Gloves are off as Hurst gets hands on 1966 ball
FROM Michael Owen to Sergio Aguero, it is a modern tradition that hat-trick scorers keep the match ball as a trophy to celebrate their performance.
But for Sir Geoff Hurst, scorer of the most famous hat-trick in football history, it has not been so simple.
After netting three goals in England’s 4-2 win in the 1966 World Cup final, a Germany midfielder slinked off with the ball before Hurst could react. Fifty years later, he was reunited with the ball yesterday as part of England’s golden anniversary celebrations.
‘You see the ball occasionally,’ Hurst told a special BBC Radio 5 Live programme to mark the occasion. ‘Helmut Haller stole it after the final — it was in Germany for 30 years — and they eventually brought it back from his loft in Germany during the Euros in 1996 and now it’s safely in our National Football Museum in Manchester.
‘It is such a priceless piece of memorabilia that anyone who touches it has to wear white gloves.
‘Apparently anyone who won the World Cup can hold the ball without the gloves — Jimmy Greaves once said, “If it gets nicked, there’s only our fingerprints on it!”’
A gloveless Hurst then held the ball to cheers from the crowd at the SSE Arena at Wembley.
FIFA president Gianni Infantino was also present at the event and joked about Hurst’s controversial second goal. There has been much debate whether the first of the West Ham forward’s two extra-time strikes crossed the line.
FIFA introduced goal-line technology in 2014 and Infantino said: ‘I have the honour to be here with you to celebrate this 50-year anniversary: 50 years not of the inception of goal-line technology, but 50 years of a great World Cup which was celebrated here.’