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Alan 3:11 Sat Mar 23
Saturday news (includes West Ham)

BBC

Real Madrid have stepped up their interest in Liverpool's 25-year-old England defender Trent Alexander-Arnold, whose contract expires next year. (Relevo - in Spanish)

Bayer Leverkusen manager Xabi Alonso will join Bayern Munich rather than Liverpool if he moves anywhere this summer. (Sky Sports News)

English striker Eddie Nketiah, 24, could leave Arsenal this summer amid interest from Crystal Palace,Brentford and Wolves. (Football Insider)

Chelsea are in advanced talks with Lyon about appointing Sonia Bompastor, the 43-year-old former France midfielder, to take over from Emma Hayes. (ESPN)

Chelsea led the race for Brazil forward Endrick but concerns about the fee allowed Real Madrid to beat them to the signing of the 17-year-old from Palmeiras. (Telegraph - subscription)

Manchester United are ready to firm up their interest in Juventus' 27-year-old Brazil defender Gleison Bremer, who has a £43m release clause in his contract. (Mirror)

Aston Villa could be forced to sell English midfielder Jacob Ramsey, 22, to help avoid breaching profit and sustainability rules. (Football Insider)

Manchester United minority owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe wants to change the role of the manager at the club, so it is more of a head coach position primarily focused on training. (Telegraph - subscription)

Newcastle United might have to sell Sweden striker Alexander Isak, 24, in the summer to comply with financial fair play regulations, with long-term admirers Arsenal a possible destination. (Football Insider)

Sunderland's 23-year-old English winger Jack Clarke will not sign a new contract, which could spark fresh interest from West Ham and Lazio. (i)

Former Arsenal head of recruitment Sven Mislintat could return to Borussia Dortmund as sports director. (Sky Sports Germany)

Eintracht Frankfurt are not willing to pay the £8.5m option to make Manchester United's 26-year-old Dutch midfielder Donny van de Beek's move permanent this summer. (Bild, via Goal)

Inter Milan could offer South Korea defender Kim Min-jae, 27, a move away from Bayern Munich less than a year after joining. (Gazetta dello Sport)




Sky Paper Talk

DAILY TELEGRAPH

Brazil's new boy wonder Endrick will join Real Madrid this summer - but he nearly signed for Chelsea

Sir Jim Ratcliffe is looking to put a head coach in charge at Manchester United rather than the current manager role, with the change of structure wanted regardless of Erik ten Hag's future at Old Trafford.

England's shirt row is two years in the making.

Arsenal Women manager Jonas Eidevall has defended the club's post-season trip to Australia for an exhibition amid criticism over concerns about player welfare and climate change.

DAILY MIRROR

Harvey Elliott appeared to hide the controversial England flag while debuting the new kit for the U21s.

Manchester United winger Facundo Pellistri is unhappy with how his loan spell at Granada has gone as the LaLiga outfit edges closer to relegation.

Rasmus Hojlund has sympathised with Christian Eriksen after the Manchester United midfielder expressed his frustration over a lack of game time.

Manchester United are ready to firm up their interest in Gleison Bremer ahead of the arrival of the club's prospective new sporting director, Dan Ashworth.

THE SUN

Sir Jim Ratcliffe, 71, needs a PB in the London Marathon if he's to make Man Utd's FA Cup semi-final after kick-off switch.

Man Utd defender Brandon Williams inhaled laughing gas before being involved in a high speed car crash, a court heard.

DAILY MAIL

Manchester United defender Lisandro Martinez has cut short his call-up with Argentina's national squad and will return to England on Saturday.

The FA executive who approved the controversial changes to the England flag on the home shirt left Wembley last year. The FA's former commercial director Navin Singh is now chief commercial officer of Six Nations Rugby.

Erik ten Hag is reportedly admired by multiple top German clubs amid suggestions that Manchester United could be preparing to part ways with the coach.

The Premier League's youngest-ever player Ethan Nwaneri is set to sign his first professional contract with Arsenal next week upon returning from England Under 17 duty, Mail Sport can reveal.

Arsenal were thumped 4-0 by QPR in a behind closed doors friendly on Thursday in a bruising defeat without some of their headline stars.

