1966 and Not All That by Mark Perryman

Author:Mark Perryman [Perryman, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781910924099
Published: 2015-10-07T16:00:00+00:00

Why England Won

Simon Kuper

IF NOSTALGIA FOR 1966 could be plotted on a graph, it probably peaked in February 1993. That month Bobby Moore died of cancer aged 51, and was mourned as the kind of gentleman winner that England no longer produced. The economy, England’s footballing fortunes, and national morale were all then at a low. Only the crime-rate was buoyant. Twelve days before Moore’s death, the murder of two year-old James Bulger by two other small boys had shocked Britain. The event “registered a growing presence of evil,” said the Labour MP Frank Field. He called for children to be taught the “Bobby Moore morality.”

The technicolour moment when a beautiful Queen Elizabeth handed a beautiful Moore the World Cup in the London sunshine serves as a constant reprimand to the English present. National decline is a powerful notion in modern English history, and England’s failure to win a football tournament since 1966 seems to sum up that decline. That’s why the English often turn 1966 into a symbol. The argument then goes that England won because Moore’s “greatest generation” were giants compared with today’s spoiled overpaid lot. However, if we want to know why England really won, symbolism doesn’t get us very far. In an attempt to demystify 1966, I read the history and crunched data.

The first thing to say is that England in 1966 probably were slightly better than most subsequent England teams. A crucial caveat: the quality of England sides over time scarcely varies. This may sound improbable. Fans feel strongly about the qualities of managers and players. Periods of national euphoria alternate with periods of national pessimism (such as 1993 or 2014). The public tends to think the England team is either strong or a disgrace.

But in fact, England in almost any era pretty consistently wins about half its games, drawing or losing the rest. Contrary to all popular opinion, it may be that since the 1960s the strength of the England team has barely changed (which would make the vast apparatus of punditry attached to the team instantly redundant).

The chart across was made by the economist Stefan Szymanski, with whom I wrote the book Why England Lose (we renamed the later editions Soccernomics; the original title for some reason didn’t appeal to English book-buyers). The chart shows England’s cumulative win percentage from 1950 to 2013 (counting a draw as worth half a win). Apart from a few moments in the 1950s the win percentage has not risen above 70%, and it has never fallen below 67.5%.

The overall picture is one of steady but extremely slow decline, punctuated by two eras of exceptional performance. One of those eras was the late 1960s. The other period of clear improvement began in the early 2000s and continues today.

It really does look as if the only period in England’s modern football history that can match the late 1960s is the present. Here is some more evidence — the win percentages of all post-war England managers:

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.