England won the World Cup in 1966: But sadly since then it’s been downhill ever since
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ENGLAND have won just SIX knockout stage games at major tournaments since Sir Alf Ramsey's boys lifted the World Cup in 1966.
It's been 50 years of hurt following Sir Geoff Hurst's hat-trick against West Germany at Wembley on July 30 that was the backbone of England's historic 4-2 triumph after extra time.
For the record the only scalps England can point to in those 50 lean years are those of Paraguay (1986 World Cup), Belgium (1990) World Cup, Cameroon (1990) World Cup, Spain (Euro 1996), Denmark (2002 World Cup) and Ecuador (2006 World Cup).
But while there may have been few key victories, along the way various England teams have accumulated a mountain of cock-ups and disappointments in the search for more national glory.
Here, SunSport documents the worst of them:
1 1967. Euro 1968 qualifier: England lost their first game since since becoming world champions when they suffered a 3-2 loss to Scotland at Wembley. Jack Charlton and Geoff Hurst scored the England goals.
2 1968: West Germany gained their first ever win over England. The winner was credited by most as a Franz Beckenbauer spectacular 25-yard shot at goal, but his effort deflected heavily enough off Brian Labone to wrong-foot Gordon Banks - who had the shot covered - to make it an own goal.
3 Euro 1968: After watching his replacement Geoff Hurst slam that World Cup final treble. Jimmy Greaves played just three more times for England, remaining unused as the team finished third in the European Championship in Italy in 1968. He scored a total of 44 goals for England, a figure passed only by Bobby Charlton, Gary Lineker and Wayne Rooney.
4 1970 World Cup: Skipper Bobby Moore was finally returned to the squad after being held under house arrest in Bogota on a trumped up theft charge.
5 1970 World Cup: Time had stood still when Gordon Banks pulled off his wonder save in Guadalajara to deny Brazilian legend Pele a certain goal. But Banks had food poisoning for the quarter-final with West Germany that cost England so dear. England let a 2-0 lead slip to lose 3-2 in extra-time with stand-in goalkeeper Peter Bonetti sadly contributing a decisive mistake.
6 1972: Jeff Blockley became a one-cap wonder with an appearance in the 1-1 draw with Yogoslavia just days after moving to Arsenal from Coventry City. His stay at Arsenal was also unsuccessful and manager Bertie Mee later said signing Blockley was the worst mistake he ever made as manager.
7 1973 World Cup qualifier: England 1, Poland 1 marked the end of the Three Lions World Cup campaign on a night at Wembley that will forever haunt Norman Hunter and Peter Shilton. Hunter lost out on the halfway line and Shilton virtually dived over Jan Domarski's shot. Allan Clarke’s penalty was not enough. It was the the final curtain for manager Sir Alf Ramsey.
8 1986 World Cup finals: Inspiration skipper Bryan Robson injured his shoulder in a warm-up game and after just four minutes of the 0-0 draw with Morocco was off the pitch and of the tournament with the same injury.
9 1989: England faced Chile in the first game of the Rous Cup in front of just 15,628 people at the old Wembley Stadium. The stay-away fans didn't miss much, as the game ended in a 0-0 bore draw.
10 1997: Don Revie resigned as England manager after secretly lining up a job as the Saudi Arabian national team manager. The former Leeds boss actually resigned in an exclusive newspaper article before even telling even the FA. Later it was revealed Revie had been offered £340,000-a-year against his England salary of £20,000.
11 1997: The FA suspended Revie from football for 10 years on a charge of bringing the game into disrepute. Revie contested his suspension in a lawsuit and the court overturned the suspension after ruling that the FA had overreached its powers.
12 1990 World Cup finals: England scrapped their way through a tense semi-final showdown with West Germany. In the shootout, Gary Lineker, Peter Beardsley and David Platt scored, only for Germany to hold their nerve, and Stuart Pearce and Chris Waddle to miss. It was the closest England have been to the World Cup final since 1966...and Paul Gascoigne famously burst into tears.
13 Euro 1992: Graham Taylor became known as 'the man who shot Bambi's mother' for substituting Gary Lineker on the hour in the defeat to Sweden in what proved to be the striker's final international, leaving him stranded a goal shy of Bobby Charlton's then England record of 49 goals.
14 1993 World Cup qualifier: England boss Graham Taylor decided to allow a TV documentary crew into the dugout for a vital World Cup qualifier in Holland. His reactions - 'do I not like that' - on a controversial and frustrating night would be used as a stick to beat him forever more. England needed a win to secure automatic qualification. A draw would have kept them narrowly ahead of the Dutch, but instead they lost 2-0 on a night beset by controversy, including a goal from Ronald Koeman who, Taylor insisted, should already have been sent off.
