The History of West Ham United: From Shipbuilding to European Triumphs

Talking about West Ham in the sixties is doing it in a different way of understanding football in England. The titles harvested in the middle of the decade are a direct consequence of an idea that started Ted Fentonhis coach in the fifties, the third in the history of the 20th century because the first two tenants of the bench had been thirty and twenty years respectively. In fact, throughout the last century the club only had eight coaches, a trend that has naturally changed in today’s football maelstrom. Fenton, a former “Hammers” footballer and World War II veteran, after taking charge of the team, launched what became known as the West Ham Academy. Grassroots work was something that hardly existed in England. There was no structure or methodology for the most talented youngsters. Fenton visited those countries where the most progress had been made and was collecting ideas to apply them later in West Ham. Hungary, which was at the height of its football at the time, was one of the main sources of information about him. He armed himself with patience, resisted the doubts that could exist within his own club and launched a modest academy but which began in a few years to produce players who found it easier to reach the first team compared to what happened in the rest. of English clubs. He achieved promotion to the First Division at the end of the fifties and then placed the team in a creditable sixth place. That was beginning to bear fruit.

In 1961 West Ham closed the stage of Ted Fenton and entrusted the bench to Ron Greenwood who followed the path marked out by his predecessor. He really is the one who benefits from the work done in previous years because he is the one who gives the alternative in the first team to a handful of unforgettable players in the history of West Ham and English football such as Bobby Moore, Geoff Hurst or Martin Peters.

In 1964 the first great moment in the club’s history came when the team signed a brilliant Cup, especially in the semifinal played in Sheffield. against the magnificent Manchester United of the sixties, whom they defeated 3-1 with two goals from another product of their youth academy, Ronnie Boyce, one of those footballers without much recognition, who never became international, but who always knew how to be in the big parties. The “Hammers” were thus planted in the Wembley final where Preston North End, a second category team, awaited them, and whom they defeated in a very difficult match 2-3 thanks to a goal at the last minute by Ronnie Boyce (again on his site at a key moment). Bobby Moore climbed the steps to the box at Wembley for the first time that afternoon to receive a trophy.

With the first title in the history of West Ham in his pocket, Ron Greenwood prepared his team for the Cup Winners’ Cup that was held the following season and where he had firm hopes of continuing the victorious path. So much so that in the summer he took the entire squad to see a pre-season friendly that Chelsea played with Munich 1860, Cup winners in Germany and one of their potential rivals in the competition. Little did Greenwood and his players imagine at that time that the Bavarians would be precisely his rivals in the final a few months later. West Ham suffers a lot in the Cup Winners’ Cup because none of the qualifiers are sufficiently solved.

Hasty victories, delicate moments and some stroke of luck mark his journey through that competition. They began by eliminating Genk in the first round with Ronnie Boyce leaving his signature on West Ham’s first goal in European competition. Then they get off against Sparta Prague – a faithful representative of the notable Czech school of the time – and suffer tremendously against Lausanne in a match where the Swiss came to take the lead at Boleyn Ground (also known as Upton Park) although they ended up being surpassed by the English. In the semi-finals West Ham received another helping of suffering at the hands of Zaragoza of the “Magnificent Five”. The hands were his most complicated rival by far. A draw at La Romareda and an agonizing victory by the minimum in London thanks to a goal from Sissons, another essential footballer at West Ham at the time, also from his own factory. Those from Greenwood reached the final this way, although they had to wait several days to find out who their opponent was because in the other semifinal there was a playoff game between Torino and Munich 1860. This circumstance allowed the English coach to organize a trip for the entire squad to Zurich to attend that clash live and thus collect information from their potential rivals. There they attended the triumph of the Munich team, precisely the team they had come to see against Chelsea in preseason.

The final was played at Wembley. West Ham fielded a team with nine players from their youth academy. Only goalkeeper Stanton and midfielder Alan Sealey “failed” who, although he had been at the club since 1961, was not a product of his academy. For that final, Greenwood had the important loss of its starting center forward Johnny Byrne who had been injured a few days before in a Scotland-England match and that forced Geoff Hurst to advance his position, who would no longer move from that position, something that the fans would especially appreciate. English in the World Cup the following year. West Ham, pushed by an overturned stand with them, overwhelmingly dominated the final against Munich 1860 who felt uncomfortable all afternoon. But the goals did not come. They had to wait for the final stretch of the game and that’s when the unexpected hero appeared.

Alan Sealey had been married just a week before. He had that date scheduled months before because he did not imagine that it would almost coincide with the Cup Winners’ Cup final that they were going to play. He invited his teammates to a discreet party so that they would alter the preparation for the final as little as possible. Sealey was a good footballer who hadn’t had much luck so far. He apparently reserved it all for that night. In the seventieth minute he received a good delivery from Sissons to beat the German goalkeeper with a shot from a low angle and only two minutes later he sealed the final with the second goal.

It was Sealey’s big afternoon in professional football…and his last. Just a few months later, while playing cricket during a pre-season break, he suffered a fracture to his right leg from which he has never fully recovered. He could not return to play at the same level at West Ham and ended up leaving football after a short time.

Bobby Moore climbed the Wembley steps again to receive a trophy. And the streak would not end there because a year later he would return to the same stage in the company of two of his teammates, Martin Peters and Geoff Hurst, to win the World Cup against Germany with West Ham playing the leading role because the three goals in that match were scored by their footballers (two from Hurst and one from Peters). And so Bobby Moore was the first person and the only one in history who as captain went up to collect three different trophies at Wembley in three consecutive years.