Those of you who live in countries with no real interest in international football tournaments are spared the endless hand-wringing and navel-gazing that comes with catastrophic defeat. Eventually, conversation about pressing, left-backs and formations becomes a conversation about the national temperament and psyche - especially in England, where catastrophic defeat is apparently inevitable, every two years.
“Have you noticed how we only win the World Cup under a Labour government?” PM Harold Wilson once said, referring to England’s only triumph, in 1966. And that victory did come at a significant time in the life of a nation. In ‘66, England was swinging, like a pendulum do, with London suddenly the centre of fashion and popular culture, after years of post-war austerity. But four years later, England caved at the quarter-final stage against West Germany, after taking a two-goal lead. The date of that game was the 14th June, 1970; on the 18th June the Labour government was turfed out of office by the electorate, despite a seven-point lead in the polls. Wilson refused to blame the football. “Governance of a country has nothing to do with a study of its football fixtures,” he said. But in his memoirs, Denis Healey, later Chancellor of the Exchequer, revealed that Wilson had called a meeting that April. asking his colleagues “to consider whether the government would suffer if the England footballers were defeated on the eve of polling day.” The government suffered. It’s hard to prove the link between Peter Bonetti’s calamitous performance in goal and Labour’s failure, but it’s even harder to disprove it.