Everyone with an interest in football must know what Alf Ramsey did. In 1966 as manager he won the World Cup for England. Equally it is just as well-known that no-one had done it before or still has since. But is rarely mentioned is that he did it with a team that was to the foreign eye very un-English, not in the players involved but in formation and approach. It was not long-ball. It was not 2-3-5. And it was not frenetic. And that lack of English conventionality had it roots in the experiences and events of his footballing life, not so much as a manager, because that was relatively brief even at club level, just six years to the national appointment in 1962, but as a player.     

Ramsey had been a good player but not a great one. In spite of winning thirty-two caps over five years from 1948, a total that might possibly have been more but for the war-years, he had obvious limitations as well as assets. 

"He had a very, very good football brain. If he hadn't, he would not have played where he did, because he was not the most nimble of players. Not particularly brilliant in the air, because he did not have the stature to jump up. But he was a decent tackler and a great passer. He could read the game so well, that was his big asset. That was why he became such a great manager."

His introduction to the game came in growing up in some rural poverty in Essex in Dagenham, then a pre-industrial village. As a youngster he played inside-left before switching to centre-half, but not the effectively centre-back that was being pioneered at Arsenal at precisely that time, the late 1920s. Ramsey had only been born in 1920. Rather, at five feet eight in height, he played as an English or rather Welsh-origin centre-half, between the wing-backs as a three and where size was not important, nor pace particularly but the ability to read the game, to stop or mount an attack, i.e. to tackle and to pass, was.

As such he reached schoolboy, county level but then,, on having to start work, dropped out of the game almost entirely, by which time he had seen just one League football match, Arsenal versus the team he supported, West Ham. Later he would write that he remembered from that day mainly the performance of one player above the others. That player was Arsenal, via Raith and Preston, and Scotland's diminutive inside-left and fetch-and-carry attack-instigator, Alex James, himself a left-footed iteration from thirty years earlier of fellow-Scot, John Cameron, the manager at Spurs, from whom Herbert Chapman, Arsenal's and James' manager had himself learned and in all his managerial posts had sought to find in others. In James he was at his most successful.

But back to Ramsey. It is then said that after a hiatus of a couple of years he started to play again, was spotted by Portsmouth but that it came to nothing, at which point the war came. He was nineteen. Then a year later he was conscripted into the Army and rose to be the company quartermaster sergeant-major in an anti-aircraft unit having first been posted to St. Austell and then Southampton. And it was initially in Cornwall that he involvement is football was revived, as a centre-forward or centre-half, and in Hampshire that it was consolidated, still at centre-half, when, with him still in the army,  Southampton first signed him as an amateur and for the 1944-45 season. 

In fact, at St Mary's Ramsey was soon switched first to inside-left and then for 1945-46 started the season back at centre-forward. And it was still there, after a brief sojourn in Palestine before demobilisation, that he, having by now signed as a professional, found himself at the beginning of 1946-47. However,  it was only in the reserves, where after five games, it seems mainly at the instigation of the club trainer and assistant manager, Sidney Cann, a decision was taken, as basically a two-footed player, to try him at right-back. It was the position where he would remain for the rest of his playing days.

But perhaps just as interesting as the change itself is Cann's backstory. He was a Devonian and himself an ex-full-back, so understood what the position needed. He had started locally at Torquay but then spent five seasons as a reserve but a team-mate of Matt Busby at Manchester City and four more at Charlton under Jimmy Seed, who in turn had learned the bulk of his footballing trade at Spurs from a certain Peter McWilliam.  Moreover, Cann would show himself not without managerial ability. In 1949 he would step up to become Southampton manager and at the end of the season almost take the club into the First Division.  He and it would miss out by .063 on goal-average to Sheffield Wednesday with Tottenham under Arthur Rowe promoted by right with Ramsey by then in London and as an integral part of that upwardly-mobile Push 'n Run team.