DAILY STAR

Liverpool's Wataru Endo is returning to Merseyside early after Japan's World Cup qualifier with North Korea was postponed.

THE TIMES

UEFA has shelved the idea of cash limits that clubs could spend on wages

DAILY EXPRESS

Nike are at the heart of a 'patriotism' row in Germany, as well as in England. The controversy comes after The German Football Association (DFB) announced that they will cut their decades-long deal with Adidas in favour of a more lucrative deal with Nike.

Manchester United captain Bruno Fernandes has spoken out on speculation linking Sporting Lisbon manager Ruben Amorim to take over at Old Trafford - and told Liverpool their top target would be a success in England.

Liverpool target Teun Koopmeiners revealed his plans to leave Atalanta this summer.

DAILY RECORD

Rangers are facing a fresh injury sweat after Ridvan Yilmaz limped out of Turkey duty.

Forgotten Ryan Kent is reportedly pushing to have his Fenebahce contract ripped up at the end of the campaign.





The Athletic

West Ham loan watch: How Benrahma, Kehrer, Downes, Potts and more are doing



By Roshane Thomas

West Ham United have 11 players out on loan, and the impacts they’ve made for their temporary clubs have varied.

In January, first-team squad members Said Benrahma and Thilo Kehrer sealed loan moves to France’s Ligue 1, with Lyon and Monaco respectively, while West Ham have been determined to see many of the leading players from their successful under-21s side benefit from senior, competitive football elsewhere.

The Athletic takes a look at how each of the 11 loanees is getting on, and what that might mean for the rest of their season and beyond.

Said Benrahma, Lyon

Lyon have an option to make Benrahma’s half-season loan permanent in the summer, when he will turn 29. The Algeria international had eight years in French football before coming to England in 2018 and feels settled in eastern France, where he has scored once in six appearances across all competitions for Lyon, who are 10th in the 18-team top flight.

Benrahma, who signed for West Ham from Brentford in the 2020 summer window on an initial loan and has scored 24 goals in 155 games, struggled for consistency during the first half of this season, contributing one assist and no goals in 22 appearances, 13 of them starts, in all competitions. But having helped Lyon reach next month’s semi-finals of the Coupe de France, their version of the FA Cup, Benrahma is happy with the progress he has made under manager Pierre Sage.

“It’s a goal (against Metz in the league last month) that will give me a lot of confidence,” said Benrahma. “Already, after the goal, I felt a lot better, I dared more, and I had more freedom. It’s worth continuing like this, I have a team who trusts me, I have a coach who trusts me, the entire club trusts me, and I try to take that into the field.”

Thilo Kehrer, Monaco

Monaco’s deal for Kehrer also includes an option to buy in the summer. Kehrer, who played a key role in West Ham’s Europa Conference League triumph last May, playing 38 times across all competitions in his debut season after joining from Paris Saint-Germain, saw his opportunities limited following the summer signing of fellow defender Konstantinos Mavropanos from Stuttgart.

Falling down the pecking order behind Kurt Zouma, the new captain, Angelo Ogbonna, Nayef Aguerd and Mavropanos, Kehrer made only four substitute appearances in the Premier League. The 27-year-old was keen to go out on loan in January to boost his chances of featuring in host nation Germany’s squad for the upcoming European Championship, potentially adding to his 27 caps.

Under coach Adi Hutter, Kehrer has made 11 appearances, all starts, for a Monaco team currently third in Ligue 1, missing just one game since signing due to a suspension.

Flynn Downes, Southampton

Of all Southampton’s summer signings following their relegation from the Premier League, Downes has thrived most under their first-year manager Russell Martin. The 25-year-old midfielder missed four games last month with a hip injury, and his absence contributed to promotion candidates Southampton’s loss of form as a club record 25-match unbeaten run came to an end with a 3-1 loss against Bristol City.

Martin’s side have played 25 league matches with Downes this season, winning 18 and losing three, with a goals-scored average of 2.2. In the 11 without him, they have lost four, drawn three and are averaging 1.5 goals. “He is a big player for us, he is important,” said Martin. “He’s a brilliant character, he’s a winner, someone who’s aggressive and a brilliant athlete too.”

