By David Owen
February 26 – Phil Neville, the former Manchester United, Everton and England footballer turned BBC pundit, swam against the tide this week. While many in the country that invented football were bemoaning the FIFA task force recommendation to stage the 2022 World Cup in November and December, Neville said it might be “the best thing that’s ever happened” to England.
This was on the grounds that English players would be far fresher than during the World Cup’s traditional time-slot in June and July. “We normally go into a World Cup at the end of a long, hard, nine-month season when our players are absolutely dead on their feet,” he observed sagely.
There is nothing like a statistic for ruining a good story and I was frankly rather sceptical of this “lambs in spring, lions in winter” theory. However, on this occasion the record triumphantly vindicates Neville’s words: never in the more than 142 years since England and Scotland drew 0-0 in the first football international in 1872 (on November 30, funnily enough) have England lost an international match in December.
There are some special circumstances that need to be taken into account; first and foremost, England do not often play in December, and have not done so at all for nearly 20 years.
Nevertheless, the team’s record over the 19 December matches that they have played is, as a much-loved commentator might have said, “quite remarkable”: Played 19 Won 15 Drawn 4 Lost 0 Goals for 68 (so three and a half per match) Goals against 20.
And while the biggest December win of all was a 9-0 drubbing of little Luxembourg in 1982, most of the victories were against far higher-class opposition, the likes of France, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Spain. They include a 3-1 win over the then West Germany on 1 December 1954, less than five months after the Germans were crowned world champions. The only thing is, every one of their December opponents over the years have been European.
By comparison, England’s record over the far larger number of matches they have contested in the busy international month of June, including many World Cup games and some of the most vividly-remembered clashes in the history of our national sport, reads as follows: Played 157 Won 71 Drawn 48 Lost 38. Not bad, but far from the invincibility displayed decade after decade, since a 4-0 demolition of Belgium in 1924, in December.
So, one can say, it is statistically proven that, never mind how we got here, England would be well advised, if they ever want to win the World Cup again, to go along with FIFA’s latest wheeze. Indeed, you might argue, seven years out, that a second star above the crest on the national team shirt is almost in the bag.
There is just one hitch in the fiendish plan that, thanks to Phil Neville, is taking shape in my brain: the vital matches to decide whether or not England qualifies for history’s first December World Cup might be in June.
Contact the writer of this story at moc.l1734843835labto1734843835ofdlr1734843835owedi1734843835sni@n1734843835ewo.d1734843835ivad1734843835