50 years ago, the nation was enjoying breakfast as World champions, but our heroes were men of the people... is it like that now?

WHEN 22 England players woke up on this Sunday 50 years ago, they were World champions... and each £1,000 richer.

Actually, they were £ 726 richer. There were no tax avoidance avenues for professional footballers in those days.

That equates to around £13,000 today – shrapnel in the pockets of elite modern footballers.

But it was a considerable sum for the heroes of ’66.

The average wage in English football’s top flight 50 years ago was £ 44 per week, so it was around four months’ money for Bobby Moore and his squad-mates.

England’s captain at the recent European Championship is paid in the region of £300,000 a week by his club. Today’s England players donate their international match fe e s to c h a r i ty, which is a fine, kind, thoughtful gesture. But they can afford to. Jack Charlton pocketed an extra £100 for wearing a particular brand of boot for the ’66 final – Wayne Rooney’s deal with his boot supplier is worth a conservative £1million a year.

Collecting obscene amounts of money – and enjoying its trappings – is not the reason this generation has failed again and again. Any player in any era has always wanted to maximise his earning power. Anyway, Cristiano Ronaldo is on a good number and that didn’t dampen his desire in an international jersey. But amid all the many words whi ch have been written and broadcast recently about the 50th anniversary – July 30 – of that World Cup Final, one strain screams through. That England squad seemed to be touchable, reachable, working-class, a squad of the people. As a journalist, you can never tire of hearing how Jack Charlton celebrated by going out on the town with a reporter, ended up at an impromptu house party and crashed out on the floor of a random East End address.

They were still heroes, icons. They still frequented the best clubs. They were still idolised.

But they were working-class heroes who had, at some point or other, to deal with – and solve – the everyday problems of working-class life.

And even if they did earn what was relatively good money – and even if they did have hero status – they still saw their close family grapple with those everyday problems.

It is only an analogy as they all have personal and family issues to deal with, but, on the field, the England team of Euro 2016 looked like a team devoid of problem-solvers (incidentally, almost to a man, they have