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| Afterextra time | |||||||
| Date | 30 July 1966 | ||||||
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| Venue | Wembley Stadium, London | ||||||
| Referee | Gottfried Dienst (Switzerland) | ||||||
| Attendance | 96,924 | ||||||
| Weather | 20 °C (68 °F)[1] | ||||||
←1962 1970 → | |||||||
The1966 FIFA World Cup final was afootball match played atWembley Stadium in London on 30 July 1966 to determine the winner of the1966 FIFA World Cup, the eighthFIFA World Cup.[2] The match was contested byEngland andWest Germany, with England winning 4–2after extra time to claim theJules Rimet Trophy. It was the first – and to date only – occasion that England has hosted or won the World Cup.
West Germany took the lead in the 11th minute whenHelmut Haller shot the ball into the bottom left corner when an English defender failed to clear the ball, beforeGeoff Hurst equalized with a header to make it 1–1, assisting a teammate who took a free kick. The score remained level by halftime until England took the lead with a 78th minute goal fromMartin Peters (who was the only player to be booked during the match). England almost won by full time before West German player,Wolfgang Weber, scored a 2–2 equaliser in the 90th minute. The game went into extra time, in which Geoff Hurst scored a controversial goal in the 101st minute to make the score 3–2 after the first 15 minutes of extra time, until Hurst scored again in the final minute to complete his hat-trick, ending the game 4–2 after the extra 30 minutes. He was the only man to score a hat-trick in a World Cup final untilKylian Mbappé scored one in the2022 final.
The match is remembered for England's only World Cup and first and only major international title,Geoff Hurst'shat-trick – the first scored in a FIFA World Cup final – and the dubious third goal awarded to England by refereeGottfried Dienst and linesmanTofiq Bahramov. The England team became known as the "wingless wonders", on account of their then-unconventional narrow attacking formation, described at the time as a 4–4–2.[3]
In addition to an attendance of 96,924 at the stadium, the British television audience peaked at 32.3 million viewers, making it theUnited Kingdom's most-watched television event ever.[4][5]
Both teams were strong throughout the tournament. Each won two and drew one of their three matches in the group stages. England did not concede a goal until their semi-final against Portugal.
 England | Round |  West Germany | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Opponent | Result | Group stage | Opponent | Result | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Uruguay | 0–0 | Match 1 |  Switzerland | 5–0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Mexico | 2–0 | Match 2 |  Argentina | 0–0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 France | 2–0 | Match 3 |  Spain | 2–1 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Group 1 winner
| Final group standings | Group 2 winner
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Opponent | Result | Knockout stage | Opponent | Result | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Argentina | 1–0 | Quarter-finals | Uruguay | 4–0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Portugal | 2–1 | Semi-finals |  Soviet Union | 2–1 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
England, managed byAlf Ramsey and captained byBobby Moore, won the toss and elected to kick off. After 12 minutes,Sigfried Held sent a cross into the English penalty area whichRay Wilson misheaded toHelmut Haller, who got his shot on target.Jack Charlton and goalkeeperGordon Banks failed to deal with the shot which went in, making it 1–0 to West Germany.
In the 18th minute,Wolfgang Overath conceded a free kick, which Moore took immediately, floating a cross into the West German area, whereGeoff Hurst rose unchallenged; his downward glancing header went into the net and levelled the scores at 1-1. The teams were level at half-time, and after 77 minutes England won a corner.Alan Ball delivered the ball to Geoff Hurst whose deflected shot from the edge of the area foundMartin Peters. He produced the final shot, beating the West German keeper from eight yards to make the score 2–1 to England.[6]
Germany pressed for an equaliser in the closing moments, and in the 89th minuteJack Charlton conceded a free kick for climbing onUwe Seeler as they both went up for a header.[6] The kick was taken byLothar Emmerich, who struck it intoGeorge Cohen in the wall; the rebound fell to Held, who shot across the face of goal and into the body ofKarl-Heinz Schnellinger. The ball deflected across the England six-yard box, wrong-footing the England defence and allowingWolfgang Weber to level the score at 2–2 and force the match into extra time. Banks protested that the ball had struck Schnellinger on the arm, and reiterated the claim in his 2002 autobiography,[7] but replays showed that it actually struck Schnellinger on the back.[8]
