Everyone thought they could win it too –- bookies made them 3rd favourites, we had better players than everyone else according to the 2 Alan’s on MOTD. And this was the golden generation – how could they NOT win the cup??

So I thought I’d take a look at whether or not we’re actually likely to win based on past World Cup & European Championship performances.

I’d like to work out whether we’re likely to win a major championship in my lifetime and how long I have to wait until we play well (and win) in a meaningful match against good opposition. I’ll go back as far as the 1970 World Cup, because I was born in 1976, and we didn’t quality for 1974 or 1978.

Matches in bold are ones I am highlighting as games against top opposition, those rare ones in bold italic are ones we won!

1970 World Cup

1-0 v Romania
0-1 v Brazil
1-0 v Czechoslovakia
2-3 v West Germany

So we won 2 against mediocre opposition, and lost against the big boys. We are 0/2 so far

1980 European Championships

1-1 v Belgium
0-1 v Italy
2-1 v Spain

Yes! The first one, although I don’t know if we played well or not as I was too young. But we’ll have it. 1/4

1982 World Cup

3-1 v France
2-0 v Czechoslovakia
1-0 v Kuwait
0-0 v West Germany
0-0 v Spain

2/7 – Rock and Roll – 2 tournaments in a row that we beat a top team – this was clearly the golden age of English football

1986 World Cup

0-1 v Portugal
0-0 v Kuwait
3-0 v Poland
3-0 v Paraguay
1-2 v Argentina

2/9

1988 European Championships

0-1 v Republic of Ireland
1-3 v Netherlands
1-3 v Soviet Union

2/11

1990 World Cup

1-1 v Republic of Ireland
0-0 v Netherlands
1-0 v Egypt
1-0 v Belgium
3-2 v Cameroon
1-1 v West Germany

2/13 – 3 tournaments in a row without a decent win

1992 European Championships

0-0 v Denmark
0-0 v France
1-2 v Sweden

2/14 (Being kind to England here – Denmark won the cup, but you’d expect to beat them)

1996 European Championships

1-1 v Switzerland
2-0 v Scotland
4-1 v Netherlands
0-0 v Spain
1-1 v Germany

3/17 (Not counting Spain because we won on pens and they were better than us anyway)

1998 World Cup

2-0 v Tunisia
1-2 v Romania
2-0 v Colombia
2-2 v Argentina

3/18

2000 European Championships

2-3 v Portugal
1-0 v Germany
2-3 v Romania

3/20 (not counting the Germany victory because we were woeful, just less woeful than Germany)

2002 World Cup

1-1 v Sweden
1-0 v Argentina
0-0 v Nigeria
3-0 v Denmark
1-2 v Brazil

4/22

2004 European Championships

1-2 v France
3-0 v Switzerland
4-2 v Croatia
2-2 v Portugal

4/24

2006 World Cup

1-0 v Paraguay
2-0 v Trinidad & Tobago
2-2 v Sweden
1-0 v Ecuador
0-0 v Portugal

4/25

2010 World Cup

1-1 v USA
0-0 v Algeria
1-0 v Slovenia
1-4 v Germany

4/26

So there you have it – in 40 years of major football championships, we’ve won 4 games that count. Four!! That’s one every 10 years, or one every 2 and a half tournaments. And I’ve also been kind, because we didn’t beat Republic of Ireland twice in the early 1990′s and they were a good team.

If I live to 80, I’ve got around another 4 matches to look forward to and the next performance will be in the 2020 European Championships. Wonderful.

If you go back further, you’ve got the 1966 win which may skew the results – but it may not, because we didn’t win a single match of importance in ANYTHING prior to

So now I know why we’re so keen to get the World Cup hosted in England in 2018, because without it, we have zero chance of winning!

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