When Wayne Rooney and England rolled into Belo Horizonte last night ahead of tomorrow’s match with Costa Rica, memories of 1950 wouldn’t have flown into their cluttered minds.
There is too much for the modern English side to be worried about right now. The bitter recriminations following a quite horrendous campaign have already begun and will continue this summer.
But if Roy Hodgson is after a motivational speaker to remind his squad what it means for a highly fancied England side to be embarrassed in Brazil’s third-biggest city, he should call 80-year-old Elmo Cordeiro, a man who knows exactly what it’s like to see the Three Lions fall – and fall badly.
Cordeiro was a football-mad teenager working as a World Cup ball boy in Belo Horizonte 64 years ago to see a team he glowingly referred to them as ‘the kings of the world’ come to South America.
Standing in the way of Billy Wright, Tom Finney et al were the USA.
The beautiful game may be growing at lightening pace there now but in 1950?
It was no more than a kick in the park.
Fast forward to today and as Hodgson’s failures prepare to sign off with a modicum of pride and hope, there are some stark comparisons of that fateful, awful June day in 1950.
England arrived as the stars, even if they had boycotted the previous three World Cups.
No-one thought a team being offered odds of 500-1 to lift the Jules Rimet Trophy stood a chance against them.
At the end of an incredible 90 minutes, denied time and time again by American ‘keeper Frank Borghi – a hearse driver – they snuck out of the stadium having lost 1-0 in a result which shook the world.
Just as they left Sao Paulo last Thursday after the crushing defeat to Uruguay, England’s players were totally ashen faced, stunned and distraught.
If Costa Rica continue their superlative campaign with a third win, expect more glum faces slumping back onto their plush coach before returning to Rio.
England would go on to lose their next game against Spain – another shock – and bow out in disgrace.
The parallels are striking “The kings of football arrived in Belo Horizonte,” recalls the softly spoken Cordeiro.
“The England national team were based in Nova Lima, around 30 minutes outside the city. They came to the stadium in taxis on highways which at the time were all dirt roads.
“I loved English football and I wish they would have got further this time. Bobby Charlton was my hero but to see players like Finney was so special for us. When England arrived there was huge curiosity. They were the inventors of football.
“No-one thought that the Americans would beat them. No-one. But I will never forget the looks on their faces. They left with a certain coldness, their heads were bowed. They really felt the defeat.
“I was waiting to see Stanley Matthews but he was rested for that match. It was a huge factor as to why they lost. England thought they would score as many as they wanted but the United States were great after they got ahead. They were in better physical shape.
“England got desperate.”
Sadly for Hodgson, and the millions of disenchanted fans watching on in horror, not much has changed.
