World Cup 2018: England's 5 most memorable World Cup moments

#1: Geoff Hurst’s hat-trick – World Cup 1966

Like Spain and France, England have only ever won the World Cup once, way back in 1966. Unlike those two countries though – who won largely unmemorable finals – England’s triumph came in one of the best World Cup finals of all time, a 4-2 win over West Germany following drama in extra-time.

The most memorable part of England’s win? The fact that striker Geoff Hurst scored a hat-trick. Over 50 years on, he remains the only player to manage the feat in a World Cup final, and the craziest part is that going into the tournament, he wasn’t even expected to be starting for the Three Lions.

Prior to the World Cup England’s key striker was Tottenham’s Jimmy Greaves – a man with a truly astonishing goals-to-games ratio; coming into the World Cup he’d scored 43 goals in just 51 international games.

But he sliced his shin open in a group game against France, and so in came Hurst, who scored in the quarter-final and performed so well that he kept Greaves out of the side for the final.

Of course, everyone knows what happened in the final. West Germany opened the scoring only for Hurst to equalise soon after. England thought they’d won the game when Martin Peters scored in the 78th minute, only for the Germans to find an equaliser on 89, sending the game into extra-time.

From there Hurst’s legendary controversial goal followed – debates rage to this day whether the ball was over the line, but history says that it was – and finally the West Ham hitman scored his third goal in the last minute of extra-time, sealing the victory and completing his hat-trick as the crowd went wild.

As it remains England’s only World Cup victory, it’s always going to be their most memorable World Cup moment – but the fact that the victory came in such style, with such a historic feat from Hurst makes it even better. Will England ever repeat the feat? Only time will tell!

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