It had been after rows at Southampton, an approach by Spurs and a second, revived bid, that Ramsey had moved to White Hart Lane  in May 1949 for what was said to have been, with a player going in the opposite direction, overall a then record fee. And in doing so he found, perhaps surprisingly, his spiritual home not because of the place but the people and the style of football involved, to which Arthur Rowe was pivotal. He had just joined the club from two successful managerial seasons at Chelmsford City but had been a Tottenham first-team player, a locally-born centre-half, for a decade from 1929 almost to the war and interestingly a brief, pre-war coaching job in Hungary. And , before that even he had been at Northfleet, instigated as a Spurs feeder club in 1924 by none other than Peter McWilliam once more, and had been signed and placed there by the same. In fact the Push 'n Run style, give-go and collect, had been openly admitted by Rowe himself as having been in large part derived from the training exercises McWilliam had brought to the club, the other component being the role McWilliam had as a player developed for himself as the attack-instigator, Scottish-style, at his only club, the hugely successful Newcastle United of the first decade of the 20th Century.

Indeed, Rowe, an Englishman but inculcated in the until World War Two, distinctive Scottish system of play, might specifically have been looking at his Spurs of the early 1950s for his own Peter McWilliam but with the understanding that it, he, did not need to be a player in a specific position. McWilliam had been a left-half but need not have been. Ramsey seems to have understood that too, both theoretically and practically. Had not Alex James been an inside-left? Nor indeed did he/it have to be Scots. In fact, with the two men, Rowe and Ramsey, having similar personalities, tactical views and a belief in a fast, attacking style of play, it could even be from firstly full-back, an attacking full-back adept at the overlap, and secondly a Dagenham-boy. And that is precisely what came about. Rowe gave Ramsey the job of starting attacks utilising the latter's accurate passing and game comprehension yet reliant on a further organisational necessity, just as had been the case for McWilliam at Newcastle. When he had attacked, switching position on the field vertically or horizontally, Wilf Lowe, also a Scot, or Colin Veitch, a Geordie but Colin Campbell McKechnie Veitch, knew to move across and fill the gap with a two. At Tottenham a certain Bill Nicholson at right-half was tasked in this case with dropping back to do the same.

In itself that was not a problem. Nicholson too had been recruited to the club by McWilliam in his second term as manager from 1938 to 1942 and also served his time at Northfleet. He knew the pattern of play and, moreover, they, he and others, were coached in it daily by a fifth piece in the jig-saw, Cecil Poynton. As again a full-back, this time on the left, he had joined Tottenham as a twenty-one year old, stayed at the club for nine season, been away for a couple of years, out of the game for a few more but post-war had in 1945 re-joined as assistant first team trainer and become club trainer in 1947, a role he would fill for twenty-five years. And, of course, the man to have first recruited Poynton to White Hart Lane way back in the day had yet again been Peter McWilliam.

It is said of Alf Ramsey at Tottenham that,

"He was the master of strategy, the lynchpin of a side that built its attacks from the back, the scheming practitioner who put Rowe's plans into action."

I rest my case. And of Rowe's team that it,

"became a great side through push-and-run, which was tailor-made for Alf. There was no long ball from him, and he was one of the crucial members of the side ... Alf played a tremendous part in setting the pass pattern, which wasn't typical of the British game. It was a revolutionary side, very well-knit."

To which I add two notes; by "British" is meant "English" and by "revolutionary" "traditionally Scottish". It was Cullen Skink not Pie and Mash.

But even the best of things must come to an end but not before one, perhaps two, more major events and therefore influences. The lesser one was that Ramsey was full-back winning his seventh cap in the England side that was defeated by the USA in the 1950 World Cup in Brazil. It was the first, real, non-British humiliation and slip of the English footballing crown. Oh, and by the way the US team manager, William Jeffery, was a Scot and Ed McIlvenny, selected on the day as the American captain just because he could be, was one too.  However, it got worse. By 1953 Ramsey was on his thirty-second cap when selected in November to face Hungary at Wembley. Everyone knows the result, 3-6. Ramsey, by then almost thirty-four, scored one of the England responses, a penalty, but with Puskas scoring twice from inside-left was both humiliated, as was the whole team, and never pulled on England jersey again. Indeed, that game might be seen as the beginning of the end of his playing career. At Tottenham Nicholson had been replaced at right-half by Danny Blanchflower and the team-dynamic changed. In addition Ramsey spend much of the 1954-55 season injured, then Rowe stepped down at the end of the season and Ramsey was, probably still unknowingly, on his way too. It was initially thought that he might have turned to coaching and at Spurs but Jimmy Adamson, Rowe's replacement and another life-long member of the Tottenham staff, looked instead to Nicholson. Ramsey was frozen out and was gone, not as a player, his boots were already hung up, but directly into management, elsewhere and two divisions down. 

