The plane carrying the English team sat there at the end of the runway, silver and shim¬mering in the sunlight.
The roar of the giant engines faded to a whisper, gave one final shudder and were silent. The steps were rolled up, the doors opened and out came these Masters of World Soccer.
They stood there, for a moment, blinking in the amber rays of the sun. Then they took their first real look at Belo Horizonte.
They looked in wonder and finally it was the big, blond Bert Williams who echoed the thoughts of them all.
“My God,” he said, “it’s an¬other Shangri La.”
That moment, although no one knew it then, was a farewell to reality . . . the beginning of a story of sheer fantasy . . . and Belo Horizonte the perfect setting for just such a story.
For this was a city from out of nowhere, bounded to the south by the forests and, to the north, by the mountains.
No roads ran into Belo Hori¬zonte. There were no railways, no out-of-town coaches. You flew in and you flew out. There was no other way.
The only reason for the exist¬ence of Belo Horizonte was the gold buried up in the hills.
But perhaps the strangest thing of all about this Brazilian city, whose name translated means Beautiful Horizon, was that it hadn’t one at all . . . only a skyline.
Because it was surrounded by hills, every view was set against the wash of blue and white which was the sky.
You stared at it in something like awe and sometimes you caught your breath, because the view was one of majestic splendour.
The rounded, snow-capped mountain peaks soared above the clouds. The clear white silhouettes of the highest buildings slashed at the sky.
By night, the city nestled in the dark palm of the mountains like a sparkling nest of rare gems.
The skyscrapers and the haci- endos were white and beautiful in the moonlight.
Behind the skyscrapers, behind the haciendos, were the streets.
Ragged thirteen-year-old boys sold their fifteen-year-old sisters in the streets.
Still if the men of England found Belo Horizonte a strange and a puzzling place, be sure the citizens gazed back with equal wonder.
For, in this the year of 1950, English footballers were still the kings. Invincible in their own lair and wrapped around with legends.
True, the famed forward line of Matthews, Carter, Lawton, Man- nion and Finney had been changed a little. Carter and Lawton had gone.
But Stan Mortensen and Jackie Milburn had seemingly achieved the impossible . . . replaced the irreplacables.
The Americans were 500 to one outsiders. Even
to them this game was to be a great laree
Centre half Neil Franklin had gone too, dramatically to Bogota.
But Billy Wright, Jimmy Dickin¬son, Alf Ramsey and Bert Wil¬liams were nobody’s fools.
They came to the World Cup as co-favourites with the host nation, Brazil, and all in all added up to half a million pounds of anyone’s money.
Their hosts were the gold miners, a mixed gang of many nationalities, but for this week at least England supporters to a man.
The night was surprisingly cold after the heat of the day. Moon-light flickered across the moun-tains. Hyenas howled out in the darkness.
And the shadows cast by the ranch-house, armed guards lurked. The miners were taking no chances and perhaps in this wild, soccer mad land they were wise.
In such a place, it seemed only fitting that they should be drawn against the most bizarre side of all, the United States . . .
A random collection of con¬verted grid-iron players and col¬lege boys with just a thin sprink¬ling of imported Continentals.
Star of the side was Mcllvenny who had previously failed to set any world on fire with Third Division Wrexham.
And the odds against them win-ning the competition were 500—1, incredible odds for any 16-horse race.
Still the Americans would have been the first to agree with such a rating. They had come to Brazil pretty much for the ride and they had no illusions.
Sam Borghi, a goalkeeper who seemingly trained on cigars, was typical of this happy-go-lucky side.
He was short and fat and placid with skin the colour of burnished copper and thick black hair which curled over his collar.
He was one of those fellows who must have been born with a smile. Laughter was always just a whisper away, bubbling beneath the surface like lava in a volcano.
To Sam, the world was filled with fun and the fact that he was soon to keep goal against England was the biggest joke of all.
On the eve of the match, there was a hot, dry wind blowing through the hills.
It was the kind that makes your nerves flutter and your skin itch.
It was the kind of night built for frustration and temptation.
Brawls broke out in a dozen bars. Husbands carried flowers home to their wives. Bachelors gay decided that tomorrow they’d pop the question at last.
And on the edge of town, the call houses that specialised in sixteen-year-old virgins were breaking all box-office records.
On such a night, you either lay awake, thinking about all the might-have-beens or all the pos- sibly-tomorrows ... or -you go out.
The Americans went out. After all, what had they to lose? Let the others worry about the win¬ning and the losing. For them the question was purely academic.
There was an all-night party at the million-dollar palace of Severino Minelli. They had in¬vitations, so what could be simpler? •
It wasn’t a wild orgy ... a big, swinging let’s-live-tonight affair.
Not the sort of place where one would expect to find a World Cup team on the eve of a match ... at least, let’s be fair, any team bar-ring no-hopers such as the Americans.
England, by contrast, had a calm, untroubled night and yet the sense of unreality that had been with them ever since they’d first seen Belo Horizonte was still with them.
For this was, after all, a big city team, used to the big stadiums and the big days.
Rome, Lisbon, Madrid, Paris, Vienna, Budapest and Berlin were their stamping grounds.
In Rio, they would have been at home. In Belo Horizonte, they were lost.
The stadium didn’t help. The crowd was Third Division size, the pitch hard and bumpy. They took one look at the dressing-rooms and hastily decided to change at a nearby hotel.
Then, minutes before the kick¬off, the Americans arrived. Most of them seemed to be wearing stetsons, cigars and hangovers.
The hangovers were the most pronounced. And one got the impression that all they really wished for was to get the mas¬sacre over quickly so that they could catch up on some of their lost sleep.
This Result Shook The World of Soccer
England began as though happy enough to oblige. Finney hit the post with the game only two minutes old and Mannion fired just over.
Then with ten minutes gone, Borghi made two point-blank saves and somehow the whole balance of the game was changing.
The Americans still weren’t dreaming of victory. But maybe they could escape the massacre, after all, make the English fight a little.
In the English goal, Bert Wil-liams was filled with a strange foreboding. The battle was being waged at the far end with the American defence under constant pressure and yet nothing would go right.
Players were missing chances they wouldn’t normally have mis¬sed once in a blue moon. And all the time, the Americans were growing more confident, more determined.
Then all of a sudden, during a rare American attack, Gaetjens rocketed in a drive that sailed past Williams’s outstretched fingers.
He picked the ball out of the back of the net with a sense of doom that he’d never known before.
The Americans, for their part, seemed more amused than any¬thing else at this unexpected turn of events.
But half-time came with the score still England 0, United States 1.
And as the game moved on, you could feel the desperation seeping through the English ranks.
You could sense it in the shouts of the miners and in the way the wing-halves, Wright and Dickin¬son, kept advancing in a. bid to set their attack alight.
By now, the Americans had accepted the incredible fact that victory over England was only 20 minutes away and, inspired by Borghi, they were playing like men possessed.
In the dying moments, Finney again hit a post and then it was all over.
Sam Borghi had shut out Eng-land in surely the greatest upset in World Cup history.
But it was in reality a little more than this . . . the end of an era . .. possibly the end of a myth.
The kingship was over.
England flew out of Belo Hori-zonte still bewildered, still wondering.
They took one long, last look at this strange Shangri La like city.
It was indeed beautiful, a thing of majestic splendour, a nest of jewels lying in the dark palm of the mountains.
But England would remember it sadly . . .
As the Lost Horizon, nothing more.