page_title: 1966 FIFA World Cup Final
section_title: Cultural impact
hierarchical_section_title: 1966 FIFA World Cup Final / Aftermath / Cultural impact
caption_attribution_description: england 1966 football shirt replica
context_page_description: The 1966 FIFA World Cup Final was a football match played at Wembley Stadium, London, on 30 July 1966 to determine the winner of the 1966 FIFA World Cup, the eighth FIFA World Cup. The match was contested by England and West Germany, with England winning 4–2 after extra time to claim the Jules Rimet Trophy.
  It was the first – and to date only – occasion that England has hosted or won the World Cup.
  The match is remembered for England's – as of 2020 – only World Cup and major international title, Geoff Hurst's hat-trick – the first and as of 2018 only one ever scored in a FIFA World Cup Final – and the controversial third goal awarded to England by referee Gottfried Dienst and linesman Tofiq Bahramov. The England team became known as the "wingless wonders", on account of their then-unconventional narrow attacking formation, described at the time as a 4–4–2.
  In addition to an attendance of 96,924 at the stadium, the British television audience peaked at 32.3 million viewers, making it the United Kingdom's most-watched television event ever.
context_section_description: The final is the most watched event ever on British television, as of July 2018, attracting 32.30 million viewers. In Germany, a goal resulting from a shot bouncing off the crossbar and hitting the line is called a Wembley-Tor (Wembley Goal) due to the controversial nature of Hurst's second goal. This goal has been parodied a large number of times. Some of the most notable include:
  England's third goal was referenced in a 2006 Adidas advertisement, where English midfielder Frank Lampard takes a shot at German keeper Oliver Kahn, and a similar event happens. On 27 June 2010 at that year's World Cup a similar goal by Lampard was wrongly disallowed (TV replays showed the ball landing past the goal line before bouncing away) which would have levelled the second-round game against Germany 2–2 (Germany won 4–1).
  Kenneth Wolstenholme's commentary on the third goal that bounced on the line, "It's a goal!" was used (along with the sound of breaking glass) in the tape-looped coda of an early version of The Beatles song "Glass Onion", available on the album Anthology 3.
  In August 1966 a special 4d stamp marked ENGLAND WINNERS was issued by the Royal Mail to celebrate the victory and which soared in value to up to 15 shillings each on the back of public enthusiasm for the victory before falling back in value when the public realised it was not rare.
  The 1991 BBC miniseries Sleepers, about a pair of deep-cover KGB agents placed in England in the mid-1960s and then forgotten includes a subplot about an archive film of the match recorded by Soviet agents and then placed in archives.  A KGB officer who sees the film in the early 1990s is excited to discover it includes footage of the disputed goal and attempts to sell it to a contact at a television network (pointedly described as not the BBC). Sleepers is coy about what the film depicts and in the course of the story, the film is destroyed.
  Marking the 50th anniversary of England's World Cup victory in July 2016, ITV broadcast 1966 – A Nation Remembers, which was narrated by the actor Terence Stamp who attended every England game at the tournament.
  The World Cup win features in the song "Three Lions" (known by its chorus "Football's Coming Home"), the unofficial anthem of the England football team. England's win in the final also helped fans to create the "Two World Wars and One World Cup" chant.
  The match features in the fifth episode of season 5 of American period drama Mad Men, with one of the characters watching and celebrating the game in a pub.
caption: Replica of the England shirt worn for the final
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