He went to Ipswich Town. It was literally small-town but a financially well-backed club, managed from the Southern into the Football League and then into its Second Division by Scott Duncan, an ex. outside-right mainly at Newcastle. In fact there for three seasons he had been a team-mate of McWilliam. But Ipswich was now a team clearly with on-field problems, having with just one away win all season just been relegated into the Third Division South. Moreover, Dumbarton-born so again Scottish Duncan was sixty-six years old and ready to retire after seventeen years as a player and thirty-two years more as club secretary, in management on both sides of the border. A younger man's energy was needed. Ramsey was he.

Yet notably Duncan did not go entirely, nor quite yet. On arrival Alf Ramsey took control of all team affairs, indeed insisted on it without interference, whilst Duncan would run for a while the club's administrative side. That "while" turned out to be three years, was clearly amicable and allowed four things. The first was Ramsey properly learning how to run a football club. The second was for him to be able to listen to the playing ideas and player assessments from a man, who knew more about both than most. The third was for him to coach the team in the way he wanted; i.e. his variant of Arthur Rowe and Peter McWilliam's Spurs, Push 'n Run philosophy. And the fourth was that this last could be, indeed, was done with minimal interference from Duncan, because the older man understood it intuitively. After all was it not rooted in the Old Scots style, with which he had grown up?

It meant that in the first season of partnership there was little change. Only one yet, as time would prove, vital new face arrived, the goalkeeper, Roy Bailey. He would be one of six players to remain with the club throughout the Ramsey seasons. And there were four Scots in the squad. One would be McMillan, who Bailey would replace, whilst two, Jimmy Leadbetter and Tom Malcolm, would also and equally pivotally be amongst that same six.

With the changes the club was firstly steadied and then taken to third place, just two points, so then a win, off an immediate climb of a division. Furthermore that promotion in first place, albeit on goal-difference, would by 1956-57, the second season of the partnership, not be long in coming as, whilst four left the club but the four Scots all remained, just two new faces arrived, one at half-back and in Ramsey's old position a young, right full-back, Larry Carberry.

However, following year, the third and last of the partnership, and back in the Second Division it was clearly judged time finally for greater change. Attention was turned to all areas of the pitch, again on the crucial half-backs and returned to the forward-line. Two wingers, two half-backs, one the Scot, Bobby Johnstone, from Edinburgh via West Ham, and an inside-forward were brought in and the club held steady, reaching a solid eighth place. However, the following season there was a dip, which should perhaps be seen as the measure of the quiet contribution Duncan's presence had been making but was no more. In May 1959 a Ramsey-only Ipswich finished just four spots above the drop-zone with clearly a problem with the defence not holding on in tight games. All season, having acquired another new full-back, an additional half-back and, now as two Scots left, four forwards but with twenty-one year-old Ray Crawford amongst them, it drew just six and only two away.

Yet Ramsey's response was to do little but further clear the decks. Four more left. None came it. The result was that in May 1960 the team recovered somewhat, suggesting good coaching, and finished mid-table 11th, at which point Ramsey did then act. He brought in six new arrivals with three leaving, but amongst the new arrivals was the player, who probably changed not just the direction of Ipswich, the club, but of his manager's career, in the moment and for the future. The new boy was the half- cum centre-back cum versatile utility player, Bill Baxter, also twenty-one years old, a further Scot and acquired officially from Scottish junior club, Broxburn Utd. In fact he had been spotted whilst doing his National Service in England at Aldershot and at Ipswich would soon become the team captain, breaking up attacks and distributing the ball in, dare I say it, old Scottish-style, to his three main goal-threats, Crawford, plus local boy, Ted Phillips, and Doug Millward, both of whom had actually been Duncan signings.

