June 29, 1950, 70 years ago: The U.S. soccer team played England in a game everybody assumed England would win.
In the words of the immortal Felix Unger (as played by Tony Randall on
The Odd Couple), "You should never assume. Because when you assume, you make an ASS of U and ME!"
The U.S. team played in the 1st World Cup, in Uruguay in 1930. In their Group Stage, they beat Belgium and Paraguay, each by a 3-0 score. This enabled them to top their Group and advance to the Semifinals. Then reality set in, and they got clobbered 6-1 by Argentina, who then lost the Final to the hosts, 4-2.
The 1934 World Cup in Italy was a simple knockout tournament of 16 teams, and the U.S. lost in the 1st round, to the hosts, 7-1. The U.S. withdrew from qualifying for the 1938 tournament.
The 4 "Home Nations" of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland -- England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland -- did not compete in these 1st 3 World Cups. There was a dispute between the U.K. and the governing body of world soccer, FIFA, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association.
Only 13 teams competed in 1930, and France, Belgium, Yugoslavia and Romania were the only representatives from Europe. Travel from Europe to South America was prohibitively expensive. So it wasn't surprising that no "nation" in the U.K. played in it.
In 1934, 12 of the 16 teams were from Europe, but no nation in the British Isles competed. This was also true for 1938, when it was supposed to be 16, but Austria withdraw after their "Anschluss" with Nazi Germany, making it 15. Ireland, then known as "the Irish Free State," entered qualifying, but failed to make it.
Then came World War II. The World Cups of 1942 and 1946 were canceled. Since Brazil was supposed to host in 1942, they got the 1st postwar World Cup, in 1950. And as the centerpiece, in what was then their capital city, Rio de Janeiro (the capital was moved to Brasilia in 1960), they built the most famous soccer stadium in the Western Hemisphere, the Estadio Maracanã. With standing room, it could hold nearly 200,000 people.
Only 13 teams entered this tournament. Finally, though, there was representation from Britain, the country that had invented the sport, giving the tournament more legitimacy than ever. It had not helped FIFA that, after the 1934 World Cup, winners Italy went to London and lost to an England team that then called themselves "World Champions."
The U.K. "football" authorities collectively decided that the 1949-50 Home Nations Tournament would send its top 2 teams. England won, and sent its team. Scotland finished 2nd, but the Scottish Football Association had decided only to go if they'd won, and so they withdrew, and only England went.
And what a team it was. From 1949 and 1950 Football League Champions Portsmouth: Midfielder Jimmy Dickinson. From 1950 FA Cup winners Arsenal: Defender Laurie Scott. From 1949 FA Cup winners Wolverhampton Wanderers, who would go on to win 3 League titles in the 1950s: Defender Billy Wright (the national team's Captain), forward Jimmy Mullen, and goalkeeper Bert Williams.
From 1948 League Champions Manchester United: Defender John Aston and midfielder Henry Cockburn. From 1947 League Champions Liverpool: Midfielder Laurie Hughes. From the Tottenham Hotspur team that would win the 1951 League title: Goalkeeper Ted Ditchburn, defender Alf Ramsey (who would manage England to the 1966 World Cup win), and midfielders Bill Nicholson (who would manage Tottenham to the 1961 League and Cup "Double") and Eddie Baily. From the Newcastle United team that would win 3 of the next 5 FA Cups: Forward Jackie Milburn.
From the Blackpool team that would win the 1953 FA Cup, a pair of geniuses: Right wing Stanley Matthews (known as the Wizard of the Dribble) and forward Stan Mortensen. From Preston North End: Forward Tom Finney. From Middlesbrough: Forward Wilf Mannion.
It speaks to the talent of this team that 6 of the players -- Wright, Nicholson, Milburn, Matthews, Finney and Mannion -- would have statues dedicated outside their teams' stadiums.
Sure, the host nation, Brazil, was the prohibitive favorite. But England were going to win the tournament. After all, England invented the sport.
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The U.S. team was taken from various clubs in the top league in the country at the time, the American Soccer League. There was nothing like a "first division" as in European or South American countries. And none of them was still in college, although they weren't over the hill: One player was 38, the rest were between the ages of 21 and 31, coming from these ASL clubs:
* St. Louis Simpkins-Ford, sponsored by Joe Simpkins' Ford car dealership: Frank Borghi, 25, goalkeeper; Robert Annis, 21, defender; Charlie Colombo, 29, midfielder; Gino Pariani, 22, forward; and Frank "Peewee" Wallace, 27, forward.