When West Ham strengthened their midfield last summer with James Ward-Prowse, Mohammed Kudus and Edson Alvarez, Downes was given the green light to join Southampton on loan. The arrangement does not include an option to buy, something West Ham were reluctant to sanction. But Southampton intend to prioritise turning his loan into a permanent transfer at the end of the season, regardless of whether they go straight back up.



Callum Marshall, West Bromwich Albion

The Northern Ireland international had interest from 10 clubs in the recent winter window, but a switch to Championship promotion hopefuls West Brom was considered best for his development.

Ian Pearce, the former West Ham defender, is their head of recruitment and he outlined how Marshall would improve playing for the West Midlands club in the second tier, where they sit fifth in the table. West Ham sporting director Mark Noble also played an important role in the 19-year-old forward signing a contract extension until 2027 before his move.

Marshall made his first-team debut for West Ham off the bench in the FA Cup loss to Bristol City in January, shortly before joining West Brom for the rest of the season. The move has not gone well, with Marshall only playing in three of their 10 league games since and not starting, or scoring, once. He has been an unused substitute six times and was not in the 20-man matchday squad for a 4-1 away win against Huddersfield Town two weeks ago.

“It’s a pity, because he’s a player with a lot of good skills and he’s in a position where there is still a lot of growth,” West Brom head coach Carlos Corberan said of Marshall’s situation recently.

“We have players who went on loan to places where we wanted them to play, and they didn’t. When you are 17, 18, 19 years old and you go into the Championship, to a club like West Bromwich, which is in a good position in the table, you cannot go there, in your first loan, thinking this is under-21 level.”

Freddie Potts, Wycombe Wanderers

The 20-year-old midfielder has impressed hugely since joining Wycombe on a season-long loan last summer.

Potts has played an important role in Wycombe getting to the EFL Trophy final (against fellow League One side Peterborough United at Wembley on April 7), scoring twice with two assists across 36 appearances in all competitions.

“I’m loving it at Wycombe and it’s been one of the best decisions to come here,” Potts told The Athletic in October. “The treatment and trust the gaffer (manager Matt Bloomfield) has put in me is starting to pay off. It’s a tough league with good sides but I’m really enjoying it. It’s a club that suits my style of play and we’re looking to achieve big things.”

Potts is the son of former West Ham defender — and their current under-21s head coach — Steve Potts, and the younger brother of Luton Town defender Dan Potts. He scored his first senior goal away against Charlton Athletic in September.

Several other unnamed League One sides were also interested in signing him last summer but West Ham felt Wycombe — looking to implement a more progressive playing style under Bloomfield — would be best for his development and he has since reaped the rewards.



Gideon Kodua, Wycombe Wanderers

Last season, Kodua captained West Ham Under-18s to FA Youth Cup glory, scoring a superb goal in the final as they beat Arsenal 5-1 at their Emirates Stadium. It was always on the cards for striker Kodua to go out on loan this season and Wycombe were considered an ideal fit in January, following Potts’ development and a standout, goal-scoring performance for West Ham Under-21s against them in the EFL Trophy a couple of weeks earlier.

But Kodua has not had a Potts-level impact yet, having only played in five of their 13 league matches since joining, starting two of them. He is yet to play 90 minutes under Bloomfield but put in his strongest performance for Wycombe so far in their most recent match, a 2-0 home win against Northampton Town last Saturday.

Nathan Trott, Vejle

Goalkeeper Trott is in the final three months of his West Ham contract and hopes to extend his stay at Vejle, who are second bottom of the Danish top flight. This is his second season on loan there and Trott has started all 22 league games in it so far, keeping five clean sheets.

“I’m not focused on my contract situation with West Ham right now as that would just be a distraction, so I’ll leave that to my agent,” the 25-year-old told Danish media outlet Bold. “I’ll just keep playing, and then we’ll see in the summer what my options are. Of course, I’ll have to talk to West Ham and look at my other options. It’s too early to say where I would like to play.

“I enjoy life in Vejle. The Superliga is a good league, there are many good teams and healthy competition. I wouldn’t mind staying for another season.”

Krisztian Hegyi, Den Bosch

The highly-rated 21-year-old goalkeeper joined Den Bosch of the Netherlands in January, and has since kept four clean sheets in 10 appearances. Den Bosch play in the Dutch second tier and are currently 19th out of 20 clubs, only off the bottom of the table on goal difference. This is the Hungarian’s second loan this season, with a spell at League One side Stevenage getting cut short after he only made four appearances.

