The End of Sir Alf: The Fall of England's Greatest Manager, Part 2
It Was What It Was : The Football History Podcast
The Overlap
4.9 • 667 Ratings
🗓️ 4 July 2024
⏱️ 62 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Welcome to the latest episode of The Overlap’s football history podcast, It Was What It Was.
In Part One, journalists Jonathan Wilson and Rob Draper set the scene for the qualification of the 1972 Euro quarter-final, where England were knocked out by West Germany. We now delve into the continuing years of decline as England failed to qualify for the following three major tournaments.
Having won the World Cup in 1966, Sir Alf Ramsey’s England side descend into struggle as Jonathan and Rob provide an in-depth look at where it goes wrong for England and how it came to the point where a World Cup winning manager was sacked by his country.
We look into England’s failure to qualify for the 1974 World Cup in their group with Wales and Poland, as Ramsey’s tactics and style of play led to his sacking, as well as the aftermath for the Three Lions.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Alf said, where do you normally go, Ted? And I said, I usually stand at a bar, |
| 0:12.3 | Alf, and have a couple of drinks on the train on the way home. He told me to find some seats |
| 0:16.8 | on the train and he'd get the drinks. And he came back with a couple of bottles of lager for me |
| 0:20.9 | in a miniature of him for himself. And I said, I've never seen you drink whiskey, Alf. And he said, oh, I have one now and again. And when we got to Chelmsford, I'd go and get another round in. But he insisted on him going himself. And when I got off at Colchester, I said, see you tomorrow Alf, because I knew he |
| 0:37.9 | sometimes caught the same train. The next morning, Diane, my wife, took me to the station. |
| 0:42.7 | I got my paper. I sat down and opened it as the train got moving and bloody hell. |
| 0:48.8 | Well, welcome to it was what it was. I'm Rob Drape. I'm here of Jonathan Wilson and that was |
| 0:53.1 | Ted Phillips. |
| 0:59.8 | Talking about the day in 1974, where he bumped into his old manager, Ted Phillips being an switch player, bumped to his old manager, Alf Ramsey at Liverpool Street Station. They get on |
| 1:05.1 | a train together. They have this quite banal interaction, but a few drinks. These been a days |
| 1:10.3 | where trains had sort of bars where you could sit around it. |
| 1:14.3 | And he has no idea that it's the afternoon that Alph Ramsey's been sacked. |
| 1:17.5 | It's not until he picks up the paper the next day. |
| 1:20.0 | He sees the headlines, Ramsey sacks. |
| 1:21.7 | He realised he is the first person to really have met Ramsey after he'd been sacked. |
| 1:26.8 | Alf Ramsey, of course, the greatest England manager, certainly greatest national team |
| 1:31.0 | manager having run a 1966 World Cup when England are the best team in the world. |
| 1:35.8 | And really in this podcast, because it's Euro time and we're in the middle of the Euros and |
| 1:40.0 | we're thinking that England might be heading somewhere towards the semi or final, but we were |
| 1:44.2 | called in before the Euro, so we don't know exactly. |
| 1:46.8 | We're trying to plot what goes wrong with English football. |
| 1:49.4 | And how does it come to this point, Jonathan, that Alf Ramney's great manager has been |
... |
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