Frank Borghi
* St. Louis McMahon: Harry Keough, 22, defender. Each of these 6 men was a St. Louis native. Borghi, Colombo and Pariani came from the "Dago Hill" neighborhood on the North Side, which also produced baseball legends Yogi Berra and Joe Garagiola. A line Berra would later use about the 1969 Mets, on whom he coached, would apply to this U.S. team: "We were overwhelming underdogs."
* Philadelphia Nationals: Walter Bahr, 23; and Ed McIlvenny, 25; both midfielders. Bahr was a Philadelphia naive, born on the exact same day as the great Ferenc Puskás, whose Hungary team did not enter the tournament but would star in it 4 years later. But McIlvenny was born and raised in Scotland, and had played in his homeland for Greenock Morton and in Wales for Wrexham. He came to America because labor paid more than "football" back home, and since he had begun the process of attaining American citizenship, he qualified for the U.S. team under the rules of the time.
Walter Bahr
* Brookhattan, which, as its name suggests, played home games in both Brooklyn and Manhattan: Joe Gaetjens, 26, forward. A native of Haiti, he came to New York in 1947, and led the ASL in scoring in the 1949-50 season. Then, as now, there was a notable Haitian community in Brooklyn.
Joe Gaetjens
* Brooklyn Hispano: Joe Maca, 29, defender. A native of Belgium, he played in his country's 1st division and for its Army team during World War II, then came to America. Perhaps someone thought "Maca" was a Hispanic-sounding name, and recommended Hispano to him and vice versa.
* Ponta Delgada: Frank Moniz, 38; John Souza, 29; and Ed Souza, 28; all forwards. Ponta Delgada was named for a town in the Azores, islands off the west coast of Portugal, and all 3 players were from Fall River, Massachusetts, a small city south of Boston with a large Portuguese community -- large enough that no close relationship between the 2 Souzas could be established. Because of "blue laws" in Masschusetts, Ponta Delgada played their Sunday games in Tiverton, Rhode Island, in a stadium whose northern boundary was literally the State Line.
* Pittsburgh Harmarville: Nicholas DiOrio, 29; and Robert Craddock, 26; both forwards.
* Chicago Vikings, so named for their largely Scandinavian ethnic makeup: Geoff Coombes, 31, defender.
* Chicago Eagles, so named for their largely Polish ethnic makeup: Adam Wolanin, 30, forward.
* Chicago Slovak, yet another mostly ethnic team: Gino Gardassanich, 27, goalkeeper.
This was probably the most talented national team the U.S. had ever had -- and would remain so for a long time to come. But nobody thought they would do much in the World Cup. The odds on them winning the tournament were given as 500-1.
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June 24: Brazil opens the tournament, and the
Maracanã, with a 4-0 win over Mexico.
June 25: England starts by beating Chile 2-0 at the Maracanã. Mortensen scores in the 39th minute, Mannion in the 51st. The U.S. gets off to a good start against Spain, with Pariani scoring in the 17th. But the defense collapses late, allowing 3 goals between the 81st and 89th minutes, and Spain win, 3-1. Elsewhere, Yugoslavia beats Switzerland 3-0, and Sweden beats Italy 3-2. As amazing as this game was, this would not be the biggest upset of the tournament, or even the 2nd-biggest.
June 28: Brazil can only manage a 2-2 tie with Switzerland, blowing 1-0 and 2-1 leads, with Switzerland equalizing in the 88th minute. Yugoslavia beats Mexico 4-1.
June 29: Spain beats Chile 2-0. Sweden and Paraguay play to a 2-2 draw. And then there was the game between England and the U.S. Surely, this would be an England win, and nobody would talk about it forever.
Indeed, in America, hardly anybody talked about it for decades.
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This is what the world was like on June 29, 1950, 70 years ago today:
American soccer, as I pointed out, was barely noticeable. What would later be called Major League Baseball was no further south than Washington and Cincinnati, and no further west than St. Louis. And yet, there were teams in both the American League and the National League in Boston, Philadelphia and St. Louis. Within 5 years, each of those cities would be down to 1 team.