Ramsey seems to have regarded Bill Baxter with some awe.  He could also be seen as proto-type Bobby Moore yet his talent seems to have gone unrecognised by all but the few. He would remain at Portman Road for over a decade until falling out with the manager five down the line, curiously Bobby Robson. By then Alf Ramsey had, of course, moved on. On what would be Ipswich's winning of the Second Division at the end of the season Baxter arrived, 1960-61, and the taking, with just a single addition to the squad, the inside-forward, Doug Moran, also a Scot, this time from Musselburgh via Falkirk, of the League title in May 1962, incidentally immediately ahead of both Burnley and Tottenham, and not Ipswich's then seventeenth place at the end of 1962, he had been appointed England manager. However, before this new step there is need to examine how the culmination of Ramsey's one club career had been achieved.

First it has to be restated that Alf Ramsey won the Second Division Championship with five players inherited entirely from Scott Duncan and one more that was acquired just as the Scot has stepped back but not yet down. Moreover, two more were acquired during the partnership. It meant that four, only four, were recruited by Ramsey alone. However, it also has to be said that of the team that took the First Division title in 1962 fewer of Duncan's and the partnership's men were then in the first eleven, four and one respectively. Ramsey had recruited six, five in the previous two seasons. The conclusion has to be that he inherited a good base but also built upon it astutely.

Second, Ramsey had achieved both titles with a system of play that he had definitely developed post-Duncan and which involved most pivotally one of Duncan's men and one of his own. His defence was conventional, two full-backs, Carberry and Malcolm and then Carberry and Compton, in front of a very sound goalkeeper, Bailey and behind half-backs, initially Pickett/Baxter, Nelson and the defensive Elsworthy and and then Baxter, Nelson and Elsworthy respectively. But the forwards were anything but conventional. He employed two wingers, Leadbetter, to whom he added Stephenson. Neither was in the flush of youth, 33 and 30 respectively and therefore not as nippy as they might once have been. But they could ping a pass, low or high, to the front-men from the bye-line or mid-field, from where especially Leadbetter actually operated for the most-part. And the three front men consisted of very much inside-forwards, Millward and Phillips and then Moran and Phillips, and a centre-forward of the sly rather than robust variety. Ray Crawford at 5ft 10ins yet well short of twelve stone was much more Roy Bentley than Jackie Milburn. 

It was at the very least unconventional yet it worked, with Ramsey having both the scope to choose his actors and the time to coach but also to observe and learn.

"Whilst at Ipswich, Ramsey converted Leadbetter from an outside left to a more withdrawn left-winger role. He began to play deeper, threading through passes or providing crosses for the prolific goal-scoring partnership of Ray Crawford and Ted Phillips. ......................................................Ramsey later admitted "Yes, he (Leadbetter) was Scottish, but I owed him so much.""

In other words he was able at Ipswich, rather than replicate the McWilliam of Newcastle or himself of Spurs, to identify his own Alex James in Jimmy Leadbetter, albeit a winger and not an inside forward, with Leadbetter providing and the two of u-front taking it from there.

But from the above quote there is a section missing, in fact, deleted by me and for good reason, I believe. It read as follows.

"This was to be the prototype for Ramsey's Wingless Wonders, with which he won the 1966 World Cup."

And my reason for deletion is simply that as an assertion it is not correct, something that I now will try to show.  

The most obvious contradiction is that it was not "wingless". At Ipswich he played not just Leadbetter as a notional one but also Stephenson far more conventionally. If anything it was a tactic not with an English or even British source but was 1953 Hungarian. For Ramsey's Portman Road two read Czibor and Budai respectively. And it could be argued even with England he would try the same, the difference being, be it by design or events, with the Wingless Wonders becoming the result, that it failed him and he adapted or that he moved on. You can decide which.

