A goalkeeper from the humblest rung of the English football league was pitched against the Germans. Furthermore, the Germans were not any old foreign international team. They were holders of the World Cup, which they’d won two years earlier in Switzerland by beating no less than Puskas and the Hungarians. Reg Matthews could one week be up against the might of Gillingham at home, the next facing vengeful Germans away. From a foot-of-the-league battle with Bournemouth, he might suddenly have to face the flowing rhythms of Brazil. He had done, just over a fortnight earlier at Wembley, when England won 4–2 in the first game between the two countries.
Reg was typical of the British small guy, ‘plucky’ and plucked from a modest background to face whatever the world had to confront us with. Among the British national teams, England’s goalkeepers weren’t alone in affording their selectors the luxury of being able to reach down the divisions for someone of the highest calibre to defend the last line. Only Jack Kelsey of Arsenal and Wales was a keeper in the First Division. Ireland’s Harry Gregg played for Doncaster Rovers and Scotland’s Tommy Younger for Liverpool, both in the Second. When Gregg made his debut two years earlier, he’d been playing in Doncaster’s third team. It all went to prove that while others claimed fancy titles – the ‘World Cup’ itself was an example – we didn’t need to.
Reg Matthews’s clearance upfield in Berlin found an England forward, who put in a shot on goal. It was not a particularly strong one. With a couple of brisk steps to his left, the German goalkeeper could have picked up the ball. He opted not to move his feet, however, and dived. Actually, it was more like a flop. He stopped the shot easily enough, and there on the ground lingered, hugging the ball to his chest. You could see a white number ‘1’ on the back of his black jersey, facing the presumably grey Berlin sky. He kept glancing up, heightening the drama, soaking the moment for all, and much more than, it was worth. The misguided crowd cheered their appreciation and he even found time to smile in acknowledgement. ‘It’s a wonder he doesn’t wave,’ said my dad, no longer in an approving murmur but waving his own hand at the screen in disgust. ‘There’s the difference between us, you see. We get up and get on with it.’
When the German keeper finally did get on with it, I wished he hadn’t. His forwards resumed their assault on Reg Matthews’s goal, whereupon Walter materialised again to score. ‘And it’s Fritz Walter!’ shouted the commentator. ‘The Germans have scored!’ His voice conveyed what I took to be a distinct state of alarm. He compounded mine by adding there were only five minutes to go.
There was nothing in my cultural heritage to prepare for the likelihood that the Germans might win. None of my comics, nor any film I had seen, had anything but a recurrent collection of Fritzs leering their way towards comfortable victory, till ultimately beaten by their deficiency of character. When down we got up, bounced bombs on water, sent in pilots with tin legs, or chased their battleships to distant Norwegian fjords and harbours in Latin America. We might have a tendency to get in tight situations ourselves – trapped on narrow beaches, for example – but it only needed a chirpy British private to wave a thumbs-up at the encircling Germans and say ‘Not ’arf, for them to rush out with hands aloft yelling, ‘Kamerad! Kamerad!’
Only five minutes to go was a time for us to be hitting the net, not them. But just as the unthinkable was having to be thought, the scoreline moved into vision, chalked by hand on what seemed like an old piece of black cardboard at the bottom of the screen: ‘West Germany 1 England 3’.
‘There we are, we’re winning,’ said Mario, who had noticed my concern (and who always supported England, even against Italy). Not having seen a game before, and because seven-year-olds did not instigate conversations in other people’s houses, it had not occurred to me to ask the score.
‘That’s right,’ said my dad, as unruffled by the goal as Mario. ‘The Germans have never beaten us.’ When I read reports of the game, it was true the Germans had dominated much of the play, but Reg Matthews had held things together at the back, while out on the field Duncan Edwards of Manchester United had created the few England attacks there had been. From nearly all of them we scored. The wider facts were that we had indeed, never lost to them. England and Germany had played four times – twice each at home and away – since their first match against each other in 1930. England had won three and drawn the other.
This helped explain the reaction of the German crowd. Far from regarding the goal as a late and meaningless consolation, they could hardly have cheered more when they’d beaten Puskas and the Hungarians those couple of years before in Berne. The TV picked out various areas of the Olympic stadium and the spectators involved in scenes of uproarious celebration. The camera swivelled sharply to catch the German commentator in similar rapture. ‘The Germans are going mad,’ said the BBC man, with more than a hint of a laugh and in tones which suggested that foreigners could be very funny people. The thought had occurred to me.
But their antics were understandable. In their historical rivalry with England, the Germans had adjusted to a low level of expectation. This goal was a goal, after all. It was the first, too, they had scored on home soil against England since the war. They had not won, they were not near achieving even a draw, but here in Berlin a German crowd had witnessed for themselves that they were at least back on the score sheet. The camera zoomed in on the crowd and people beamed, waved and roared straight back into it. They could have been shouting as one: ‘We’ve had your aid and your Marshall Plan, and we’ve even won the World Cup. But now we’ve landed one back on you, you watch us really get going with that post-war revival.’
They had also not merely scored a goal against England. For almost ninety minutes the Germans had bombarded us, only to be kept out by a characteristic last line. Their solitary success was futile as far as the result was concerned but, at last, they had managed to get something past a typically great British goalkeeper. For a German or any foreign crowd, this was worth celebrating.
My dad had played in goal when he was at school: ‘Always good with my own company,’ he said. From a country family of seven brothers, his two nearest in age died very young and he was used to getting on with things on his own. At the age of eight he suffered paralysis and nearly died from what people came to believe was polio. Over a period of weeks he fought a lone and fevered battle with the question of whether he was to drop off this mortal coil. The family and the town doctor didn’t expect him to survive. When he did, by their and his own reckoning, he had been those few yards beyond normal experience.
He liked goalkeeping for its occasional spectacular moments. At such times you went through the air knowing you were going to save what, to teammates and opposition alike, was an unstoppable shot bound for the corner of your net. The coordination of mind and body was enough to make you smile, even laugh, as you experienced it. But, overall, it was best not to flaunt things. They had to be done properly; in other words, not overdone. The best keepers were ‘spectacular but safe’.
In British goalkeeping, the first half of the 1930s was the era of Harry Hibbs of Birmingham City. Over five years Harry won twenty-five caps for England, seeing off all challengers for the position. He presided over a period which consolidated the British tradition of goalkeeping, and one which built on foundations laid by two keepers whose heyday just preceded his own. The weighty Encyclopaedia of Sport I received one Christmas, published by