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The last ever World Cup final to be broadcast in black and white was rich in color. England, despite rarely impressing on home soil during the 1966 tournament, would have fancied their chances as they’d never lost to Germany. But they went behind early on, to Helmut Haller’s opportunistic strike. Within six minutes, England were level as captain Bobby Moore found his West Ham teammate Geoff Hurst, who headed home. When Martin Peters gave England the lead with little more than 10 minutes remaining, Queen Elizabeth II must have been expecting to present Moore with the trophy. But back came the Germans (a constant theme of this top 10 and soccer in general) as Wolfgang Weber scored in the final minute to send a World Cup final into its first ever extra time.
Any fan of the game knows the rest. Hurst scored his second goal, and it couldn’t have been more controversial, with his turn and shot smacking the underside of the bar and bouncing down very close to the goal line. Swiss referee Gottfried Dienst deferred to his Soviet assistant, Tofik Bakhramov, who said the ball had crossed the line and that the goal should stand. Hurst put the icing on the cake with his hat-trick (to this day, the only hat-trick in a World Cup final). And English fans can still recite BBC commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme’s immortal words, “Some people are on the pitch, they think it’s all over … It is now!”