England are through to the second round, despite their loss last night, and that means the country can continue to dream about ‘football coming home’.

By the way, if you have no idea why you keep hearing that line from English football fans, you can thank two comedians, David Baddiel and Frank Skinner, along with Liverpudlian indie band the Lightning Seeds.

They released this whopper 22 years ago, ahead of England hosting Euro 96, and it was quickly adopted by their fans.

If we must:

You can read the full story here, but we’re moving along.

England fans will never cease to talk about 1966, and their World Cup win over the Germans (no worries this time around), but you should also ask them about what happened 68 years ago yesterday.

That’s 1950, and a rather infamous day in their World Cup history. Over to Quartz to put the boot in:

In 1950, England suffered a World Cup upset on par with Germany’s 7-1 drubbing of Brazil in 2014 and North Korea’s defeat of Italy in 1966. The US national team—currently watching the World Cup from home, having crashed out of qualifying with a loss to Trinidad and Tobago—beat mighty England 1-0 in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The English were favorites to win the tournament; the US were 500-1 underdogs.

The American team was a ragtag collection of amateur soccer players whose day jobs included mailman and teacher—reminiscent of this year’s Icelandic team, which features a coach who moonlights as a dentist and a goalkeeper who works as a filmmaker.

Scene set – to the match in question:

England dominated the first half in terms of possession and shots on target, but in the 37th minute, Haiti-born center [sic] forward Joe Gaetjens [being carried aloft in the image up top] scored for the US. The Americans clung to the lead and the rest is history. In its match report the next day, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch called the result a bigger upset than Sweden’s defeat of Italy or Switzerland’s draw with Brazil in the same tournament. So unfathomable was the score that the New York Times thought that the wire report of the game was a hoax.

This video below tells that story in greater detail, but you might have to head to YouTube to watch it:

Top notch, but unfortunately the rest of Joe Gaetjens’ life was less of a fairytale:

The US victory in 1950 received only a muted response back home. Not all of the American players, however, receded into a quiet life after that victory. Gaetjens, who scored the winning goal, returned to Haiti later to coach soccer, but he and his family soon became embroiled in the chaos of the Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier regime. Under Duvalier, tens of thousands of opposition supporters were killed—including members of Gaetjens’ family, and Gaetjens himself, who was held in a prison notorious for torture…

A sad end, but at least he stuck it to the Poms on the grandest stage of all.

[source:quartz]