Yet, it is clear that, if Wingless Wonders were the end-point and post-Hungary was an intermediate stage, neither would be the starting-point when Alf Ramsey began his eleven seasons of England managership. Changes in his first selection in comparison with the last of predecessor, Walter Winterbottom, with the proviso the Winterbottom was a team-manager and selection was by committee, were in truth minimal. He clearly did not fancy Sheffield United's Graham Shaw at left-back. He was replaced by Ron Henry and was never to feature in the national team again. And he brought back a certain Robert Charlton but as, what he was then, a proper left-winger, in a team with two wide-men, the second being John Connelly on the right. He already had both Bobby Moore and Jimmy Greaves in the squad, although the latter did not play that game.  And he also recalled Bobby Smith, an utterly conventional, if aging, centre-forward dropped for the 1962 World Cup but Greaves' partner at Spurs, in place of Alan Peacock, who had earned much of his reputation at Middlesbrough as an inside-forward to a certain Brian Clough. However, there was one off-field change that was perhaps more important than all of the above. Ramsey insisted, as he had a Ipswich, that he was the sole chooser of the players that played. 

But the same limited change of that first team was not to be repeated for Ramsey's second England match. And here there were echoes of Ipswich. Ron Springett in goal was replaced more or less permanently by a certain Gordon Banks, remember Bailey for McMillan, a suggestion being that that the latter worked the box more allowing the full-backs greater scope to overlap, a Ramsey prerequisite. Armfield is credited as the first and best, in England at least, to do it, a corollary being widening. Then at centre-half Maurice Norman was brought in for Labone,  Jimmy Melia came in at inside-forward, Bryan Douglas took Connelly's role  and at left-back Henry's one cap was behind him, Gerry Byrne returning. But it was perhaps in the third game, a commendable draw against World Champions, Brazil, that a settled team began to emerge. Byrne lost his full-back place to Ramon "Ray" Wilson, George Eastham came in as another inside-forward and, Gordon Milne, a Scot, indeed a Dundonian in all but birth, was chosen at right-half for the first time, with none other than Bobby Moore consolidating more or less permanently at left-half.

And that settling team had by Ramsey's seventh game become his first, albeit briefly "fixed", one. Banks was in goal. The full-banks were Armfield and Wilson, the half-backs Milne, Norman and Moore. And the forward line was Charlton, Eastman, Smith, Greaves and a new name, Terry Paine, a winger then in still a two-winger plus centre-forward team, but one whose greatest asset to the manager was, like Charlton, an ability to adapt. 

However, the "fixed" team lasted just three games, three wins, at which point, seemingly as a result of defeat and against Scotland, three more changes took place. One was a second cap for Roger Hunt as a replacement, thus far temporarily, for Greaves. The second was the end of Bobby Smith's international career at the age of thirty with the third was Ramsey's more or less abandonment and for eight seasons of the specialist centre-forward. Smith would be replaced by Johnny Byrne, a sometime centre-forward but equally an inside forward, a central-ish forward in a central-ish attack that that had for the first time more than a passing resemblance to earlier Ipswich, Byrne in Crawford's role.     

Johnny Byrne would play more or less eight consecutive games in a team that again had an air of choosing itself from a settled squad of twenty with an adjustment in but one position. Jimmy Armfield, demoted to back-up, at almost twenty-nine would be replaced as first choice right-back George Cohen, four years his junior. But elsewhere there was a change taking place that was far less obvious. Ramsey's predilection for a fetch-and-carry winger on one flank and a more attacking one on the other, his Ipswich model, might just be seen to be creeping in though adjustment. Phil Thompson was brought in as the quasi-Stephenson. Bobby Charlton began to drop back a little into the Leadbetter role as Paine did too when he played, neither playing at the same time.

But still Ramsey could not have been happy. Against Scotland in 1964 he tried a two-man half-back line, effectively two centre-backs, inserting a two-main mid-field in front of the Eastham on the left and Milne on the right and presumably pushing the full-backs wider to accommodate. They lost. Then on tour at the end-of-season he tried against the USA the two centre-backs for a second time but now with no midfield before reverting to 2-3-5, albeit with still no conventional centre-forward, for the next game. It was his fifteen game in charge, would be played in Rio de Janeiro, against Brazil and England was gubbed 5-1. The right side of the defence, Milne and Cohen, was destroyed and for the next several games and a run of poor results it in general was thrown into turmoil. Cohen was dropped the next game, replaced by Robert Thomson. Then in game eighteen Cohen came back and Thomson was moved across to replace Wilson. Milne then would be dropped for both game twenty-one and for good and finally by game twenty-three, the half-back line had become Stiles. Jackie Charlton and Bobby Moore. It was April 1965, incidentally in a less then inspiring home-draw against Scotland  and the England's 1966 World Cup defence had came together and apparently conventionally, three half-backs, right, left and middle and two full-backs of the overlapping variety.