15 1993 World Cup qualifier: England conceded a goal to minnows San Marino just 8.3 seconds into their final qualifier which they needed to win by seven clear goals. They actually won 7-1, but that goal by part-timer Davide Gualtieri, a computer salesman, helped cost a World Cup finals place.
16 Euro 1996: Terry Venables announced he would stand down after the tournament because of several upcoming court cases. In 1994, a police inquiry into whether he had paid a bung had been dropped.
17 Euro 1996: Terry Venables famously told his England team on a tour to Hong Kong they could have a drink downstairs in a little place next door to the hotel. A 'couple of drinks' escalated into folklore in the China Jump nightclub's Dentist’s Chair. Teddy Sheringham was pictured strapped into the chair while a barman poured Drambuie and tequila down his throat!
18 Euro 1996: Oh no! It's 1-1 in the semi-final with Germany and Alan Shearer pings over a teasing low centre that Paul Gascoigne, stealing in at the far post, misses by a whisker with his outstretched foot. If only...
19 Euro 1996: England lost the semi-final with Germany at Wembley 6-5 on penalties with Gareth Southgate missing the vital kick. Boss Terry Venables tried to console Gareth Southgate in the centre circle but words didn't seem to help...
20 1998 World Cup finals: David Beckham was sent off against Argentina after being fouled by Diego Simeone, Beckham, lying on the ground, vented his frustration with a cheeky little flick of his right leg tripping over a backward-walking Simeone. England were a man down early in second half. With the game locked at 2-2, they held on to the draw and eventually lost the game on penalties.
21 1998 World Cup finals: In that penalty shootout, against Argentina it was Paul Ince and David Batty who missed their spot kicks to pile more misery on top of Beckham's dismissal.
22 1999: Glenn Hoddle sensationally lost his job as quit as England boss after his comments about disabled people. "You and I have been given two hands, two legs and half-decent brains. Some people have not been born like that for a reason," he had told the Times. Hoddle said: "I accept I made a serious error of judgement in an interview which caused misunderstanding and pain to a number of people."
23 2000 World Cup qualifier: Kevin Keegan sensationally confirmed his decision to resign as England manager in a toilet after the final international game at the old Wembley in October 2000, a 1-0 loss to Germany, telling former FA chief executive David Davies: "I'm out of here. I'm not up to it."
24 2000 World Cup finals: England lost 3-2 to Romania and saw a place in the quarter-finals ripped cruelly from their grasp with a dramatic late penalty. Phil Neville's ugly late tackle on Viorel Moldovan gave substitute Ioan Ganea the chance to send stand-in keeper Nigel Martyn the wrong way from the penalty spot and break England's hearts in Charlero.
25 2002: Michael Ricketts won his only England cap with a pointless wandering-about-the-pitch performance in a friendly with Holland during which he looked so off the pace that he was subbed halfway through.
26 2002: World Cup finals: England’s first choice right-back Gary Neville broke a metatarsal in a challenge on Bayer Leverkusen’s Ze Roberto during Manchester United''s Champions League semi-final first leg five weeks before the tournament – and failed to recover in time.
27 2005: World Cup qualifier: Northern Ireland put a dent in England's World Cup hopes as David Healy's goal gave them a stunning win. Leeds striker Healy fired home Steve Davis' pass after 73 minutes to give Lawrie Sanchez's side their first victory against England since 1972.
28 2006 World Cup finals: This tournament was supposed to be the breakthrough for Sven Goran Eriksson’s nearly men, or the ‘Golden Generation’ of Premier League players, which included David Beckham, Steven Gerrard, and Micheal Owen.England navigated their group and the second round to set up a quarter-final clash with Portugal only to stutter to a goalless draw and see Frank Lampard, Gerrard and Jamie Carragher miss their penalties to leave Cristiano Ronaldo to deliver the final blow to England’s World Cup hopes.
29 2006: Sven Goran-Eriksson ended his tenure as England manager having hung on for five years despite being caught out by the News of the World's Fake Sheikh, having an affair with FA employee Faria Alam and meeting Chelsea to discuss a deal while still in charge of England.
30 2007: Joey Barton was amazingly selected for a 1-1 draw with Spain just weeks after berating many in the England team for releasing books after their poor showing at the 2006 World Cup. He was bereft of ideas in the match.
31 2007: One cap wonder David Nugent netted goal against Andorra in Barcelona...but Jermain Defoe has probably still not forgiven him as Nugent poached his goal-bound effort from inches out.
32 2007: Steve McClaren ended his disastrous reign as England manager portrayed as 'The Wally With The Brolly' after a Wembley defeat by Croatia that ended England's hopes of qualifying for Euro 2008 when he chose to protect himself from a torrential downpour with an umbrella.
