England last won the World Cup in 1966, and Dave Badger still remembers the day as if it were packed into the back of his car with the flags. At 22, he was at Wembley on 30 July 1966 when England beat West Germany 4-2 in the final, the country’s only triumph on football’s biggest stage and still its last 60 years later.
That is why the question of when did England win the world cup still lands so heavily now: supporters are once again looking back to the summer of 1966 while waiting to see what comes next. Badger did not just watch the final. He followed the tournament across the country, taking in nine matches on home soil and building a memory of England’s run that has lasted longer than the wait for another one.
“I got married in the March, and the World Cup started in the July. I had a deal with my wife, that she didn't mind that I went to all the matches. The atmosphere was fantastic,” Badger said. He was a regular at Villa Park in Birmingham and said it felt different to be there backing the national team rather than his club. “Because I was a regular at Villa Park, it was quite a nice feeling, and very different going to support the national team. The atmosphere with the different sets of teams was brilliant.”
The final itself came after weeks of travel and a country-wide burst of football fever. Matches were played at stadiums across England, including Villa Park, and Badger said the journey to Wembley and back was part of the spectacle. “Going through Birmingham, although we travelled by car, everybody had flags outside the cars, it was all happening,” he said. “We had a fantastic day out, and the thing I can remember about it, there were lots of cars with open tops.”
That last image still seems to carry the mood of the day: people standing in cars, waving flags, believing they had seen the beginning of something. Instead it became the beginning of the longest wait in English men’s football. Badger kept four scrap books from the tournament, filled with tickets, newspaper cuttings, rosettes and hand-written score charts, a private record of the only World Cup win England has ever managed. For now, those pages remain the closest thing to a next chapter.