Dan Chesters, Salford City

Having spent the first half of this season playing for West Ham Under-21s, and being on the bench for the Europa League group game away against Serbia’s Backa Topola in November, midfielder Chesters was packed off on loan to Salford City of League Two for the rest of it on deadline day last month.

The 21-year-old has played nine league matches for Salford so far, starting six times, without scoring, after failing to find the net in 18 appearances during an underwhelming loan to Colchester United in the same fourth-tier division last season.

Keenan Appiah-Forson, Dagenham & Redbridge

Since joining West Ham’s east London neighbours on a season-long loan, midfielder Appiah-Forson has made 21 appearances (17 starts) in the National League, English football’s fifth tier, scoring once. The 22-year-old is entering the final months of his West Ham contract and is unlikely to be offered an extension.

This is Appiah-Forson’s first loan and he hopes regular first-team football will put him in contention to play for Ghana.

“We have held talks about me playing for Ghana, together with my parents,” the London-born youngster told Ghanaian broadcaster Saddick Adams. “I have actually thought about this and I have always said if I get the call up from Ghana, I will always take it. Because this is where my parents are from. I want to give back to them and show them what I’m capable of.”

Mason Terry, Concord Rangers

Terry joined the Essex-based Isthmian League Premier Division side, who play in the seventh tier of English football, on a season-long loan in August. The 19-year-old, who signed his first professional contract last season, was keen to go out on loan after fellow West Ham goalkeeper Jacob Knightbridge, now 20, spent last season at the same level with Harrow Borough, another London-area side.

“One of my targets was to play men’s football,” said Terry. “I wanted to challenge myself. I knew it wouldn’t be easy but I’m loving it. I still train with West Ham (the clubs are less than an hour’s drive apart) and feel involved with the under-21s, but I am also getting the games at Concord, which is really important.

“The players have made me feel welcome and given me lots of advice, bits of information, from their experiences. I have always been learning and I feel a lot stronger and confident in my play.”




The Athletic

Sir Geoff Hurst, 1966’s last man standing



Oliver Kay

Sir Geoff Hurst is thinking about absent friends. He has been doing a lot of that lately. “You get to that age,” the 82-year-old says with a wistful tone, all too painfully aware that many people don’t.

We are talking about lives, legacies and the passing of time. About how “30 years of hurt”, the years of the England men’s national team winning nothing, referenced in the song Three Lions, is now coming up to six decades — and how, of the 11 men in the team that beat West Germany on English football’s greatest day, Hurst, the hat-trick hero in that 1966 World Cup final, is now the only survivor.

For years, the boys of ’66 held reunions. “Each year a different player would host it,” he says. “We would play golf, the wives would go shopping and then in the evening we would all get together for a meal and it was great. It illustrated the camaraderie, the spirit and how close we all were.”

He recalls his sense of disbelief when the great Bobby Moore, the man who lifted the Jules Rimet trophy as captain, died from colon cancer in 1993, aged just 51. “I was driving up north somewhere when it came on the news and it was a huge blow,” he said. “Someone I had grown up with at West Ham as well as England and always looked up to. The best player I ever played with, a fantastic leader and captain.”

Then it was Alan Ball, only 21 when he won the World Cup and only 61 when he died after suffering a heart attack while trying to put out a fire in his garden.

At one reunion, Ray Wilson shocked his former team-mates by announcing in that matter-of-fact way of his that he had been diagnosed with dementia. Nobby Stiles, the tough-tackling midfielder, later had a similar diagnosis.

Hurst recalls another reunion when his former West Ham United team-mate Martin Peters, who scored the other goal in the final, became confused on the golf course and was “clearly struggling”. A third dementia diagnosis followed. Others would come later.

The numbers at those reunions dwindled; Wilson, Stiles and Peters too unwell to attend, others in declining health.

When a huge event was arranged at Wembley Stadium to commemorate the 50th anniversary in 2016, only four of the victorious starting line-up — Gordon Banks, George Cohen, Jack Charlton and Hurst — were able to attend. When they parted that evening, it was in the sad recognition that this reunion would likely be their last.

