left-hand side though, they had a speedy player in Aarón Padilla who attacked space very directly and most of the time got involved in the final third.
Generally, the Mexicans built up play with composure and short passes before they progressed further up the pitch. The center backs and the full-backs who tended to stay deep were composed on the ball and tried to make rational decisions. That being said, you also could see long balls from the back, but they were strategically picked when someone, usually Borja made a run behind the defence and chances were good to collect a second ball. Although the Uruguayans were good at the back and put in some clever work of shithousery (time wasting), it is fair to say that the Mexicans might have deserved more out of these three games, not to say Uruguay didn’t deserve qualification either.
Against England though, they seemed to have too much respect. In that game one of the strikers was sacrificed for the experienced José del Muro who played a libero role to sweep up everything that came behind the defence and Jáuregui — apparently normally a left back — replaced Mercado as a defensive midfielder, maybe to track runs between the fullback and one of the stoppers. The only attacking incentive were long balls to Borja with the hope of him flicking them on to the pacey Padilla.
Summary:
With a bit of luck, the games against Uruguay and France (which they drew) could have panned out differently. While a goal from Borja against France was ruled out because of an offside position, it was the woodwork and the sensational Uruguayan goalkeeper Mazurkiewicz that denied a Mexican victory in the last game. Things could have panned out differently, however Uruguay’s quality should not be undermined.
After the era with the likes of Raymond Kopa and Just Fontaine in the 50s, France have struggled to find the way back to the top of European and World football. Yet, it was especially this tournament that would be the initiator of dark times in French football.
Coach Henri Guérin was appointed in 1962 after the team failed to qualify for the World Cup in Chile but only started to become responsible for the team selections in 1964. He seems to have been unpopular in public and, as has been stated by players after the tournament, there was also discontent within the team, mainly due to defensive playing style despite beating some reputable opponents over his first four years in charge.
After watching three group stage matches, what springs to mind is, that the approaches in the games might have been inconsistent. Here’s their line-ups for all the games:
The game against Mexico was already a showpiece of what went wrong for Les Bleus in England. The French defended in quite a reactive way, using the usual left-back Budzynski as a sweeper behind three other very man-oriented defenders (probably inspired by Catenaccio as Burgnich played a similar role for Inter) who had problems picking up diagonal runs in behind as they tended to be dragged too far, thus always being two steps behind as crossing each other’s pathways was just a very uneconomic way of defending. Moreover, there were problems with second balls and if they managed to pick them up, you would see very hasty attacking attempts by the French that often ended with long quick balls into nowhere or dribbles with head down into opponents without any strategic prowess.
Just sometimes you could see the quality of ball-carriers like Bonnel, Hausser or Combin and there were some spells in the game where they initiated quick combinations moving forward and could force the Mexicans into a lower block, but those situations were rare and rather spontaneous.
That France’s goal was scored after Mexican right-back Chaires over-committed in a dribble and Hausser did a superb individualistic job at running at the defence before scoring was a bit symptomatic for this individually brilliant but atrociously organized team which carried on to be this way in the other matches, but in different ways.
It was hard to recognise any functional patterns in attack. It seemed like the one or another great individual that they had, had to make very spontaneous decisions on the ball. For the number of athletic, pacey, dynamic players they had in midfield and attack, it felt like they were lacking press resistance and a creative engine in midfield as England had with Charlton or Uruguay with Rocha. The only way to progress the ball were dynamic dribbles. Bonnel and Hausser were good at recognizing dynamics and at bursting into open spaces with the ball.
It went a bit better offensively against Uruguay with the dynamic wingers sometimes being able to burst forward as when they received the penalty that gave them the lead after a one-two on the right. Mazurkiewicz was also tested heavily at times after set-pieces and long-shots but the lack of ball control in midfield was too evident.
Heading into the last game against England after Uruguay already drew with Mexico, it was clear that France had to beat England by three goals which seemed very unlikely to say the least. Although they could compete quite well, there was no realistic chance of beating the hosts and after injuries to two players and conceding two goals, it was over and the last World Cup match for the French until 1978.
Summary:
From today’s point of view, it might surprise people that France had quite a long spell without a top national side. This team is a big contender for being the worst in this whole tournament, which — in all fairness — might be due to poor coaching. The team seemed well-prepared physically, but had no cohesion, no tactical identity and faced opponents to whom that does not apply.
Thank you, if you made it this far. The first part is a bit longer due to the introduction, but I’m generally open to develop my approach as everything goes. For feedback, don’t hesitate to message me on twitter @Julianfutbl and I hope to see you for Group B.
