The 2026 FIFA World Cup, is scheduled to be hosted by the Canada, Mexico and the USA.  A second cross-border tournament, first successfully undertaken with the South Korea-Japan tournament of 2002, will present some wonderful memories for those Pompey fans who will travel to support England. Group match tickets, starting at $60, are being allocated through a world-wide lottery.  Final tickets start at $2,030 a piece.  Getting into games may well be an exercise in who you know, or meet on your travels. 

Many of us watching England on the box will also take part in the age-old parlour game of spotting the various St George’s flags from around the country.  It is always cheering to see a Pompey flag in the array of England flags ringing a foreign field.  Spotting Pompey flags at non-England matches during a major tournament gains extra points, by the way. 

Noting names of other clubs and towns on English flags is another side-show, particularly when full backs and centre backs are trading side-passes in the stifling heat of a New World summer. For example, one that caught my eye was Workington, stitched into a flag prominently displayed for the group qualifying match in Tirana, in mid-November.  

Workington AFC, located thirty-five miles south-west of Carlisle, on the Whitehaven coast, would have been a challenging away trip for any lower division team, after the club was elected to the Football League Division Three – North, replacing New Brighton in 1951.  Workington lasted in the Football League until 1976/77, when after winning just four matches that season, it was replaced by Wimbledon FC.  The club made little impression on the Football League, (apart from being a step on the way to Anfield for Bill Shankly and the launch pad for goalkeeper John Burridge’s 798 professional game career), but Workington’s supporters are still proud to support the English national side.

In a club versus country debate, my loyalties have always put Pompey first, then I’ll follow any international side that features Pompey players, past or present.  This permits me some leeway when watching a major tournament, but this year, it will be 60 years since HM Queen Elizabeth II presented Bobby Moore with the Jules Rimet Trophy at Wembley.  That steamy July day in 1966, is one of which I hold some clear memories.  My dad had bought a new black & white television, on which he watched the match with a work friend, while I was left to follow events on the older TV set in the back room.

I distinctly recall Hurst’s header, Peters sweeping the ball home for England’s second and then Geoff Hurst’s thumping third that settled the match beyond all doubt, ensuring that there would be no replay had West Germany equalised again.

Of the controversy about the ball which did not cross the line, or the scrambled 90th minute West German equaliser, I cannot recall.  I do remember by first brother wandering away bored from the TV, and going up to his room during the match to play with the Lego.  At the time I questioned his commitment to the beautiful game.   If he couldn’t sit through a World Cup Final, how would he ever be a proper football fan, I wondered. He had celebrated his fifth birthday a couple of weeks previously, old enough for school, so old enough to know about football, I reckoned, already being a world-weary six-and-a-half-year-old myself.

Geoff Hurst is still my hero for his three goals in 1966, but it was twenty-one-year-old Alan Ball, who ran the show that day. If you watch a recording of the match, you will see the player, who was to become a famous Pompey manager, run non-stop for the team that World Cup Final day.  He was a vital cog in Alf Ramsey’s ‘Wingless Wonders’ winning formation.  No Pompey fan watching in ’66 could have dreamt that the little guy wearing the No 7 for England would be the man to steer Pompey up to the top Division for the first time in twenty-eight years.

Here’s a game of imagination for you to try, while watching the FIFA tournament whittle forty-eight teams down to the final two, consider who of all the players you see, see if you can spot one who one day may become a member of the Pompey family.

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The Seven Stages of An International Career

All the world cup’s a pitch And all the men and women merely players

They have their appearances and their substitutions

And one man in his career plays many parts

His games being in several parts.  At first the debutant

In awe of his team-mates, who know the score

And then the unused substitute skipping and stretching

Shining with enthusiasm, trying to catch the coach’s eye To get on the pitch,

And then the player, Growling like a lion, during the national anthem

Sung with patriotic passion.  Then a hardened pro

Full of feints and moves, making the killer pass

United in loyalty, sudden and quick in a challenge

Seeking the winner’s reputation

Even in time added on for stoppages. And then the coach

In fair round belly with peaked cap on With eyes severe and beard of formal cut

Full of wise tactics and modern formations

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the sad and slipper’d panel pundit

With spectacles on nose and on the couch, side on;

His too young clothes, well sav’d, the screen too wide

For his shrunk name and his big manly voice

Turning again toward petty gripes 

Complaints of VAR and referees’ 

Unfair whistles.  Last game of all 

That ends this strange, eventful career

Is with child-like enthusiasm and mere oblivion

Sans shirt, sans club, avec memories et medals.

 ~

(with apologies to W Shakespeare)

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n.b. This article was first published in a Portsmouth match day programme, details tba.

Chris Perry

02/05/2026