The National Basketball Association had just completed its 4th season, its 2nd straight with the Champions being the Minneapolis Lakers, but their only Western outpost had just folded. It was known as the Denver Nuggets. That name would be used again. The next season would see the NBA following MLB and the National Football League in racially integrating.
The NFL had stretched to Los Angeles and San Francisco, but no further into the South than had baseball. And the National Hockey League had only 6 teams: The Montreal Canadiens, the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Boston Bruins, the New York Rangers, the Detroit Red Wings and the Chicago Blackhawks.
In addition to the Lakers, the Red Wings, the Yankees and the Los Angeles Rams were defending Champions. Ezzard Charles was the Heavyweight Champion of the World. There was, as yet, no European Cup (the tournament now called the UEFA Champions League). Television and sports was still a new combination, as radio, newspapers, and movie theaters' "newsreels" still dominated the way people found out what was going on in "the world of sports."
The defining soccer players of my childhood? Pelé was a 9-year-old boy named Edson Arantes do Nascimento, nicknamed "Dico" by his family, and using radio and newspapers to keep tabs on the tournament, especially the Brazil team, in his hometown of Três Corações (Three Hearts) in the State of Minas Gerias.
Eusébio was 8, and living in Mozambique in Africa, then still a colony of Portugal. Sandra Mazzola was 7, and watching his father, Valentino Mazzola, star for Torino in Turin, Italy. Gianni Rivera was 6. Franz Beckenbauer was 4. Giorgio Chinaglia and Johan Cruijff were 3.
Arséne Wenger -- not a defining player of my childhood, but a defining figure in the game in my adulthood -- was 8 months old. And Charlie George, Kevin Keegan, Kenny Dalglish, Doctor Sócrates, Mario Kempes, Michel Platini, Liam Brady, Paolo Rossi and Diego Maradona hadn't been born yet.
The World Cup has since been held twice each in Mexico and Germany; and once each in Switzerland, Sweden, Chile, England, Argentina, Spain, Italy, America, France, Japan, Korea, South Africa, Brazil again, and Russia.
And the Olympic Games have since been held in America 5 times; 3 times each in Japan, Italy and Canada; twice each in Austria, France, Norway, Australia, Russia and Korea; and once each in Finland, Mexico, Germany, Bosnia, Spain, Greece, China, Britain and Brazil.
America had 48 States. There were 22 Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. There had not been a Civil Rights Act since 1886. There was Social Security, but no Medicare,
Medicaid, Environmental Protection Agency, OSHA or Title IX. The ideas that abortion, same-sex marriage and recreational marijuana use would one day be legal were absurd -- but so was the idea that corporations were "people" and entitled to the rights thereof.
The President of the United States was Harry Truman. Herbert Hoover, and the widows of Calvin Coolidge and Woodrow Wilson, were still alive. Dwight D. Eisenhower was the President of Columbia University. John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford were in the U.S. House of Representatives. Lyndon Johnson was in the U.S. Senate. Jimmy Carter was in the U.S. Navy. Ronald Reagan was an actor. George H.W. Bush was in the oil business.
Joe Biden was 7 years old. Donald Trump was 4 years old (and hasn't gotten any more mature), while George W. Bush and Bill Clinton would soon reach that birthday. Barack Obama and Mike Pence weren't born yet.
The Governor of the State of New York was Thomas E. Dewey. The Mayor of the City of New York was William O'Dwyer. The Governor of the State of New Jersey was Alfred E. Driscoll. The current holders of those offices -- Andrew Cuomo, Bill de Blasio and Phil Murphy -- weren't born yet.
There were still surviving veterans of the American Civil War, the U.S. Army's wars with the Native Americans, the Franco-Prussian War, and the Zulu War. There were still a living person who had witnessed the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, another who had witnessed the Wright Brothers' 1st flight, and a living former policeman who had worked on the Jack the Ripper case.
The holder of the Nobel Peace Prize was John Boyd Orr, who had worked with the nascent United Nations to increase the world's food supply and get it to starving people. This is one of several examples of the Prize going to someone whose efforts were humanitarian and deserved some kind of recognition, but were not really related to the stopping or the prevention of a war.
The Prime Minister of Britain was Clement Attlee, and of Canada Louis St. Laurent. The head of state for both was King George VI of Britain. The Pope was Pius XII. The current Pope, Francis, was then Jorge Mario Bergoglio, 13 years old, and following the World Cup, though his native Argentina had not qualified for it. There
have since been 13 Presidents of the United States, 2 British Monarchs, and 7 Popes.