Now at this point a minute analysis of England's progress to the Jules Rimet trophy could be entered into but that would be not to recognise that Ramsey throughout would be constricted by the abilities and availability of the players at his disposal. It would therefore seem to be more constructive to concentrate on the games to come that would be, as the Rio one had just been, pivotal. Of them the first would see the introduction of both Jackie Charlton and Nobby Stiles. It was against Scotland in the 1965 Home Championship and as a conventional centre-and right-halves.  And it would almost immediately be followed by a first appearance of Alan Ball but at inside-left or at least inside-leftish. Moreover he had a wee run in the team but then swapped first to the right interestingly with the re-introduction in both cases of a conventional centre-forward, Mick Jones, and for the German game the same but in a three-man mid-field, a 2-3-3-2.

And, after a return to the norm of 2-2-5 that three-man midfield would re-emerge five games later, by which time there had been one important positional change, Bobby Charlton moved to inside-left, and the introduction, replacing an injured Jimmy Greaves, of Joe Baker.  He was a player who was more Scottish even than Gordon Milne.  Still only twenty-five and now brought back, having first been capped for "Down South" in 1960 he was Arsenal via Hibs' Joe Baker, a man who had lived almost all but the initial six weeks in Motherwell, would die in Wishaw and spoke 'Well an' Wishy". Indeed so thick was his accent that, it is said, his England team-mates struggled to understand him and, had he been born five years later, despite a start in Liverpool, his mother en route to Lanarkshire back from New York, where his brother, Gerry, also a noted professional player, had first seen the World, he would probably have been leading Scotland's line beside his pal, Denis Law and all the happier for it.

The game itself was against Spain in Madrid and was a triumph, won 0-2.  Bobby Charlton was at inside-left, Roger Hunt would be brought back in at inside-right and Joe Baker played between them. He scored in the eighth minute. But there were no wingers. Instead Alan Ball was behind Charlton as a fetch-and-carry, George Eastham behind Baker orchestrating and Stiles defensive on the right tackling as Moore and Jackie Charlton formed an on-paper, two-man half-back line in front of the Banks, Cohen, Wilson rear-guard.  Moreover, when Baker went off injured in the thirty-fifth minute he was replaced by Norman Hunter, who essentially provided a second, defensive mid-fielder on the left allowing Eastham to move up but not as a centre-forward.  Roger Hunt doubled the score in the fifty-fifth minute.

Ramsey could have been nothing but content with the Spanish outcome but again the record seems to show that once more he tweaked. It may be an unfair judgement. Injuries prior to the next game against Poland game to Bobby Charlton and during it once more to Joe Baker may have forced his hand. He kept the rest of the team as was but had to re-jig the forward-line not once but twice, re-introducing a winger before kick-off and then playing with ten men for a half and a bit. And, finishing as a draw with England equalising late on the game, as such it looks inconsequential. In fact it was the opposite. Jo Baker never played an international again and with him and his quasi-replacement with debutant Geoff Hurst the centre- but not the central-forward was pre-World Cup, with the next game prophetically against West Germany, consigned to the scrap-heap.     

In fact the caveat is made because of not what would happen in the German match but the one which followed.  Against Scotland once more it would see Bobby Charlton notionally now with the No. 9 on his back but operating from quasi-mid-field as a G.O. Smith or more still an R.C. Hamilton of yesteryear, the first False 9, or, chronologically closer and no doubt branded into Ramsey's memory, a Hidegkuti of those Magic Magyars. 

There were now just four games to the start of the World Cup and only one name from the final had not made an appearance. It was Martin Peters. Notionally a half-back, at school he had played centre-half and full-back, was two-footed, good in the air, had movement and could pass. But he was young and relatively inexperienced and perhaps not the obvious replacement for Nobby Stiles. But is was as that and at right-half he got his chance, against Yugoslavia, was retained against Finland as the notional wingers were first tucked in,  re-emerged three games later himself as one of those tucked-in wingers now on the left as Ball was moved to the right, did so again in the second round of the World Cup as such and finally in the final was the second, deep-lying but attacking inside left.   