The tributes poured in when Wilson died in 2018, Banks and Peters a year later. When Jack Charlton and Stiles died in 2020, the country was in lockdown and their funerals were sparsely attended. Then it was Roger Hunt, Hurst’s strike partner in the final, then Cohen, then last October the great Sir Bobby Charlton passed away — and suddenly, mournfully, there was one.

It’s a funny thing, sitting in the company of English football royalty.

Hurst has been such a familiar presence over the years, perhaps the most visible and certainly the most media-savvy member of the 1966 team.

But in another way, he seemed the most distant. From a journalistic perspective, there was always a “run it past my agent” air to Hurst which would have felt alien to Wilson, Cohen, Stiles and others. You couldn’t cold-call him. Interviews were by appointment only.

So is this one, over coffee at a hotel near his home in the well-heeled spa town of Cheltenham. It helps that he has a roadshow to promote, touring theatres and sharing the stories of the World Cup triumph.

But this feels like a different Hurst — less business-like, more contemplative, more reflective as he embarks on what he is calling his farewell tour.

Why farewell? “Well it depends how I feel at the end of it, but I’m not getting any younger,” he says.


The England World Cup squad before leaving for a pre-tournament tour in Europe. (Back row, from left) Les Cocker (trainer), George Cohen, Gerry Byrne, Roger Hunt, Ron Flowers, Gordon Banks, Ron Springett, Peter Bonetti, Jimmy Greaves, Bobby Moore, John Connelly, George Eastman and Harold Shepherdson (trainer). (Front row, from left) Jimmy Armfield, Nobby Stiles, Jack Charlton, Geoff Hurst, Terry Paine, Ray Wilson, Martin Peters, Alan Ball and Bobby Charlton. (Sitting on the ground) Norman Hunter (left) and Ian Callaghan (Roger Jackson/Central Press/Getty Images)

He talks of a life in three acts: the first growing up in Essex, going to school and becoming an apprentice footballer; the second in professional football, scoring goals and winning trophies for West Ham, forcing his way into the England squad at the age of 24 and then making history five months later, going onto play for Stoke City and others, and briefly trying his hand in management; and then the third working in insurance, which took him roughly from the age of 40 to 60.

But what of the last two decades? “Well, from 60 onwards it has been pretty part-time, doing PR work, things like that, and then doing the theatres,” he says. “Terry (his agent) came up with the theatre idea a few years ago and it has proved to be very successful.”

The continuing fascination with the 1966 story amazes him. “It is quite remarkable,” he says. “You realise over the years what a big event it is. People stop and ask me about it every time I leave the house. The other day I got an email from someone in Germany asking if I could sign a programme for him. Germany!”

He knows the fascination with 1966 persists in part because England haven’t won it since. Brazil have won the men’s World Cup five times, Germany and Italy four times, Argentina three times, France and Uruguay twice. England and Spain are the only nations to have won it once — and Spain’s 2010 success was recent enough for most of us to remember vividly, whereas you would have to be in your sixties at least to recall England’s triumph.

“The medieval times, I call them,” Hurst says. “The only thing that hasn’t changed in that time is the goalposts.”

At the time, it didn’t feel life-changing. Even as the tournament unfolded, the World Cup was still a hazy concept in the English consciousness.

“One of the reasons is that we hadn’t done particularly well prior to that,” Hurst says. “In 1950, we got beat 1-0 by America. If we were beaten by America today, people wouldn’t be very happy. But goodness me, this was America in 1950. And this was in an England team with Tom Finney, Stanley Matthews, Nat Lofthouse, some of the greats of our game. So by the time 1966 came around, there wasn’t a great interest or expectation from the public.”

England had home advantage, but the tournament was a slow-burner. There were empty seats at Wembley for their opening game against Uruguay and a 0-0 draw did little to whet the public appetite. Only gradually, with victories over Mexico and France to reach the knockout stage, did a wave of popular support grow.

At that point, Hurst was kicking his heels on the bench, in the squad as an understudy for Hunt and Jimmy Greaves. “I remember being happy just to be there,” he says. “There is no way I was going to play unless Jimmy was injured.”

