Product Description

Mexico, the summer of 1970: Pele, Brazil 4 Italy 1 in the Final, Gordon Banks' save against Brazil, Bobby Moore and the Bogota bracelet, Bobby Charlton's substitution, televised match action (in colour), the single 'Back Home', the Esso coin collection . . . all this and more, the familiar and the not-so-well-known, feature in Jeff Dawson's account of the 1970 World Cup, the sexiest World Cup of all time. Where the events of 1966 have been well documented, any books dedicated to the 1970 tournament have been long out of print. Using interviews with players involved and personal childhood recollections, and having studied hours of videotape, Jeff Dawson, acclaimed author Tarantino: the Inside Story, pieces together the events of Mexico 70, inviting the reader to 'taste the Brooke Bond, smell the B & H and feel what it was like that English summer, switching on Good Morning Mexico with Frank Bough' - and also to remember what it was like when England had a decent international side.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #336904 in Books
• Published on: 2001-09-27
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Back Home recalls the 1970 World Cup finals in Mexico as the zenith of the beautiful game; when the great Brazilian team of all time showed the world how football could and should be played; when Pele, Jairzinho, Rivelino and company produced perhaps the most dazzling football ever played on the world stage. For the English, however, the 1970 finals will always be remembered at least as well as the tournament when England's reign as World champions was brought to an end and when West Germany took their revenge for the events of four years before in the dramatic quarter-final in Leon.

This is why Jeff Dawson's book works. Brazil may have been the eventual champions, but the English provided equally good headlines: Bobby Moore, England's captain and the stolen jewellery in Bogota, the save of the century that keeper Gordon Bank made from Pele, manager Ramsay's fateful decision to substitute the talismanic Bobby Charlton in the quarter-final versus West Germany, and the absence of Banks from that decisive game due to a mysterious stomach bug, leaving Bonetti to falter as English custodian. With such material, Dawson has a real tale to tell, and he does so admirably conveying the feeling that surrounded the tournament; colour TV pictures, a carnival atmosphere and those Brazilians provided something seemingly more exotic than standard football fare. And that's not to mention the final itself, or the Brazil-England game, or the pulsating semi-final between Italy and West Germany. Unlike England in 1970, this blow-by-blow account of the events surrounding the games in Mexico is a winner. --Trevor Crowe

About the Author
Jeff Dawson is a freelance journalist who's work has appeared in all the UK broadsheet newspapers. He is a former US editor of Empire film magazine, and is the author of a well-received book about Quentin Tarantino.

Customer Reviews

'Sheer delightful....reading'
If, like me, you were too young to remember anything about ‘1966 and all that’ when England, guided by Alf Ramsey, won the World Cup, then you probably feel (as I do) that you ‘missed out’ on THE greatest English sporting triumph ever. However I was old enough to remember the competition when it moved to Mexico in 1970 and the ethereal quality of the flickery satellite images IN COLOUR (not that many people had it as Dawson points out) and the voice of Hugh Johns as events in the Azteca and Jalisco stadiums were beamed into our homes. It all seemed, quite simply, a magical event, as we watched Alf and the boys carry our hopes and aspirations with them in Mexico as we sat on our comfy sofas ‘Back Home’.

The 1970 World Cup has, in the intervening years, seemingly gained in fame and status particularly among the thirty/forty-somethings who view Mexico ’70 as the golden age of international football when great players met in great games, and a great team (Brazil) won the Jules Rimet trophy which they kept forever (until it was stolen and melted down). It has become both a link to our innocent childhoods and a benchmark against which all succeeding tournaments will be judged; harshly it has to be said.

As I sat watching the Italia ’90 Final between West Germany and Argentina and saw it transform itself into a spectacle that disgraced the World Cup and twisted its ideals of the brotherhood of footballing nations, I reminded myself that it wasn’t always like this. Jeff Dawson’s affectionate and highly entertaining book about the Mexico World Cup reminds us of the joys of a bygone footballing age, and also startles us with examples of how maybe it wasn’t so innocent as we used to think.

The fact is that IF Sir Alf Ramsey’s England team (regarded by many as maybe England’s best ever side, even, according to Dawson, superior to the 1966 side) had won the World Cup in Mexico in 1970 it would have been a triumph against the odds. Incidents like the famous ‘Bobby Moore Bogota Bracelet’ fiasco when England’s captain is accused and held (without any evidence) for stealing from a hotel jewellers, Jeff Astle’s and Peter Osgood’s inebriation, the intense hostility towards England of the Mexican press and public (the latter of whom conspire to deprive England of sleep prior to the clash with Brazil) coupled with the loss of Gordon Banks going into the watershed encounter with West Germany in Leon, not to mention the endless ‘administrative difficulties’, all seemed to occur with the sole intention of thwarting England’s progress (successfully as it turns out). All these, and other incidents, are fully examined by Dawson, who talked to players, press and media personnel who were there to help compile this book.

