July 30th, 1966

Forty years of hurt
Yes, gentlemen, it’s forty years ago that England won the World Cup with a 4-2 victory over West Germany in the final at Wembley…Surely, as Bobby Moore held the cup aloft and the “England Roar” reverberated around the stadium and throughout the land, nobody thought it would be such a long and painful wait for it to happen again. Indeed, just four years later in 1970 England had arguably a better team but lost to the Germans in the quarter-final 2-3, after leading 2-0 at half-time…
That crushing defeat had terrible repercussions with England not even qualifying for the 1974 and 1978 tournaments…We have since lost in cruelly disappointing ways on numerous occasions including elimination by penalties on three occasions (1990, 1998, and 2006).
In Spain 1982 we were eliminated when the preposterous second round group format saw us going out despite being undefeated in the tournament, winning three and drawing the other two of our five matches…In 1986 it was that “cheating Argie Bastard” and his Hand of God in a 1-2 defeat and in 2002 it was Smiling Boy Ronaldhino’s poor cross which remarkably ended up in the net in a narrow 1-2 defeat to Brazil…All sad but true…..
Now it is forty years on and a nation continues to wait for the hurt to end…
Regards, Steve of England…..