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The funniest episode in Leo McKinstry’s biography of Sir Alf Ramsey (1920-99) finds its subject — the time is 1973 — reaching the end of his tether with the talented but undisciplined Manchester City forward Rodney Marsh. ‘I’ve told you that when you play for England you have to work harder’, Sir Alf harangues his wayward protégé. ‘I’ll be watching you and if you don’t, I’m going to pull you off at half-time.’ ‘Christ!’ Marsh mutters. ‘At Manchester City all we get at half-time is a cup of tea and an orange.’ Here in the twilight of Ramsey’s career, this ‘typical piece of cockney wit’ marked a wider, symbolical divide: the gap that had opened up between an erstwhile national saviour and a new breed of mavericks more interested in soccer’s rewards than some of its obligations.
Forty years after that epochal Wembley victory — one of my first coherent memories is of watching Wolfgang Weber slide in to score West Germany’s equaliser — one forgets quite how embattled Ramsey was for the greater part of his England tenure.
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