Authors: Gordon Banks
Alf took to his feet to address the players and the accompanying press corps. I found what he said completely unbelievable. Bobby Moore had been arrested in Bogotá accused of stealing a bracelet from the Green Fire jewellery shop. The accusation had been made by the manageress of the shop, Clara Padilla. Furthermore, Padilla alleged that Bobby Charlton had covered for Bobby Moore while he stole the item.
Bobby Moore a thief and Bobby Charlton his accomplice? He might as well have been told Mother Teresa had been arrested for cruelty to children, it was that outlandish and unbelievable.
Of course, our concern was for the welfare of Bobby Moore, in custody in Bogotá. It was a disturbing thought that someone, out to disrupt our preparations for the World Cup, may have stolen the bracelet and planted it on Bobby. We in the squad were aware of the allegations against the two Bobbys, but this was a bombshell to the press corps. On hearing Alf’s statement
the journalists flapped like chickens in a hen house with a fox in residence. They were now privy to the biggest and most sensational story of the World Cup but, such was the technology of the day, being en route to Mexico City, they had no means of contacting their editors back in London.
By the time we touched down in Panama City for an hourlong refuelling stop, Jeff Astle’s ‘medicine’ had gone to his head. We tried to keep him out of Alf’s way, and did our best to smarten up his shirt and tie and make him look a bit more presentable, reasoning that it would be most unwise to provoke Alf’s ire at a time like this. But we needn’t have bothered. Alf Ramsey was like a man possessed. He paced around like a caged lion, his face inscrutable but his mind obviously preoccupied by the plight of his captain.
As soon as we entered the airport building the press boys ran to the telephones, just like in a courtroom drama when they scramble to file their reports of a sensational trial. The press found themselves in a cleft stick. Here they were, stuck in Panama en route to Mexico City when their editors wanted them back in Bogotá to cover the breaking news of Bobby Moore, no less, being accused of shoplifting. Some were told by their editors to hire a car to take them back, obviously unaware that the Colombian capital was some 2,000 miles away. By coincidence, many newspapers had assigned reporters to cover the RAC London to Mexico Rally (which can you believe it, Jimmy Greaves had entered), so several motor-racing correspondents suddenly and unexpectedly found themselves taken off the rally story and re-routed to Botogá.
When we eventually arrived in Mexico City the media were lying in ambush. The Bobby Moore story was now global news and a veritable army of TV, radio and press journalists jostled for position alongside photographers whose cameras flashed and whirred away at anyone and everyone. Jeff Astle, having been administered a little more nerve tonic, was by now unsteady on his legs and the photographers captured him looking as if he had
not changed his clothes from the moment we left Heathrow over three weeks ago. Dozens of microphones were thrust in front of Alf Ramsey. Alf realized that he had to say something, so he issued a complete denial of the allegations that had been brought against Bobby Moore. I’d never seen Alf appear so uncomfortable. On all the previous occasions he had been confronted with a barrage of questions from the press, he had remained cool, calm and collected. Now his speech came in gusts, like linnets in the pauses of the wind. Alf was rattled and he wasn’t the only one.
The local newspapers had a field day. If anything, they were worse than the British press. The Mexican newspaper
Esto
had managed to find out that a midlands brewery had sent a case of beer to Jeff Astle. Apparently, prior to leaving England, Jeff had given an interview for a magazine in which he mentioned that this particular beer was his favourite drink. On reading this, the marketing department of the brewery dispatched a case of their product to Jeff care of our hotel in Mexico, simply as a goodwill gesture for the World Cup.
Esto
had been tipped off about the case of beer by a hotel worker and ran the story along with the photograph of a dishevelled Jeff (who was in truth a very moderate drinker) passing through arrivals at Mexico City airport. The brewery got more free publicity than even they had dreamed possible.
Esto
linked this story to that of Bobby Moore and when Alf Ramsey was shown the headline, ‘England Arrive – a Team of Thieves and Drunks’, he nearly had a coronary. To his credit, Alf quickly regained his composure. Holding the newspaper in his hand, he walked up to Jeff who was sitting in the lounge of our hotel and uttered the words every England player dreaded: ‘Jeffrey, a word please…’
The one person to keep his cool throughout this whole sorry affair was Bobby Moore himself. Bobby refused to be rattled because his character and psychological make-up wouldn’t allow it. When the heat was on, when the game was frenetic and fraught, Bobby was immune to the pressure. Throughout this
whole affair he was to remain a model of probity, and conducted himself at all times with grace and dignity.
