"WE LOVE YOU EUROPE. WE DO.."
As the UK goes to the polls over ‘Brexit’, FFT looks back on how a football match helped to ease its entry into the Common Market in the first place
Boris Johnson didn’t take long to nail his colours to the Brexit mast. In June, voters will decide whether the UK is to remain in the European Union, and the departing Mayor of London announced he was happy to pull up the drawbridge and leave Europe to it.
If only an eight-year-old Boris had been at Wembley on January 3, 1973. There, he would have seen Bobby Moore, Bobby Charlton, Franz Beckenbauer and plenty of others do more for European unity than any bureaucrat has managed in the ensuing 43 years.
To celebrate the UK, the Republic of Ireland and Denmark entering the European Common Market (forerunner to the EU) at the turn of 1973 two days earlier, a friendly was arranged to foster better continental relations, taking place between ‘The Three’ new nations and ‘The Six’ founder countries, represented by players from France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and, er, Luxembourg. The roll call was impressive, including Moore, captain Charlton, Colin Bell, Pat Jennings, Johnny Giles and Henning Jensen for the newbies, with Beckenbauer, Dino Zoff, Johan Neeskens and captain Gunter Netzer for ‘The Six’.
As New Year’s Eve hangovers cleared, there was no shortage of stars on the pitch, nor of besuited cheerleaders off it, readying their political pompoms.
“Tonight’s match is unique in embracing the whole of the enlarged community, and we are very glad our European friends are able to take part,” wrote Conservative prime minister Edward Heath in his programme notes. “I am sure that, with us, they will look upon this evening as a major landmark in the history of European football.”
Heath’s message was translated into French, German and Italian in a match programme costing a very British 10p, the cover of which (right) would have Nigel Farage choking on his warm beer. The English Channel was no more, with Britain a mere suburb in northern France.
There was even unity in the pre-match entertainment, as The Grenadier and Coldstream Guard Bands played music from European ballets. Latecomers then took their seats to the strains of Cabaret before the two sides waltzed onto the Wembley turf, led by managers Sir Alf Ramsey and Helmut Schon.
“It was an honour to get the call,” Scottish forward Colin Stein tells FFT. “I’ve still got the shirt in my house. There was quality everywhere you looked that night, and it was a great experience to play under Sir Alf, a true gentleman.”
With Schon’s side representing the epitome of European football flair, even the most cynical of hacks were salivating at the rare prospect of witnessing them performing together.
“The Dutch and the Germans, so long regarded as dour, cautious and stolid, rather than elegant, are now playing in a way that represents a gay beaker of sparkling champagne,” wrote Geoffrey Green in The Times. “Much of this will doubtless be given free rein at Wednesday’s celebration, when men like [Paul] Van Himst of Belgium, [Luigi] Riva the Italian, and Netzer from West Germany let down their collective hair in the presence of our own Bobby Charlton, who, dear fellow, has little of his own these days to boast about.” Harsh.
After an exhibition of continental one-touch play in the first 45 minutes, ‘The Three’ took an early lead after the break thanks to a typically perfect cross from Charlton – “little to boast about”, indeed – and a header from Danish striker Henning Jensen. Stein sealed the win, with a little help from Alan Ball, who had just come on as a substitute.
“I ran into the box and Bally put it square on my head,” Stein tells FFT. “My abiding memory of that match is Bally patting me on the back and then saying: ‘Well played, Col’ in that famous squeaky voice of his. Brilliant.”
The enjoyment wasn’t restricted to the players, either.
“Here was an occasion worthy of more than a 36,500 crowd,” wrote Green. “Still, those who were at Wembley last night – most of them, at least, I would imagine – went away purring.”
In a celebration of unity, a draw would have been a more fitting result than Ramsey’s side running out 2-0 winners, but the evening had provided a ringing endorsement for an ambitious new Europe. So were the players equally enthusiastic at the prospect of an expanded European community? “I do not remember too many conversations about it, you’ll be surprised to know,” admits Stein. “We had more important things to worry about.”
The beautiful game may still be just as broadly indifferent to EU politics, but 43 years after The Three delivered a bloody nose to the Union’s longest-established nations, will the British public be about to strike another? Either way, it won’t be on the football pitch – more’s the pity.