But Greaves’ goalscoring touch eluded him in the first two games and then he was injured in the third, suffering a gash to his shin. At that point, opportunity knocked for Hurst, who scored the only goal in the quarter-final victory over Argentina. He played in the semi-final, a 2-1 win over Portugal, but, with Greaves fit again, Hurst was still pleasantly surprised to keep his place for the final against West Germany.

The whole experience sounds a world away from the hype and bombast that accompanies the modern game — particularly at tournament time. There were long afternoons spent playing cards or dominoes. On the eve of the final, manager Alf Ramsey allowed his players a trip to the cinema to watch Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines. They walked from their hotel in Hendon, north London, to the nearest cinema, largely unnoticed.

What does Hurst remember of the day of the final? “It felt like a normal day,” he says. “I’ve got a lovely picture of us all sitting down at a long table at the hotel for lunch. Everyone else is eating and I’m looking over my shoulder directly at the camera. Nothing out of the ordinary.”


Hurst looks over his shoulder on the day of the final (Terry Fincher/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

For those involved, the game went by in a blur — even a gruelling period of extra time after West Germany equalised in the 89th minute.

Hurst has seen the highlights a thousand times or more and he will never tire of telling the story of his highly controversial second goal to put England 3-2 up in stoppage time when the ball crashed down off the crossbar and linesman Tofiq Bahramov signalled his belief that it had crossed the goal line. Hurst has always said Hunt’s instinctive celebration put the matter beyond doubt “because if there was any doubt at all in Roger’s mind, he would have followed it up and put the rebound in”.


Hurst celebrates the controversial third (Cattani/Fox Photos/Getty Images)

As for the hat-trick goal — “They think it’s all over… it is now”, in the immortal words of BBC commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme — Hurst has dined out on it for nearly six decades.

He starts by talking about Jack Charlton going ballistic as Moore, his ever-composed partner in central defence, brought the ball down on his chest in the penalty area, 3-2 up in the final minute of extra time in a World Cup final. Then, upon receiving the pass from Moore, he mentions seeing Ball making a brilliant run to his right but thinking, “F*** you, Bally, I’m on a hat-trick here.”

And then he describes wellying his shot with his left foot, half-hoping it would end up in the crowd to eat up more precious time and finding himself delighted — weary but delighted — when it ended up in the back of the net. At that moment, the course of his life changed. He just didn’t know it yet.

The tour kicks off in the unlikely surroundings of Frome, Somerset. Unlikely in the sense that this quaint market town is not exactly a football hotbed. Its local team, Frome Town, plays in English football’s seventh tier.

But the town’s main entertainment venue is packed for Hurst’s arrival.

At 7.30pm, the lights are dimmed and the room falls silent before a big screen flickers into life, showing the goals from the 1966 final, building up towards that moment: “They think it’s all over… It is now.”

Hurst arrives on stage to cheers, but he starts with an apology for the tissue sticking out of his nose — the legacy, he says, of a nosebleed that morning. “It was either stuff this up my nose or cancel the gig,” he says. With that, he is into his stride and his polished repertoire.

But he has only been on stage minutes before his nose starts bleeding again. He reluctantly leaves to be patched up. An auction of signed shirts — Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Pele, Hurst — ensues, brought forward from the interval, raising money for children’s charities in the south west, before Hurst returns to the stage half an hour later.

The crowd waits for Hurst in Frome (Photo: Oliver Kay)

Undeterred, Hurst rattles through a series of anecdotes and has just spoken about being mistaken for Glenn Hoddle in the Cheltenham branch of John Lewis when the bleeding starts again. He looks distraught as he walks off.

Eventually, the compere comes back on and reluctantly, apologetically calls it a night with the promise that Hurst will return to Frome at a later date. There is a sense of anticlimax in the air, but there is also a lot of warmth towards Hurst.

“Get yourself sorted, Geoff,” someone calls out, to a round of applause. “Go and get fixed,” shouts another. More applause. Backstage, Hurst is anguished. But he can hear the applause. It warms his heart.

Back in Cheltenham, Hurst says he feels lucky. Blessed with the talent to become a professional footballer; blessed with the mindset to make the most of that talent; blessed with an opportunity to play in the World Cup when he had felt happy — indeed honoured — just to watch Greaves from the bench; blessed with everything that fell his way on July 30, 1966; blessed with good health.

