The 1970 World Cup: The End of a Golden Age

One day, in May 1970, our teacher, Mr Griffiths, asked the boys in our class if we knew which teams England would play in the first round of the 1970 World Cup finals in Mexico. Since 1966 I had become really interested in football as it filled the gap that friends usually occupied in ten-year-olds’ lives. My best friend was the wireless in my bedroom where I listened to the football commentaries on Soccer Special. I was now a keen Leeds United supporter and delighted that Terry Cooper, Jack Charlton, Norman Hunter and Allan Clarke had made the squad. I still knew little about the World Cup though so was unable to raise my hand and say Brazil, Czechoslovakia and Romania.

I wanted to learn how to play football properly but Mr Griffiths was Welsh so only rugby mattered. Football and swimming lessons were unimportant and he often cited ‘bad weather’ to avoid even pretending to teach us – with the result that I’ve never been able to do either

The summer of 1970, however, was hot and the golden sunshine matched the shirts of the Brazilian team. Michael Shellbourne and I ran around the playground together, pretending to hold the trophy aloft, safe in the knowledge that everyone thought we had a better team in 1970 than four years earlier.

Before the tournament began we went on a family holiday to the Lake District, having braved Devon the previous year. I’d bought a yellow Mexico 1970 football with my holiday money and my father had a kick-about with me on a few occasions but he seemed distant and there were a number of family quarrels from the other end of the caravan that week.

Lee Marvin kept singing about his ‘Wanderin’ Star’ on the radio and the newspapers were full of Bobby Moore’s supposed wanderin’ fingers when he was accused of stealing a bracelet in Bogota as the England team trained at altitude in Colombia. Despite these worries my Esso World Cup coin collection was building nicely, even though opening every other sealed blue bag seemed to reveal Keith Newton’s face.

I watched all of the games on my own in front of the same Murphy’s black-and-white television, though the finals were actually being broadcast in colour for the first time. Gordon Banks’ save from Pele in Guadalajara still defies belief on TV replays, as it did live, and that name lives on as Schnellinger still does from the previous finals.

So does Leon. I hadn’t been too worried about Peter Bonetti in goal as he had unfortunately played so well for Chelsea against Leeds in the 1970 Cup Final a few weeks earlier. As Alan Mullery and Martin Peters put England two-nil up against West Germany after fifty minutes, I was wondering what all the fuss had been about four years previously. Of course Gerd Muller was scripted to remind me and, once again, I failed to finish my tea.

However, the final was a seminal moment in my life. I think I already knew it but that match confirmed that I could never live without football in my life ever again. While Pele grabbed the headlines and Carlos Alberto finished the game off with such a fantastic exhibition of passing skill, it was Jairzinho who really took my eye, scoring in that game as well as every other round in the competition. My mother – who watched the last few minutes with me – suggested I write to Don Revie to see if he could get him to play for Leeds but I correctly informed her that we already had Mick Jones and Allan Clarke.

The fireworks went off around Mexico City but not in our village this time. Mum pointed out some men in the crowd wearing large white ‘cowboy hats’ but my days of playing Cowboys and Indians or dribbling my yellow ball past the haystacks in the cornfield at the bottom of the garden were about to change.

I still lie in the grass and dream but then I was looking forward; now I just wish I could be back in that golden age where the yellow shirts and blue shorts played such a beautiful game.

See also:

1966: http://sportales.com/soccer/i-was-six-in-1966-and-thought-the-world-cup-was-just-for-fun/

Stay in touch with the football World Cup at thefootballground.co.uk