England pressed forward and created several chances. In particular, with five minutes gone, Bobby Charlton struck the post and sent another shot just wide. With 11 minutes of extra time gone, Alan Ball put in a cross and Geoff Hurst swivelled and shot from close range. The ball hit the underside of the crossbar, bounced down and was cleared. The referee Gottfried Dienst was uncertain if it had been a goal and consulted his linesman,Tofiq Bahramov fromAzerbaijan in the USSR, who indicated that it was, and the Swiss referee awarded the goal to the home team. The crowd and the audience of 400 million television viewers were left arguing whether the goal should have been given or not. The crossbar is now on display in the Wembley Stadium.[9] England'sthird goal has remained controversial ever since the match. According to theLaws of the Game the definition of agoal is when "the whole of the ball passes over the goal line".[10] English supporters cited the good position of the linesman and the statement of Roger Hunt, the nearest England player to the ball, who claimed it was a goal and that was why he wheeled away in celebration rather than attempting to tap the rebounding ball in. Modern studies using film analysis and computer simulation have shown that the whole ball never crossed the line – only 50% did. Both Duncan Gillies of the Visual Information Processing Group atImperial College London and Ian Reid and Andrew Zisserman of the Department of Engineering Science atUniversity of Oxford have stated that the ball would have needed to travel a further 18 ± 4 cm (7.1 ± 1.6 in) to fully cross the line.[11] Some Germans cited possible bias of the Soviet linesman,[12] especially as the USSR had just been defeated in the semi-finals by West Germany.[13]
One minute before the end of play, the West Germans sent their defenders forward in a desperate attempt to score a last-minute equaliser. Winning the ball, Bobby Moore picked out the unmarked Geoff Hurst with a long pass, which Hurst carried forward while some spectators began streaming onto the field and Hurst, as he later revealed, decided that, if he wasn’t going to score, he needed to boot the ball as far as possible, to prevent Germany getting back up.[14] The ball instead went straight to the top corner ofHans Tilkowski's net, sealing a historic hat-trick and winning the World Cup for England.[15] The goal gave rise to one of the most famous calls in English football history, whenBBC commentatorKenneth Wolstenholme described the situation as follows:
"And here comes Hurst. He's got... some people are on the pitch,they think it's all over. It is now! It's four!"[16]
One of the balls from the final is on display in theNational Football Museum inManchester.
| England | 4–2 (a.e.t.) | West Germany |
|---|---|---|
| Report[17] |
     England |    West Germany |
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Officials
| Match rules
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One of the enduring images of the celebrations in Wembley immediately after the game was the picture of the captainBobby Moore holding the Jules Rimet Trophy aloft, on the shoulders of Geoff Hurst and Ray Wilson, together with Martin Peters. In recognition of Moore and otherWest Ham United players' contribution to the win, the club and Newham Borough Council jointly commissioned a statue of this scene. On 28 April 2003Prince Andrew as president ofThe Football Association, duly unveiled theWorld Cup Sculpture (also calledThe Champions) in a prominent place near West Ham's ground, at the time, theBoleyn Ground, at the junction ofBarking Road andGreen Street. The 13-foot (4 m)-high bronze piece was sculpted byPhilip Jackson and weighed 4 tonnes.[18][19]
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The final is themost watched event ever on British television, as of July 2021, attracting 32.30 million viewers.[4]
In Germany, a goal resulting from a shot bouncing off the crossbar and hitting the line is called aWembley-Tor (Wembley Goal) due to the controversial nature of Hurst's second goal.[21] This goal has been parodied many times. Some of the most notable include:
In August 1966 aspecial 4d stamp markedENGLAND WINNERS was issued by theRoyal Mail to celebrate the victory. It soared in value to up to 15 shillings each on the back of public enthusiasm for the victory before falling back in value when the public realised it was not rare.[24][25]
The World Cup win features in the song "Three Lions" (known by its chorus "Football's Coming Home"), the unofficial anthem of the England football team.[26] England's win in the final also helped fans to create the "Two World Wars and One World Cup" chant.[13]
Haller collected the match ball after the final whistle, conforming to a German tradition that the losing team keeps the ball.[27] In the build-up toEuro 96 in England, Englishtabloid newspapers suggested that a British tradition ought to apply, of giving the match ball to the scorer of a hat trick. A consortium ofDaily Mirror,Virgin Group, andEurostar paid Haller £80,000 for the ball and arranged a photo shoot at which he symbolically presented it to Hurst.[27][28] The ball was then displayed inWaterloo Eurostar terminal, where Hurst and Haller's signatures faded in the sunlight.[27] It was subsequently lent to theNational Football Museum in Manchester.[27][28][29][30]
From1930 to1974, only those who played in the Final received World Cup winners' medals.[31] In the 2000sFIFA retrospectively awarded medals to the other players and staff of each winning squad.[31] Medals were presented at a ceremony at10 Downing Street in London on 10 June 2009 to the relevant members ofEngland's 1966 squad, or representatives in the case of those, such as manager Ramsey, who had died.[31]
Fédération internationale de football association (FIFA) | |
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| Finals | |
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| Miscellaneous | |
