It is fair to say that England haven’t exactly been a roaring success when it comes to the national side’s ability to win trophies. As a result, the name of Sir Alf Ramsey stands out above all others, having won the World Cup as manager of the Three Lions back in 1966. Whilst his name will be almost instantly recognisable to most, the career that he led before that famous trophy-winning moment might not be one that people are all that familiar with. He played for just two clubs before deciding to turn his hand to management, also keeping things limited there too.
Ramsey the Player
Born in Dagenham, which was a quiet village in Essex at the time, on the 22nd of January 1920, Alfred Ernest Ramsey was the third of five children of Herbert and Florence. Not an overly vivacious boy, the young Ramsey loved sport and spent hours in the meadow located behind his family home, learning ball skills by using a tennis ball. He had to travel two hours with his brothers to school each day, kicking a ball between them as they went to keep them entertained. This development of his skills might well be why he was selected to play for the Becontree Heath School team when he was just seven.
He played as an inside-left, becoming the captain by the time he was a nine-year-old, having made the switch to play as a centre-half in spite of his diminutive nature. His passing was known for being accurate, whilst his good positioning made up for his lack of pace. He left school as a 14-year-old, trying to get a job at the local Ford plant before becoming an apprentice at the Co-op. Needing to work on a Saturday, he stopped playing for two years before rejoining the sport when he played for Five Elms. During the 1937-1938 season, he was spotted by a scout for Portsmouth.
Although they offered him an amateur contract, the club never contacted him when he sent them the signed paperwork. He was conscripted into the British Army when World War Two broke out, allowing him to play football more regularly. One such game came for Southampton, who needed a centre-back, signing him to an amateur contract as a result. His first appearance as a professional didn’t come until the December of 1944, scoring four goals in a 12-3 win later in the season. He stayed in the army even after the war’s conclusion, then joined Southampton’s reserves.
His full league debut came on the 26th of October 1946 in a Second Division match, with Ramsey going on to play in 90 league games for the Saints, scoring eight goals. On the 15th of May 1949, Tottenham Hotspur’s manager, Arthur Rowe, signed him for £4,500 and Ernie Jones in part-exchange.
Tottenham’s Alf Ramsey try’s to evade Newcastle United’s Bobby Mitchell at White Hart Lane 1950 pic.twitter.com/Ln5AgdAsDH
— VintageFooty (@VintageFooty) August 13, 2015
He developed a good relationship with his manager, developing a playing style known as ‘push-and-run’, which hadn’t been seen in England before. The club won the 1949-1950 Second Division, going on to become champions of England at the end of the following season.
Becoming a Manager
Having been made the club captain at Tottenham, Ramsey’s career with the club eventually came to a close after he played 250 competitive games across six seasons. Having wanted to become part of the Spurs coaching staff, his chance of doing so ended when Rowe retired permanently. He spent the off-season in 1955 coaching in Southern Rhodesia, then was offered the player-manager role at Third Division South side Ipswich Town. He declined the opportunity to play, but became the club’s manager on the ninth of August 1955, having a strong sense of how to manage.
After mostly playing in the First Division, Ramsey had to abandon his ideas of how football should be played and instead looked at what was in front of him. In his second season there he won promotion out of the Third Division South, then out of the Second Division for the first time in Ipswich Town’s history at the end of the 1960-1961 campaign.
Better things were to come, though, when Ramsey made them champions of England at the end of their debut season. Although Ipswich performed poorly the following season, Ramsey was about to take on the England job.
Managing England
England had made it to the quarter-final of the World Cup in Chile in 1962, which resulted in the British press putting Walter Winterbottom under extreme pressure as the losing manager. He resigned five months later, with Ramsey being confirmed as the new boss in the October. In spite of this, he didn’t take over formally until the May of 1963 because he continued managing Ipswich until the end of the season. Many consider Ramsey to be England’s first ‘proper manager’ because of the fact that he took on numerous responsibilities that had previously been handled by the Football Association.
When appointed manager of @England, Alf Ramsey announced: “We will win the @FIFAWorldCup.” 😯#OnThisDay in 1963 he had his first game in charge with a 5-2 loss to France – not the best reinforcement 😬
But he was right – and that made England’s 1966 victory even sweeter 🤩⚽️ pic.twitter.com/qzl71V4dcF
— FIFA Museum (@FIFAMuseum) February 27, 2020
He demanded full control over squad selection, for example, telling the press that England would ‘win the World Cup’ in 1966. He named Bobby Moore the captain, being the youngest that the Three Lions had had by that point. The England side had drawn the first leg of the 1964 European Championship 1-1 with France under Winterbottom, but lost the away leg 5-2 and didn’t make it to the finals. That was Ramsey’s first competitive game in charge, making his claim that a World Cup win was incoming look all the sillier. They were hosts of the World Cup, meaning that they didn’t need to qualify.
The first group game was a 0-0 draw against Uruguay, followed up by a 2-0 win over Mexico after Ramsey had wrung the changes in his team. They also won 2-0 against France, meaning that they would be taking part in the knockout stage. The first side up was Argentina, which England won 1-0 after Ramsey swapped from a 4-3-3 to a 4-3-1-2 formation. That meant a semi-final against Portugal, who boasted the competition’s top scorer in Eusébio. England won 2-1, setting up a final against West Germany to be played at Wembley in front of a packed crowd.
Having replaced an injured Jimmy Greaves with Geoff Hurst earlier in the competition, Ramsey ignored pressure to restore Greaves with a ‘don’t change a winning team’ philosophy. It proved to be a wise decision when Hurst scored a hat-trick. The game finished 2-2 at the end of normal time, meaning that it went to extra-time. Famously, Ramsey refused to allow his players to lie on the pitch at full-time, pointing to the German players doing so and saying they were ‘finished’. The Three Lions emerged as 4-2 winners, resulting in them lifting the World Cup for the first time in the country’s history.
A year after England had won the World Cup, Ramsey became the first football manager to be given a knighthood. They made it to the finals of the European Championship in Italy, losing 1-0 to Yugoslavia in the semi-final. As defending champions, they qualified automatically for the 1970 World Cup, losing to West Germany in the quarter-finals. The 1972 European Championship also resulted in a loss to West Germany that stopped England playing in the finals, then at the 1974 World Cup, England failed to qualify after drawing 1-1 with Poland at Wembley.
Life After England
Perceived to have failed in three successive tournaments, Ramsey was sacked as England manager by the FA on the first of May 1974. He returned to Ipswich to spend a ‘period of rest’ with his wife, then in the January of 1976 joined the board of Birmingham City. When Willie Bell was sacked in the September of the following year, Ramsey became the club’s caretaker manager and then resigned as a director in order to become a consultant, managing the team as well as looking for his successor. Issues around the sale or lack thereof of Trevor Francis led him to resign.
When he left the club, having enjoyed a famous 3-2 win over league and European champions Liverpool, Ramsey was 58. It proved to be his final game as a manager, although he did briefly work as a Technical Advisor for the Greek side Panathinaikos. Always working to hide his working-class roots, he was mocked by England players from a similar background for speaking in a posh manner. He claimed to be two years younger than he actually was when he was in football, returning to Ipswich after his retirement. He suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and prostate cancer, dying on the 28th of April 1999.