Major novels of 1950 included
Across the River and Into the Trees by Ernest Hemingway,
Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith,
A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute,
The Town and the City, whose author is listed on the cover as John Kerouac, although it's the debut novel of Jack Kerouac;
Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake,
Mr. Midshipman Hornblower by C.S. Forester,
Conan the Conqueror by Robert E. Howard,
The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury, and
Pebble in the Sky, the debut novel of science fiction writer Isaac Asimov.
The year would also see the publication of Asimov's collection of short stories
I, Robot; Damon Knight's collection of short stories
To Serve Man, the title story later forming one of the most renowned episodes of the anthology TV series
The Twilight Zone; and Beverly Cleary's children's story
Henry Huggins -- not to be confused with Henry Higgins, the nasty dialectician created for the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw, who died that year.
Later in the year, C.S. Lewis will begin his
Chronicles of Narnia, by publishing
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. His close friend J.R.R. Tolkein had published
The Hobbit, but not yet any of his
Lord of the Rings trilogy.
J.D. Salinger was still working on
The Catcher in the Rye. Ian Fleming was working for a newspaper syndicate, and had not yet published any books. Vladimir Nabokov had, but they hadn't succeeded, so he was teaching at Cornell University. Truman Capote had published novels, but not yet the one for which he would be best known. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn had been sent to what the Soviet government called a "special camp" in Kazakhstan. Robert Ludlum was producing Broadway plays, and hadn't yet published a novel.
Joseph Heller was a Fulbright Scholar at Oxford University. John Updike and Philip Roth had both just graduated from high school. Thomas Harris was 9 years old, Anne Rice and John Irving were 8, Winston Groom 7, Alice Walker 6, James Patterson and Tom Clancy 3, Stephen King 2, George R.R. Martin a year and a half, and Douglas Adams, Stieg Larsson, Helen Fielding, Suzanne Collins, J.K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer weren't born yet.
So no one yet heard of Dean Moriarty, Holden Caulfield, James Bond, Dolores "Lolita" Haze, Holly Golightly, Yuri Zhivago, Jason Bourne, John Yossarian, Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, Alexander Portnoy, Hannibal Lecter, Lestat de Lioncourt, T.S. Garp, Forrest Gump, Celie Harris, Alex Cross, Jack Ryan, Jack Torrance, Jon Snow, Arthur Dent, Lisbeth Salander, Bridget Jones, Katniss Everdeen, Harry Potter or Bella Swan.
Major films of the Summer of 1950 included
The Asphalt Jungle (which helped launch Marilyn Monroe to fame), the best-known film version of Robert Louis Stevenson's pirate epic
Treasure Island, the Western
Winchester '73, the film version of the Broadway musical
Annie Get Your Gun,
Father of the Bride, the baseball biopic
The Jackie Robinson Story (with Jackie playing himself), Elia Kazan's epidemic film
Panic in the Streets, the original film noir versions of
Night and the City and
No Way Out, the science fiction film
Destination Moon, and the film noir tribute to old Hollywood
Sunset Boulevard.
Kirk Alyn once again played the Man of Steel in
Atom Man vs. Superman. Robert Lowry had recently played Batman in a serial. Gene Roddenberry was a Los Angeles policeman. Sydney Newman was helping to establish British episodic television, and hadn't yet created
The Avengers (the 1960s spy series, not the superhero team) or
Doctor Who. George Lucas was 6 years old, Steven Spielberg 3.
Lucille Ball and her husband Desi Arnaz had just founded Desilu Productions. While they hadn't yet begun filming
I Love Lucy, this did make Lucy one of the earliest women, and Desi one of the earliest Hispanics (if a very light-skinned one), to have any creative control in Hollywood. American TV was dominated by anthology shows like
Kraft Television Theatre and
The Philco Television Playhouse; game shows like the brand-new
What's My Line? and
Beat the Clock; and variety shows like
Your Show of Shows hosted by Sid Caesar, and
Toast of the Town, which would later be renamed for its host:
The Ed Sullivan Show.
The Hazel Scott Show made its debut on the DuMont Television Network, making singer Scott the 1st African-American woman to host a TV program.
