I’ve seen Botham Tiger and Bolt but win for these boys was a golden day
I’VE commentated on gold medal successes for Brits at the Olympic Games, Ryder Cup victories, and seen wonderful feats achieved by the likes of Usain Bolt, Tiger Woods, Diego Maradona and Sir Ian Botham.
But to see this young England side play with such panache and obvious togetherness has given me as much pleasure as anything, and genuine optimism about our national football prospects for the first time in 30 years.
Maybe this really is the start of a revolution. For more than half a century the only English team worth trotting off the tongue was: Banks; Cohen, Wilson, Stiles, J Charlton, Moore; Ball, Hunt, R Charlton, Hurst and Peters.
Now we can salute the likes of Brewster, Fod e n , McEachran, and the doublebarrelled trio Hudson-Odoi, Gibbs-White and OakleyBoothe. Nothing so fancy in those halcyon days of ’66.
New stars were born in the shape of a Golden Ball winner, the magical Phil Foden of Manchester City, and Rhian Brewster of Liverpool, who lifted the Golden Boot.
The bare facts tell you that England exacted revenge on the Spanish who beat them in May’s European final in Croatia. As always, facts tell you a fraction of the story.
Following on the success of England’s Under 20 team, who also won gold in South Korea, this was further vindication of coach Steve Cooper’s belief that the DNA running through England’s system is beginning to pay rich dividends.
He is also gushing in his praise of the modern generation.
‘They take a lot of knocks and sometimes rightly so for getting success too early to cope with, but it is just an era thing,’ he said. ‘We are developing good people as well as good footballers, and they are totally respectful and professional the way they go about things, and in the way they stick together as a group. These boys have been fantastic and the country should be proud of them.’
The other big winner at this World Cup has been India. Not on the pitch, their team was as ordinary as expected, but in terms of organisation.
For FIFA president Gianni Infantino to call India ‘a football continent’ may be regarded as hysterical in a cricket- crazy country, but there is no doubt the truly global game is catching on.
Television audiences for the tournament went through the roof, regularly topping 30 million per match, while record crowds in the stadiums were recorded, beating the previous cumulative total of 1.2m in China in the very first edition. As someone who first commentated on football here a dozen or so years ago, I can testify to the remarkable transformation.
I was here when a monkey trashed a referee’s dressing room, when a ball delivered from a corner kick never came down because it landed in the branches of a tree, and when one team overdid their goal celebration for so long that their opponents merely went downfield and equalised into an unguarded net. Airports were filthy, pollution ghastly, traffic insufferable . . .
The football this time has been terrific too, which has helped. Marco van Basten commented that the standard has been way ahead of the level he was at as an aspiring 17- year- old, and players from every continent have performed like men rather than boys.
This has probably been the most attractive Under 17 World Cup ever. Only two of the 52 matches were goalless, and all the strikers who were predicted to shine did so.