So there we have it or rather them, the players who would take Ramsey to the peak of achievement, if only at that time the quarter-point of his managerial career.  And it was done finally, I suggest with a system that was, dare I say it, remarkably hybrid, somewhat patchwork and in the end not really his or at least not the Ipswich his, albeit not for lack of trying. In the first game of the finals Peters had been dropped and he played a "Stephenson", Connelly. Moreover, in the second game with Peters reinstated and now his Leadbetter, Paine, was in for Ball. Only in the third game did he haver. The more robust Callaghan came in the Paine but then Ramsey's hand was in any case forced. Greaves was injured. Hunt replaced him in quarter-final, Ball returned and, whether he knew or even had real belief in it, the die of necessity completed the final castings in terms of personnel against Portugal and positionally against West Germany.  The defence had become largely Hungarian and therefore Hoganesque. Wilson and Cohen were the wide, attacking full-backs, Lantos and Buzanszky. Jackie Charlton was Lorant, Moore Zakanas, but perhaps as key, also Baxter, and Stiles Boznik. But now the forward-line too was Magyar, or at least centrally so with no "Czibor" or "Budai". In fact it was more Glasgow Rangers 1902 with "Toffee" McColl away to Newcastle and R.C. Hamilton left to move across from inside-forward to shoot from distance or come from deep between Puskas and Kocsis, Speedie and Walker. And this whilst the midfield emerged as, with Alan Ball on the right, a combination of a John Cameron with younger legs or the pre-drink  John Tait Robertson to fetch and and on the left the ghost of The Ghost,  John White, whose role fetch and "drift forward Martin Peters would fulfil that day and go on in 1970 to reprise at Spurs.

Post-Script

And that should have been the end of the story. It might have been thought that the 1966 Final would have been a moment, indeed, the moment to change English football for good. But it did not happen, at which point, not least as a Scot, it might be tempting to argue, that England just got lucky. However that would be too simplistic. That Alf Ramsey was English is undoubted. Had he been a stick of rock he would have had his country written right through. That he was prickly too cannot be denied. That he was nationalistic, indeed, too nationalistic, is also open to debate. But football-stupid he was not. Ipswich had shown that.

Yet there is still argument about 1966. I do not mean whether goals were goals and about Russian lineman, about the how but the why. One interpretation is that, whilst he was a product of his experiences in life and football and had an air of caution about him, he could be bold.  That was, so it goes, what the team, which emerged during the 1966 World Cup was. In extremis he went radical and it worked. But he was also football-clever. The team was set-up unconventionally. It had unconventional players. In goalkeeper and defence he had taken what had been conventionally English, a way that he himself in his playing days had at the behest of Arthur Rowe torn-up, and done it again replacing it with, in breaking up, sweeping and overlapping, a clone of traumatic but nevertheless admired Hungarian, itself of Hogan-esque and therefore Scots origin. Moreover, he also attempted to graft on a certain blend of Scots-Austrian-Hungarian further forward. Two, sometimes three, inside-forwards, Hunt and Hurst and Peters, would move physically, zonally, spacial-ly with Bobby Charlton, driving forward from deep. Then in mid-field there was no Scottish centre-half but there was some drifting and switching and much fetching and carrying in attack and cover and tracking in defence. And somehow the graft worked. Systems and players alike, were melded together. That was Ramsey's genius.

Meanwhile, the other interpretation is that he had got lucky, the most lucky he had been and would be again at the England helm. And the justification is perhaps in part due to the next game England would play, where certainly the unforgiving nature of bad luck played a part but  there might also have been a loss of nerve, if it had been intentional, or a lack of belief, if it had not. The game was the 1967 one at Wembley against Scotland, the Baxter Game. It could have been almost the Scots games, the one exported to Hungary combined with the one Scott Duncan had been a part of,  against the Scottish one of the day. It was actually first eleven fit players against eleven, became effectively ten and half against nine, but most of all what appeared to be the first of a series of reversions, the interpretation of which is that Ramsey lost his nerve, perhaps unable to believe his luck.