His pride at his World Cup final hat-trick is abundantly clear; he doesn’t mind suggesting Kylian Mbappe’s three goals against Argentina in 2022 resonate less because France lost the final, but he doesn’t for one minute claim to have been England’s best performer in the final. He is sure he wasn’t.

“Oh no, I would say Bally was man of the match,” Hurst says. “Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville analysed the final for Sky a few years ago and they said Alan Ball was man of the match. Absolutely he was. Bally was probably the most passionate player ever to represent England. He was absolutely fantastic.


Some of the team celebrate the 1966 win (Allsport Hulton/Archive)

“The ability of that team goes without question. Banks, Moore, Charlton, Greaves… I mean, good heavens. I played with some fantastic players over the years, but you wouldn’t find four better than those four.”

It is striking that he includes Greaves, whose place he took. “I’ve always been acutely aware of that,” he says. “Jimmy was one of the greatest goalscorers — if not the greatest goalscorer — we have ever had.”

Greaves admitted to a sense of despair at missing out. His overwhelming feeling was that he was “the loneliest man in Wembley Stadium that particular day”. “All I wanted to do that day, after we won the World Cup was just to… go away and be alone really,” he told the BBC in 1981.

Greaves only played three more times for England. He continued to excel for Tottenham Hotspur, but within three years, in his late 20s, his career was in steep decline. Two years after that, he was finished with professional football and battling with alcoholism. Greaves, who died in 2021, always rejected the theory that the bittersweet World Cup triumph triggered his off-pitch problems, but he also admitted that missing out was a “tremendous blow” to his self-esteem.

Hurst’s life went in the opposite direction. He was now English football’s golden boy.

There is another dimension to the 1966 story. It concerns the widely held feeling that English football and the English establishment let down the heroes who had won the World Cup. It was as if on one level their achievement was taken for granted, as if it were simply a restoration of the natural order (which, as the past six decades have demonstrated, it was not). On another level, individual contributions seemed to be overlooked in the eagerness to bask in the glory of victory.

Many of Hurst’s team-mates struggled financially after they had finished playing football. Most of them had left school at 16 to start football apprenticeships, many of them with no qualifications, and were not set up for the third act of their lives.

Ball and, more enduringly, Jack Charlton had success in management, Bobby Charlton’s name and reputation earned him ambassadorial work, Wilson became an undertaker and Hunt joined the family’s haulage business. But others drifted — lionised as national heroes when it suited the establishment, but otherwise forgotten, cut adrift, “put out to pasture” as Ball’s son Jimmy described it.

That included Moore, who dabbled in management (unsuccessfully) and business (even more so) and ended up grateful that David Sullivan, now chairman of West Ham, briefly employed him in a largely ceremonial role at the Sunday Sport newspaper so that he could at least get a seat in the press box to watch the club he had represented with distinction.

It was not until after Moore’s death that statues were commissioned in his honour at Upton Park, West Ham’s former home, and Wembley.

“There are a lot of stories about that with Mooro and others,” Hurst says. “You look at it now, where there are so many jobs for ex-players, working for the clubs or working in the media, and it’s fantastic. But it really wasn’t like that then. It wasn’t like Germany, where they used the experience and knowledge of players in various roles once they retired. Here, you could hardly get a ticket.”


Hurst scores the winner against Argentina in the quarter-final (Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Hurst tried his hand at management, initially at non-League Telford United and then at Chelsea, where he lasted 19 months, narrowly missing out on promotion in the first season before being sacked towards the end of the second. There was a brief and lucrative stint coaching in Kuwait, but Hurst soon concluded he would be better off leaving football behind and selling insurance policies instead.

In some ways, Hurst more resembles a retired insurance salesman than an ex-footballer. He enjoyed the work and found the transition fairly easy, even if it felt like a comedown. Early on, he cold-called a customer and introduced himself before being told, curtly, “If you’re Geoff Hurst, I’m f***ing Marilyn Monroe”. He tells that story as enthusiastically as any from his football career.

But Hurst, too, faced adversity — and grief. His brother, Robert, died by suicide in 1974 having been stalked by depression for years.