Among the writers of
Your Show of Shows were Neil Simon, his brother Danny Simon, Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Selma Diamond, Larry Gelbart and Woody Allen. Neil would base Felix Unger of
The Odd Couple on Danny. Carl would create
The Dick Van Dyke Show, basing his character Alan Brady on Sid, Dick's character Rob Petrie on himself, Rob's wife Laura on his own wife Estelle, their son Ritchie on real-life son Rob, Buddy Sorrell on Mel, and Sally Rogers on Selma. Mel would go on to create Get Smart with Buck Henry.
No one had yet heard of Joe Friday, Ralph Kramden, Marshal Matt Dillon, Captain Kangaroo, Paladin, Beaver Cleaver, Ben Cartwright, or any of the legendary TV characters of the 1950s onward.
The Number 1 song in America was "
The Third Man Theme," Anton Karas' zither-driven theme song from an Orson Welles spy thriller film. Frank Sinatra was at a low point in his career, as his original fans, the "bobby-soxers," had outgrown him and weren't drawn to his new material. Nat King Cole, Frankie Laine, Patti Page and Teresa Brewer were the year's big singers.
Hank Williams was already big in the South, but not in the North. Elvis Presley was in high school. Johnny Cash had just graduated, and, before the World Cup was out, would enlist in the U.S. Air Force. Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly, and Don and Phil Everly were in junior high. Tina Turner was 10 years old; John Lennon, Ringo Starr and Bob Dylan were 9; Paul McCartney, Paul Simon and Aretha Franklin 8; George Harrison 7, Mick Jagger and Diana Ross 6, Pete Townshend 5, Cher 4, David Bowie and Elton John 3, Billy Joel 1, Bruce Springsteen 9 months old, and Michael Jackson, Madonna and Prince weren't born yet.
Inflation was such that what $1.00 bought then, $10.64 would
buy now. A U.S. postage stamp cost 3 cents, and a New York Subway ride 10 cents. The average price of a gallon of gas was 23 cents, a cup of coffee 15 cents, a burger-fries-and-Coke meal 46 cents, a movie ticket 46 cents, a new car $1,700, and a
new house $7,150. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed that day at 206.72. Not 20,006, or even 2,006, but two hundred and six.
The tallest building in the world was the Empire State Building in New York. Telephones had been possible in cars since 1946, but a phone you could carry around with you? Forget it. Telephone numbers
were still based on "exchanges," based on the letters on a rotary
dial. So a number that, today, would be (718) 293-6000 (this is the number for
the Yankees' ticket office, so I’m not hurting anyone's privacy), would have
been CYpress 3-6000.
There were no ZIP Codes, either. They ended up being based
on the old system: The old New York Daily News Building, at 220 East
42nd Street, was "New York 17, NY"; it became "New York, NY
10017."
Color film was expensive, so it was far from universal. Color television was still in the experimental stage. Small transistor radios were still a few years off. Photocopiers, a few more, so carbon paper was a hot commodity in offices.
Computers were still in their early stages of development. Alan Turing was still alive and working on them, but Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Tim Berners-Lee hadn't been born yet. A worldwide network of data, similar to what became the Internet, had been suggested as an idea in some science fiction stories. Diners Club had just introduced the
credit card, but American Express had not yet popularized it. There were no automatic teller machines.
There were artificial kidneys, but no artificial hearts. Transplanting a kidney
was possible, but not a heart, lung or liver. The polio vaccine was still in
development. There was no birth control pill, but there was no Viagra, either. Insects and apes had been launched into space, but no object had yet been put
into orbit.
In the Summer of 1950, Communist North Korea invaded capitalist (but hardly free) South Korea, and President Truman mobilized the United Nations to push them back, beginning the Korean War. This would also be the debut of jet airplanes in U.S. combat.
The European Coal and Steel Community was formed in Paris by France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, beginning the process of creating the European Union. The Arab League signed a Joint Defence and Economic Co-operation Treaty. The African National Congress held a National Day of Protest against the apartheid government of South Africa. Radio Free Europe began broadcasting.
Guam was given the status of a U.S. Territory, and its residents were granted U.S. citizenship. The volcano Mauna Loa started erupting in Hawaii. On the U.S. mainland, the Rev. Billy Graham visited Truman at the White House. A fan watching a 4th of July doubleheader between the arch-rival New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers at the Polo Grounds was killed by a sniper from a nearby apartment building. Sam Walton opened his 1st store in Bentonville, Arkansas, beginning the Walmart empire. And the U.S. Army used Cape Canaveral, on the Atlantic Coast of Florida, to launch rockets for the 1st time.