I have no doubt in my mind that Bobby was stitched up by someone out to disrupt our preparations for Mexico, or someone out to make monetary gain from involving him in a trumped-up charge. They definitely chose the wrong man when they picked out Bobby Moore. Bobby was unflappable. He took everything in his stride and never ever lost his head. His personality and character were very strong and his unruffled self-belief enabled him to survive the attentions of the Colombian authorities. They found no chink in his armour and eventually dropped the ridiculous charges that had been brought against him.
I shudder to think what might have happened if the allegations had been made against any other member of our squad. I doubt that anyone but Bobby could have emerged psychologically unscathed from an experience like that, facing an inexplicable charge in a foreign jurisdiction thousands of miles from home. And then to go out and play arguably the best football of his career – that was the measure of the man.
The case against Bobby began to look more and more ludicrous as the investigation conducted by the Colombian police progressed. Bobby was in danger of being imprisoned by the police for the course of the investigation, but the President of the Colombian Football Association, Alfonso Senior, intervened and suggested Bobby be placed under ‘house arrest’ at his home. That was the first positive point. The FA tour party officials then received a telephone call from the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, who said he was willing to speak to the President of Colombia himself in an attempt to clear Bobby’s name. Ultimately Mr Wilson’s proposed call was unnecessary because the case against Bobby fell apart by itself.
The Green Fire manageress, Clara Padilla, told the police that she had seen Bobby Moore slip, what now had evolved into a $3,000 bracelet sporting a large diamond, into the left-hand pocket of his England blazer. (You will recall that the bracelet
was worth $600 a few pages back. Well, that’s South American inflation for you!) The problem with this tale was that our blazers didn’t have a left-hand pocket, as the Colombian police discovered when looking at Bobby’s. Padilla then changed her story, saying she had not actually seen Bobby pocket the bracelet, but had acted on the word of another customer in the shop, one Alvaro Suarez. Señor Suarez said he had seen Bobby slip what was now a $6,000 bracelet studded with diamonds and emeralds, into ‘a pocket somewhere on his person’. The Colombian police stated that, ‘having subjected Suarez to further and more intense questioning’ – one can only imagine what that may have entailed – he too changed his story. Now he ‘thought he might have seen the England captain put something in his pocket’.
Clara Padilla tried to wash her hands of the whole affair, saying that she had in fact seen nothing and had been put up to it by Suarez. Then the police discovered that, rather than being a prospective customer, Suarez was a close friend and business associate of the owner of the jewellery shop, Danilo Rojas. It seems that the Green Fire was in financial difficulties as were its owner, Rojas, and Alvaro Suarez.
When Bobby appeared in court and the so-called evidence against him was presented by the prosecution, the judge, Pedro Durado, threw the case out. Bobby was free to go and rejoin us in Mexico. Bobby was mightily relieved, though he at no time betrayed the anxiety he must have felt. He left the court displaying the same dignity and grace he had maintained ever since his arrest.
‘I have nothing against the Colombian police and authorities,’ Bobby told the waiting reporters. ‘Charges were brought against me, they simply acted on them and they did their job. Their job was to establish the truth and they achieved this. I was totally innocent of the charges brought against me and that has been established. All I want to do now is join up with my fellow England players in Mexico and give my undivided attention to helping England retain the World Cup. Thank you, gentlemen.’
What a man!
Had dark forces been at work? Had there been a conspiracy to prey on visiting celebrities by desperate people in deep money trouble? You decide. Suffice to say, very soon after Bobby’s release Alvaro Suarez disappeared off the radar. Perhaps, following his exposure in the media, he simply lay low. As for Clara Padilla, she took off for the USA and, to the best of my knowledge, like me, never returned to Bogotá.
When Bobby Moore arrived at our hotel, the entire England squad lined up outside the entrance to applaud him. He hadn’t had a change of clothing for nearly a week, yet he looked as smart as if he were stepping out of a tailor’s shop after a complete makeover. His blazer, shirt and trousers were completely unruffled, as was the man himself.