Jimmy Greaves was returned, in place of Roger Hunt and there would be more changes to follow. In the next game Hunt against Spain in Madrid was back, Brian Labone came in in place of the injured Jackie Charlton, Alan Mullery for Stiles, Keith Newton for Wilson and full-back, the Diasporan Swiss, Peter Bonetti, for Banks and wingers were back, at least notionally. Although with the 11 shirt on his back John Hollins replaced Peters but it was clearly not like-for-like and no-one could accuse Hollins of being a line-hogging pace man either. Nor was that the end of the changes to be rung. Against Austria three days later and in Vienna Hunt returned but now wearing the same 11 was Norman Hunter, who again no-one could accuse of being any remotely like an out-and-out attacker except in the GBH sense. Meantime, as Greaves played what was to be his last international, positions were still being switched on the field and morphed in terms of role in an again notional 4-2-4 that wasn't. Alf Ramsey was certainly juggling but with an air of still jiggling. In other words despite the argument that fate had placed it right in his lap he was still in search of something else, albeit with every indication he never found it, a failure that would eventually lead to his dismissal. 

Despite reverting against Wales in October 1967 to the team of the '66 Final bar two, Wilson and for Stiles the more conventional Mullery, Ramsey did not settle. In the next game against Northern Ireland David Sadler replaced Jackie Charlton, although that might have been young replacing old. Sadler was twenty-one, Charlton thirty-two. Yet he also restored a winger in Thompson. Then Knowles came in for  Cohen against the Soviet Union and in February 1968 against Scotland once more but this time in Glasgow and the home side without Baxter he played Mike Summerbee, yet another winger, apparently as a number 9 in now something like a 4-3-3. The result was a draw. Moreover, Ramsey must have seen in Summerbee something he liked at least temporarily. He remained for the next fixture, a home return against Spain, this time in the European Cup and a win, but then he was largely relegated to the subs-bench. In fact Hunter came in once more. It seems probable that, whilst Ramsey's footballing instinct remained to attack, albeit from a firm defensive base a la the Spurs of his playing days, a la the Scottish way, it was clashing with the caution that was a prominent part of his personal character, not helped by constant pressure not to fail emanating largely from the Press. And he bowed to that pressure.

From 1968 his teams became noticeably more conventional and to a degree defensive. By the beginning of the 1970 World Cup in Mexico against Romania the formation had become notionally 4-4-2 but still there were signs of life. It was actually 4-1-2-1-2, just a tad off 4-3-3 becoming 4-2-4 in attack, with Bobby Charlton still coming through and Peters ghosting. There was some fluidity and it would remain so against Brazil albeit with something of an aberration against Czechoslovakia between. In that game won on a single penalty there was a front with Jeff Astle an obvious, dedicated centre-forward in an equally obvious 4-3-3.   

And then came the West Germany game. Two up just after half-time Ramsey went defensive. He took off Peters and brought on Hunter. Germany equalised two minutes later and then scored a third in extra-time, with England having a goal ruled out for off-side a minute later. Whatever it was, tactical knouse or just luck, it ran out and with it seemingly Ramsey's confidence in what had gone before. In the next game he replaced Jackie Charlton with David Sadler. That could be out down to young man for old. But in the following one, although the team remained wingless, he brought in Joe Royle, as conventional a centre-forward as possible. Then 6ft 1ins, 12 stone Royle had his place taken by equally conventional Martin Chivers, also 6ft 1ins but now almost 14 stone. Big just got bigger. Ramsey would even turn back briefly to wingers for a few games in the form of Mike Summerbee but nothing seemed to work.

Chivers, or rather what he represented, the big English centre-forward, would remain more or less permanently in the England team until the 111th match of Ramsey's one hundred and thirteen. Sir Alf bowed out against Portugal on 3rd April 1974. And that day he played 2-3-5, Malcolm MacDonald in the No. 9 shirt. It was a 0-0 away draw. The previous game had been a home game against Italy. England had lined up as a 2-3-5 once more. Italy played 2-3-2-3. In the Italian midfield, whilst Fabio Capello held the line, Franco Causio was the epitome of Leadbetter, winger cum creator. Italy won 0-1.