33 2008 Euros qualifier: Paul Robinson was left embarrassed as England crashed to a dismal defeat against Croatia in Zagreb. Gary Neville's back pass struck a divot as Robinson went to clear, and he watched in agony as the ball rolled in.
34 2010 World Cup finals: Robert Green’s howler against the USA, the 0-0 draw against Algeria, holding the ball in the corner against Slovenia, Wayne Rooney snapping at the camera, John Terry threatening mutiny over the failure to pick Joe Cole. And that’s even before the 4-1 demolition by Germany, perhaps the single most demoralising English football defeat since 1953.
35 2010 World Cup finals: England's World Cup adventure ended in a mixture of humiliation and controversy as they were thrashed by 4-1 Germany in Bloemfontein. But they will always feel aggrieved that Frank Lampard's superb lofted finish landed feet over the line behind German keeper Manuel Neuer only for Uruguayan referee Jorge Larrionda and his officials to wave play on.
36 2010 World Cup finals: Major controversy as the 'Capello Index' - an England player ratings system that judged the players on their performances in the World Cup - was published online. "I did not authorise this and am angry it was published," said Capello, while the FA claimed it was "satisfied" with the Italian's actions.
37 2011 Euro 2012 qualifier: England were 2-1 ahead in Montenegro when Wayne Rooney needlessly hacked at Miodrag Dzudovic and was shown a red card, becoming only the second England player - after David Beckham - to be sent off twice. He missed the start of the Euro 2012 finals campaign.
38 2012: Roy Hodgson blundered in announcing the end of Rio Ferdinand’s international career to passengers on a London tube train. The England manager told members of the public on a Jubilee Line train that Ferdinand had reached ‘the end of the road’.
39 2012: John Terry sensationally retired from international football just hours before a Football Association hearing over his alleged racist abuse of QPR's Anton Ferdinand. Terry, who made his international debut in 2003 and appeared for England on 78 occasions, was twice stripped of the captaincy for off-field reasons and said his decision ‘breaks my heart’.
40 2013: Wembley friendly v Republic of Ireland.Roy Hodgson makes a cock-up of naming Ashley Cole as England’s stand-in skipper. Steven Gerrard was injured and Cole was in the frame as he was due to be presented with an award to mark his 100th international appearance. Hodgson indicated Cole’s Chelsea team-mate Frank Lampard would skipper the team, with the left-back simply leading the team out but minutes later backtracked and confirmed Cole – fined £90,000 seven months ago for calling the FA “a bunch of tw*ts” – would be handed the ulitmate honour.
41 2014 World Cup finals: Arsenal winger Theo Walcott ruptured his anterior cruciate knee ligament in an FA Cup defeat of Tottenham in January – and it cost him a place at the World Cup.
42 2014 World Cup finals: For the first time since 1958 England were knocked out in the group stages. It was also the first time they have been eliminated after just two matches.Roy Hodgson's men failed to progress thanks to Costa Rica's shock 1-0 defeat of Italy, having already been beaten themselves by Italy and Uruguay.
43 2014: Ten weeks after the World Cup debacle in Brazil only 40,181 turned up to see England beat Norway 1-0 in a friendly - the smallest number to attend an England match at Wembley since it was re-built in 2007.
44 2014: Former England defender Rio Ferdinand gave a brutal assessment of England's most recent managers: Ferdinand said Fabio Capello brought in a prison-camp mentality, Sven Goran-Eriksson was over-awed by star names and Roy Hodgson only managed to lower expectations.
45 2015: ITV apologised to viewers for broadcasting England’s turgid 0-0 draw with the Republic of Ireland in a series of tweets mocking the low quality of the game in Dublin. Paul Scholes, described it as “a waste of an afternoon” but England manager, who accepted that his team had been well below par, refused to comment.
46 Euro 2016: Roy Hodgson and England squad checked into a spooky Chantilly hotel haunted by a chef who died 400 years ago after stabbing himself in the heart.
47 Euro 2016: Marcus Rashford jetted off to Euro 2016 without the Three Lions crest on the breast pocket of his official M&S suit. Lack of preparation time led to the mistake from the seamstresses tasked with specially altering the £199 outfit.
48 Euro 2016: Roy Hodgson underlined his muddled thinking by making six changes for the final group match with Slovakia. A goalless draw cost them top spot - and raised questions about the manager's match-on-match strategy.
49 Euro 2016: Defeat to mega outsiders Iceland in the first knockout phase denied England a long-awaited seventh knockout win since 1966 at a major tournament and cost manager Roy Hodgson his job.
50 2016: Maybe FA chief executive Martin Glenn, the man charged with picking England’s next manager, maybe unwittingly summed up England's 50 years of hurt when he embarrassingly admitted: “I’m no football expert.”