Hurst recounts how years later, on a train from Norwich to London, a conductor sat down with him and gave him a cup of tea. He imagined this was the prelude to a conversation about 1966 and all that. Instead, the conductor revealed he had been working on the train that Robert threw himself in front of.

He also lost his eldest daughter, Claire, in 2010 after a long illness. “My wife Judith and I struggled with that for a long time,” he says, adding that he feels unable to accompany Judith on her trips to the cemetery because he finds it too painful.

In more recent years, Hurst has found himself grieving team-mates and friends. The loss of Peters, his West Ham team-mate, hit him hard. They were neighbours for years and their wives were particularly close. Likewise the loss of Bobby Charlton. “Bobby was the best,” he says. “Just the best. My wife puts it perfectly about Bobby. He never put a foot wrong, on or off the pitch.”


Hurst waits as Queen Elizabeth II presents Bobby Moore with the trophy (Keystone/Getty Images)

So many players of that generation were diagnosed with dementia. That includes six of the starting XI in that World Cup final (Wilson, Stiles, Peters, Hunt and both Charlton brothers).

“There was some research recently which suggested retired footballers from our generation were three-and-a-half times more likely to get dementia than the rest of the population,” Hurst says. “You can’t ignore that. There has to be a link to the constant banging (heading), particularly with the old balls we used to have. At West Ham, we used to practise heading for 45 minutes at a time, jumping up to a head a ball on a rope.”

But it felt particularly cruel to Hurst that so many of his team-mates lost the memories that would have nourished them daily. He says he still thinks of the World Cup final every day and it still brings a smile to his face. The thought of some of his team-mates spending their final days staring into the middle distance, their place in the nation’s sporting history lost on them, saddens him immensely.

He knows it could happen to him, too. He knows fate can be capricious and cruel. Of that, too, he has daily reminders.

Two weeks after that false start in Frome, Hurst is back on stage at a theatre in Worcester, a half-hour drive from his Cheltenham home.

He starts by asking the audience whether they had heard he had been unwell.

Yes, comes the concerned reply.

“Well… I’m f***ing all right,” he says to the sound of laughter. “It was a nosebleed. The first nosebleed I’ve ever had. So I could spend 20 minutes on the nosebleed story or I could talk about my career. Which would you prefer?”

The audience delivers the right answer and Hurst is off again and into his stride, talking about his old team-mates: Banks the greatest goalkeeper he ever saw; Moore so immaculate that “he used to iron his banknotes”, so smooth that “when he got out of the bath he wasn’t wet”; Ball a tenacious bundle of energy with a squeaky voice; Stiles as hard as nails but hilarious, at times without realising it.

In the middle of it was Ramsey, whose quiet air of authority brought the whole thing together in a way that no England manager has been able to do in nearly six decades since.


Hurst, England’s World Cup hero, at 82 (Photo: Oliver Kay)

To Hurst, that last fact is astounding. “At times it has been very disappointing,” he says. “There have been some disastrous tournaments.

“But I think this current bunch of players under this manager (Gareth Southgate) are the best we’ve had in a long time. I mean, Harry Kane, what a player, crikey. Jude Bellingham, it’s remarkable what he’s doing at such a young age. It takes more than just a good bunch of players to win something, but we do have some fantastic players. I wouldn’t be shocked or surprised if we went on to win (the European Championship) this year.”

He hopes so. That or the World Cup in 2026. He enjoys the prestige that comes with his place in sporting history, particularly the hat-trick, but the honour of being the only living Englishman to have played in a World Cup final — let alone to have won it — is not something he ever contemplated and he certainly never wished for.

The more time that has passed, the lonelier it has become on that particular pedestal. He misses those times when he and that band of brothers would get together, play a round of golf while the wives went shopping, and reminisce about the good old days. These days it is all about keeping their memory and their legacy alive.

Mex Martillo 10:01 Sun Mar 24
Re: Saturday news (includes West Ham)

Thanks Alan 3:14 Sat Mar 23

Heavi995 8:38 Sun Mar 24
Re: Saturday news (includes West Ham)

Thanks Alan

Texas Iron 7:16 Sat Mar 23
Re: Saturday news (includes West Ham)

Cheers…

Thanks Alan 3:14 Sat Mar 23
Re: Saturday news (includes West Ham)

Thanks Alan