The book Red Channels was published, listing names of actors, directors, writers and producers as members of the Communist Party or sympathizers -- some, incorrectly. Nuclear technician David Greenglass was arrested and charged with spying for the Soviet Union. He cops a plea, and implicates his sister Ethel, and her husband Julius Rosenberg. Ethel and Julius would be executed for treason in 1953. Greenglass, who betrayed America more deeply than either of them, served less than 10 years, and lived until 2014.
Former Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, and coffee filter inventor Melitta Bentz, and songwriter Buddy DeSylva died. Richard Branson, and Ann Wilson, and Huey Lewis were born.
That's what the world was like when the national soccer teams of the United States of America and England took the field (or "pitch") at Estádio Independência in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil on Thursday, June 29, 1950, 70 years ago today.
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Estádio Independência, during the 1950 World Cup
England wore blue shirts and white shorts, and lined up in the W-M formation that had been standard on their shores since Herbert Chapman brought it to Arsenal in 1925. Bert Williams was in goal. The back line was Alf Ramsey, Billy Wright and John Aston. The midfielders were Laurie Hughes and Jimmy Dickinson. And the 5-man forward line was Wilf Mannion, Tom Finney, Jimmy Mullen, Stan Mortensen and Roy Bentley.
Billy Wright
England's best player, Stanley Matthews, was left on the bench. Because substitutes were not allowed yet, manager Walter Winterbottom would not be able to bring him on at all.
Bill Jeffrey, a 57-year-old Scotsman who was head coach at Penn State, and thus had coached the Philadelphia players, was the American manager. He had his players, wearing white shirts with a red sash from upper right to lower left, and blue shorts, in a 2-3-5 formation.
Frank Borghi was in goal. In front of him were the fullbacks, Harry Keough on the right, Joe Maca on the left. In front of them were the halfbacks: Right to left, Ed McIlvenny, Charlie Colombo and Walter Bahr. Then the forwards: Right to left, Frank Wallace, Gino Pariani, Joe Gaetjens, John Souza and Ed Souza. Bahr was usually the Captain of this team, but, since he was British, McIlvenny was chosen as Captain for this game.
As a British citizen familiar with the English game, as well as that of the country he had adopted, Jeffrey told the press, "We have no chance," and called his team "sheep ready to be slaughtered." One of the English national newspapers, the Daily Express, wrote, "It would be fair to give the U.S. three goals of a start."
Only 10,151 fans paid to watch this game, which kicked off at the traditional English soccer kickoff time of 3:00 in the afternoon, making it 4:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time, on a Thursday. England won the coin toss, and chose to kick off.
In the 2nd minute, Bentley fired a shot that Borghi barely saved. By the 12th minute, Borghi had had to make another great save, an England shot just went over the crossbar, and 2 other shots hit the post. The U.S. didn't get a shot on goal until the 25th, and Williams blocked it. Between then and the 32nd, Mortensen fired over the crossbar twice, and Borghi just deflected a Finney header. If even half of these England attempts had gone in, England would have been up at least 4-0 by this point.
Then came the 37th minute. McIlvenny made a throw-in. Bahr took it, and shot from 25 yards out. Williams moved to his right to get it. But before he could, Gaetjens threw himself forward, and headed it in to Williams' left.
One-nil to the Stars and Stripes. Years, later Bahr said, "The overwhelming majority was Brazilians, but they rooted for us the entire time. We didn't realize why until after. They were hoping we would beat England and that Brazil would not have to play England in the final game." (In hindsight, this may have been counterproductive, as you'll see in my July 16 post commemorating that anniversary.)
The Americans' confidence had been seriously boosted, and they came out for the 2nd half like a house afire. They had another scoring chance in the 54th, but couldn't do anything with it. In the 59th, Generoso Dattilo, the Italian referee, awarded England a direct free kick, but Borghi saved Mortensen's shot. England was dominant for a while, and it wasn't until the 74th minute that the U.S. could get another shot.
In the 82nd minute, soccer history hung in the balance. Mortensen drove toward the penalty area, and Charlie Colombo brought him down. The way Keough described it, it sounds like Colombo should have been sent off. (No red and yellow cards in those days, but a player could be sent off for an egregious foul.) But the film cameras didn't get the foul into
the highlights, so there's no way to know for sure.
