Happy Anniversary to the England World Cup winning team of 1966. 50 years ago yesterday. Or, as someone else said to me yesterday: we’re celebrating the fact that we have won nothing for 50 years. Glass half full, half empty, ya take your choice.

But I read a fact today that is much more telling. In these 50 years, in ‘major competitions’ (World Cups, European Championships), England have won, in all the knockout stages combined (I make that 25 tournaments) a total of six matches.

Do the Germans celebrate how many years since they first won a world cup? They don’t care. They’ve won loads. Brazilians are too busy designing new bikini bottoms to worry about the first, second, third world cup wins. Too many. Its a work in progress. Football is dynamic. It moves on. Its all about the NEXT World Cup. You don’t, as England appear to have done, just give up when you win it for fear of being disrespectful to the legends who won it for us. And legends they are. But they shouldn’t be. We should have had new legends from the 80s, from the noughties, who are also winners. And then the stars of Bobby Charlton, of Geoff Hurst, Roger Hunt et al, would be allowed to fade. With dignity.

Don’t get me wrong. I love those guys. Every one of them. Ray Wilson, George Cohen, Nobby Stiles. They’ll always have a place in my heart. It greatly upset me to learn that Martin Peters has alzheimers. As have Wilson and Stiles too. Peters always was ’10 years ahead of his time’ and this proves it.

And as I watched Bobby Charlton on one of the hundreds of 1966 programmes on tv yesterday, talking about Bobby Moore (the 2 best players this nation ever produced, by some way) it made me emotional, and it made me sad. Let these guys retire already. Its been long enough. Time to pass the baton onto the next ‘winners’. We’ve heard all the stories. ALL of them. We know how good Bobby Moore was. That Geoff Hurst was trying to put the ball into row Z when he ‘accidentally’ scored the final goal. That Nobby Stiles took Eusebio completely out of the game in the semi-final even though Jackie Charlton gave away the most stupid handball in the entire history of the game. Its time to move on.

They think its all over,

It SHOULD BE BY NOW

Happy Anniversary

A xxxx