As a postscript to this affair, I later found out that some eighteen months earlier a well-known Hollywood film star, a guest at El Tequendama, had been accused of shoplifting by the Green Fire jewellery store. Allegedly, a sizeable amount of money was paid by the star’s ‘people’ to hush the matter up. Bobby Moore and Alf Ramsey provided less easy pickings.
The unlucky six players that Alf omitted from the squad were Ralph Coates (Burnley), Brian Kidd and David Sadler (Manchester United), Bob McNab (Arsenal), Peter Shilton (Leicester City) and Peter Thompson (Liverpool). Alf gave permission for Thompson and Sadler to remain with us under the strict instruction that neither should ‘abuse their freedom’.
The twenty-two-man squad tasked with retaining the World Cup for England was, to my mind, a stronger selection than the one that had won it in 1966. We had greater quality in depth and more players at the peak of their powers. We all knew we had a huge task ahead of us, but to a man we firmly believed we could lift the World Cup again, and so too did Alf Ramsey.
That we were not the most popular side in the tournament was brought home to me when we watched the opening ceremony at
the Azteca stadium on television. As in 1966, each country was represented by twenty-two children. When the poor Mexican children representing England entered the Azteca, they were roundly booed and jeered by the home crowd. As Alan Mullery remarked at the time, ‘If that’s their response to children in England shirts, what sort of reception will the Mexican supporters give the England team?’
We were soon to find out.
We were drawn in arguably the toughest group of the lot, Group C. We were up against Romania, Czechoslovakia and, of all teams, Brazil, who were coming into the World Cup on the back of an unbeaten run that stretched back over two years. Brazil had won all six of their qualification matches, scoring twenty-three goals in the process and conceding just two. The Brazilians were a major threat to us, but as two teams were to qualify from each group, we were very confident of progressing in the tournament. In fact, for all the prowess and power of Brazil, Pelé et al., we believed we were good enough to beat them.
Our first match was on 2 June, in Guadalajara against Romania. The hostile reception the Mexican supporters gave us when we took to the pitch was no surprise to anyone. The Mexican press had done their utmost to blacken our name and had even exhumed Alf’s misquote of 1966 when he had supposedly described the Argentinians as animals. The fact that Alf had insisted we bring our own food, chef, even our own team bus and driver to Mexico seemed to antagonize the Latin American press. They accused us of being pompous, aloof, rude, unfriendly and anti-social. In fact, all Alf had done was to set a sensible trend. In subsequent World Cups just about every team in the world would take along their own chef who prepared meals to the strict dietary requirements laid down by the squad dietician.
Alf ignored his bad press, but such was the hostility towards him, his indifference was interpreted as aloofness. In truth his
mind was too occupied with matters of football to be bothered by such peripheral matters as what the press were saying about him. Here our FA learned a valuable lesson. It was to be twelve years before England were to participate in the finals of another World Cup. That was in Spain in 1982 when Ron Greenwood was manager of England. Mindful of the bad press Alf had been given, the FA made sure Ron Greenwood had an official PR officer by his side to help him deal with questions from the world’s media.
We failed to sparkle in our opening match against a physical and defensively minded Romanian team. Quite honestly, the game was a poor advert for international football, but we achieved our aim. We won, thanks to Geoff Hurst who latched on to a super pass from Francis Lee to score the only goal of the game with a shot that passed through the legs of their goalkeeper Adamache. Romania had been tough and difficult opponents, but we knew, and had known ever since the draw had put us in the same group, that our second game, against Brazil, would be harder still.
The match was scheduled for 7 June, five days after our victory over Romania. The day before the game Alf made me tremble at the knees when he approached me and said, ‘Gordon, a word please.’
A year earlier, almost to the day, Alf had beckoned me in similar fashion. That had been before the first game of our tour of Central and South America, against Mexico. The news Alf gave me that day was devastating. He quietly and sympathetically told me that he had just received a telephone call from England informing him that my father had died. Dad had been very ill for some months. As a family we had tried to prepare ourselves for the worst, but Alf’s words still came as a great shock to me. I was grief stricken. Alf offered words of comfort and condolence. The Mexico game was the furthest thing from my mind and he knew it. He told me there was no question about my returning home for the funeral.