England pleaded for the awarding of a penalty, but Dattilo didn't buy it, saying the foul was outside the area. He awarded a free kick. Ramsey took it, and Mullen headed it toward the goal. Borghi tipped it away. Again, the England players appealed to Dattilo, saying the ball had gone in, but he ruled that it hadn't crossed the line.
In the 85th, Peewee Wallace managed to draw Williams out of position, giving himself an empty net. But Ramsey managed to get in and clear his shot off the line.
Without much stoppage time, Dattilo blew his whistle. Final score: America 1, England 0. Or, as would be said in soccer circles, England 0-1 USA. No "Man of the Match" was given. Clearly, it was Borghi, who kept it from being about 7-1 in England's favor.
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No one could believe it. Contrary to what we would expect today, not only was the game not broadcast live to the U.K. on BBC television, it wasn't even broadcast around the world on BBC radio. When the BBC reporter delivered the final score that night (it would have been around 10:00 PM, London time), many people remembered hearing it, and thinking it was an error: That it must have been England that won 1-0.
To make matters worse for England, their national cricket team also suffered an epic loss, with their 1st-ever home defeat to the West Indies, at Lord's Cricket Ground, "the Home of Cricket," just outside Central London. That was a bigger story in some papers. One headline read, "England Caned at Soccer Too." (So it has not always been the case that the English hate it when "football" is called "soccer," as modern "geezers" would have you believe.)
And in America? It was barely reported at all. Since several players were from St. Louis, Dent McSkimming of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch wanted to cover it. He couldn't talk the paper into covering his expenses. So he applied for "vacation" time, paid his own way, and, when he got there, he discovered that he was the only American reporter at the game.
Soccer was so low on the totem pole of American sports at the time, the Post-Dispatch was one of the few papers to report the result at all. Not only had The New York Times refused to send a reporter, but, when they got the result from the Associated Press wire report, they refused to print it, figuring the report of the upset was a hoax.
The World Cup went on. On July 1, Brazil beat Yugoslavia 2-0. On July 2, the Americans were knocked out of the tournament, losing 5-2 to Chile in Recife, despite Wallace and Maca (with a penalty) scoring within a minute of each other. And England fell to Spain 1-0 at the Maracanã. Spain thus won Group 2, and only the 4 Group winners advanced to a knockout round. Elsewhere on that day, Italy beat Paraguay 2-0, Switzerland beat Mexico 2-1, and Uruguay walloped Bolivia 8-0.
The Group winners were put in a final Group, with the winner of the Group being declared the winner. This is the only time that this format has been used in the World Cup. On July 9, Brazil thrashed Sweden 7-1 at the Maracanã, and Uruguay and Spain played to a 2-2 draw in São Paulo. On July 13, Brazil beat Spain 6-1 at the Maracanã, and Uruguay beat Sweden 3-2 in São Paulo.
The final day was July 16, and Sweden's game with Spain in São Paulo was meaningless. Sweden won it 3-1. It was all down to Brazil vs. Uruguay, neighboring nations, at the Maracanã. Given the goal difference, all Brazil had to do was gain a draw, and they would be World Champions on home soil.
It remains the largest paying crowd in soccer history, 199,854. Brazil opened the scoring early in the 2nd half. But Uruguay scored in the 66th and the 79th, and won 2-1. Brazil had lost the world championship of their national sport, in their national stadium. It is known as Maracanazo in Spanish, Maracanaço in Portuguese: "The Agony of Maracanã."
Outside of the U.S. and the U.K., the Maracanazo is what the 1950 World Cup is remembered for. In England, it was part of a difficult run for the national side. In 1949, Ireland had beaten England at Goodison Park, home of Everton, in Liverpool. But that was considered a fluke, or, as they would say in England, a one-off.
It wasn't. In 1953, England lost at the original version of Wembley Stadium in London, their national stadium, to a team from outside the British Isles for the 1st time, a spectacular 6-3 performance by a Hungary team that became known as the Magnificent Magyars. Hungary would embarrass them again in Budapest the next year. And while England won their Group at the 1954 World Cup, they lost to Uruguay in the Quarterfinals.
England have rarely worn blue shirts since. It would be 9 years after the Belo Horizonte debacle before they did so again. Usually, their solid color shirt is red. And it would take until the appointment of Alf Ramsey as manager in 1962, after 2 more World Cup flops, before England would get its act together, and win the whole thing in 1966.
