Today I'm going back exactly 40 years to 1982 and England's International Friendly against that summer's World Cup finalists West Germany. It was a repeat of the goalless World Cup Quarter-Final Group game between the two played in Madrid less than four months earlier. The featured game was played at the old Wembley Stadium in front of an attendance of 68,000 and was England's 571st-ever International. At the time, the game was England's 16th against Germany / West Germany and England had won 8 of the previous 15 with the Germans winning 4.
The programme cover pictures action from that Madrid World Cup match and shows England's Terry Butcher beating West Germany's Hans-Peter Briegel to the ball. Both players played the full 90 minutes at Wembley.
The match was actually the first ever International that I had ever attended and it set me off on a journey which has so far taken in 240 Internationals of which 176 were games involving England. My standing ticket in the Lower East Enclosure cost £4. I was living in Wetherby, West Yorkshire at the time and so attending the game involved a long car journey down to Wembley during the afternoon and an early hours of the morning arrival back home after the match.
That evening, England were wearing a kit manufactured by Admiral that many England fans will say is their all-time favourite and has featured on many a Bulldog Bobby tattoo over the years. Personally I think that the kit is awful. The shorts are the wrong shade of blue and I don't know what possessed England to wear red socks when white is the traditional pairing to go with the white shirt. Perhaps the change in sock colour was made because the Germans had decided to wear their alternative green shirt, white shorts and white socks ensemble?
The featured game was Bobby Robson's second game in charge of the national side and his first at Wembley. You couldn't blame Robson for wanting to try something new and he gave a debut to 21-year old wonder kid Gary Mabbutt who had joined Spurs from Bristol Rovers that summer and was already making an impact on the top flight. Also making his debut when coming on as a substitute was Watford's Luther Blissett. In addition to the two debutantes, Luton Town's Ricky Hill and Southampton's David "Spike" Armstrong were winning only their second caps. England's most capped player that night was Ray Wilkins who was earning his 54th cap as well as captaining England for just the second time. Wilkins would go on to rack up 84 appearances for England, scoring 3 goals.
England looked to be having the better of things in the first half and indeed Gary Mabbutt struck an upright from distance but that was as close as England came to breaking the deadlock. All the goals, when they came were in the second half and it was Pierre Littbarski who made the difference, coming on as a substitute for the Germans just 24 hours after having appeared for their Under-21 side against England Under-21's in a match in Bremen. In the 72nd minute, Bayern Munich's twice European Footballer of the Year, Karl Heinz Rummenigge, who had looked dangerous all night, latched on to a through ball from Littbarski and lifted the ball over Peter Shilton to give Germany the lead. Four minutes later, Rummenigge applied the finishing touch to Littbarski's cross to put the game beyond England. With just four minutes remaining England did manage a consolation from a corner when Arsenal's Tony Woodcock turned and fired the ball in off the crossbar. It was too little too late for England but the game will have provided plenty of learning points for Robson to get his teeth into. England's run of 13 games without defeat had come to an end and West Germany had become the first overseas nation to have come to Wembley and won twice.
CRB Match No. 198
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