Inside the U.S., it took years for anyone to notice. Anniversaries passed: The 10th in 1960, the 20th in 1970 (a World Cup year), the 25th in 1975, the 30th in 1980, the 40th in 1990 (another World Cup year). It didn't help that the U.S. didn't qualify for the World Cup again until 1990. The North American Soccer League was founded in 1968, and it folded in 1984, and that included 4 World Cups, and the U.S. never came close to qualifying for any of them.
But the U.S. was awarded the 1994 World Cup, and thus automatic qualification. The team qualified for the 1990 edition, and did not make it out of the Group Stage. But in the buildup to 1994, Geoffrey Douglas wrote a book about the 1950 upset, titled The Game of Their Lives. A movie was made about it in 2005.
The U.S. advanced to the Round of 16 in 1994, didn't make it out of the Group Stage in 1998, got to the Quarterfinal in 2002, didn't make it out of the Group Stage in 2006, made it to the Round of 16 in 2010 and 2014, and didn't qualify for the tournament at all in 2018. Qualification for the 2022 World Cup has not yet begun.
The 1-0 win over England has been nicknamed "The Miracle Match." In a nod to the U.S. hockey upset over the Soviet Union at the 1980 Winter Olympics, known as "The Miracle On Ice," this game has been called "The Miracle On Grass." Given how many shots Borghi had to stop, Belo Horizonte '50 was much closer to being a miracle than Lake Placid '80.
The U.S. and England have played only 1 World Cup match since, a 1-1 draw in Bloemfontain, South Africa in 2010.
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On July 7, 1964, President François Duvalier of Haiti, known as Papa Doc, declared himself President For Life -- in other words, dictator. Joe Gaetjens had returned to Haiti, and joined his brothers Jean-Pierre and Fred in a resistance movement. The morning after Duvalier's declaration. Joe was arrested, taken to a prison, and was never seen in public again. The man who scored the biggest goal in the history of American soccer -- seen by fewer people than Landon Donovan's 2010 winner over Algeria, but far bigger -- was 40 years old.
He was joined in death by manager Bill Jeffrey in 1966, Ed Souza and Frank Wallace in 1979, Joe Maca in 1982, Charlie Colombo in 1986, Adam Wolanin in 1987, Ed McIlvenny in 1989, Bob Annis in 1995, Geoff Coombes in 2002, Bob Craddock and Nicholas DiOrio in 2003, Gino Pariani in 2007, Gino Gardassanich in 2010, Harry Keough and John Souza in 2012, Frank Borghi in 2015, and Walter Bahr -- father of Matt Bahr and Chris Bahr, who both won Super Bowl rings as placekickers -- was the last survivor of this game, living until June 18, 2018, dying during the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
Walter Bahr with then-Vice President Joe Biden,
at the opening match of the Philadelphia Union,
their shared home team in Major League Soccer,
at Lincoln Financial Field, April 10, 2010.
The Union beat D.C. United 3-2.
From the England team: Bill Eckersley and Jimmy Dickinson died in 1982, Jimmy Mullen in 1987, Jackie Milburn in 1988, Stan Mortensen in 1991, Billy Wright in 1994, Alf Ramsey and Laurie Scott in 1999, Stanley Matthews and Wilf Mannion in 2000, Jim Taylor in 2001, manager Walter Winterbottom in 2002, John Aston in 2003; Henry Cockburn, Henry Watson and Bill Nicholson in 2004; Ted Ditchburn in 2005, Eddie Baily in 2010, Laurie Hughes in 2011, Bert Williams and Tom Finney in 2014, and Roy Bentley in 2018, 2 months before Walter Bahr.
The referee from the game, Generoso Dattilo, died in 1976. Estádio Independência in Belo Horizonte, the site of the game, was demolished in 2010, and rebuilt at the same location in 2012, in anticipation of the 2014 World Cup. Its official name is
Estádio Raimundo Sampaio, for a former chairman of Sete de Setembro, a team that once existed and played at the previous stadium, named for Brazil's Independence Day, September 7. 1822. It is now home to 2 clubs,
Atlético Mineiro and América.
Estádio Raimundo Sampaio today
The Miracle On Grass was hardly seen then, and it has hardly been seen since. But it might just be the greatest upset in American sports history. Not the most satisfying -- that remains the Miracle On Ice -- but the greatest.