The football of course is what it’s all about, and the famous matches and incidents are all relayed in such detail by Dawson (complete with extracts of the famous commentaries from Hugh Johns, David Coleman and Kenneth Wolstenholme) that in our minds eye we can see ‘that tackle by Moore’ on Jairzinho, that appalling miss by Jeff Astle, that flukey headed goal by Seeler, Beckenbauer’s arm in a sling, and of course the Carlos Alberto goal in the final, ‘sheer delightful football’ says Wolstenholme in a line for me as famous as his oft-quoted ‘they think it’s all over’. Even the famous long pauses by Coleman whenever England suffered a setback are described.

Dawson relishes the small background details of the competition and leaves no stone unturned in his quest to give the reader a feel for the Mexico of 1970, so that amongst other things we learn about the great ‘Findus cock-up’ which saw England’s supply of burgers impounded and destroyed by Mexican customs, the seemingly endless presentations to Bobby Charlton, and most amusingly, the erratic and wild behaviour of the recently deposed Brazilian coach Saldanha (thought to be so unbalanced the Brazilian authorities banned him from flying in case he hijacked the plane). We also enter into the great ‘What caused Banks’s dicky tummy ?’ debate. Was it skullduggery ? bad luck ? the result of an ‘illegal’ room service delivery ? The funny thing is, Dawson has the ability to get us so caught up in the competition again that he makes us care about all these things. I want to know what DID cause Gordon Banks’s stomach cramps, just what DID go on in the little jewellery store in the Hotel Tequendama and most importantly, I want to know WHY, WHY, WHY, didn’t the referee give that penalty against Germany when Beckenbauer clattered into Bell when he was through on goal ? (cowardly and incompetent refereeing was a feature of this World Cup…..unlike all the others.)

At the end of the day the best team won the trophy…I suppose, although the magical Brazilians were revealed by Dawson to be mighty ‘physical’ against England, as well as indulging in ‘gamesmanship’. However no-one or no team is perfect but how you felt for the England boys, and for Alf Ramsey too.

Dawson’s examination of England’s campaign has no criticism for Ramsey at all. While he is variously described as short-tempered, grumpy, a strict disciplinarian, sensitive about his roots, and by Bobby Charlton as, ‘frightening’, these are not seen as faults, just as ‘Alf’. As confirmed by Norman Hunter, ‘You’ll never hear one of the players have a bad word about him’. Alf didn’t have the relaxed and easy-going nature of a Helmut Schoen (as Dawson relates, no England player would ever have thrown Alf into a pool fully clothed) his commitment to England’s cause, his meticulous preparation and his belief in his boys is undeniable.

‘Back Home – England and the 1970 World Cup’ should be read as a tribute to Alf and the boys, they tried but they couldn’t quite bring it off, but the memories…………and those matches !

Back Home : England and the 1970 World Cup
This is a book with everything; devastating pace, wonderful flair, superb organisation, impeccable poise, and faultless technical ability. Like its subjects, Moore, Charlton, Pele and Beckenbauer, it has a timeless quality and may well become the definitive work on the 1970 World Cup, probably the greatest World Cup tournament played so far.

Written, naturally, from an English point of view (and why not, we were the World Champions) the book catalogues the series of events both before and during the tournament which culminated in the cruel dashing of English hopes of remaining the dominant power in world football. All Englishmen should read this book to remind themselves of how good our football teams were both at club and international level, how we were feared by other European nations, and seen as being the only country which could seriously challenge Brasil.

The goal by the “small hairy German” Gerd Muller in Leon on 14 June 1970 changed the course of English football for the next thirty years and arguably started the development of a footballing inferiority complex from which we as a nation have never recovered.

Jeff Dawson writes with an obvious passion and love for the game. Whilst he details the undoubted injustices in some of the refereeing decisions, the calculated fouling of top class players by other top class players, and the obvious bias of the Mexican population towards the Brazilians and against the gringos - particularly the English who, worried about food poisoning, had brought their own fish fingers with them (in those days your average Englishman thought a tortilla was a cross between a tortoise and small dog) – the overwhelming message of the book is that football is a beautiful game and human frailties and imperfections are a vital part of the beauty, drama, and magic.

If you were around at the time and can remember the 1970 World Cup then this book will rekindle and restore many wonderful memories. If you weren’t around then enjoy it just as a brilliant potted history of a fantastic event.

Great Football and Social History
I was only four when the 1970 world cup was played. Since then I've developed an interest in the memorabilia of old world cups and collect and deal in it. And that's the problem with memorabilia, it can be rather one dimensional and it's easy for forget the colour and drama of World Cup events in Mexico 32 years ago.

"Back Home" brings the 1970 tournament to life, although pieced together after-the-event from reportage and research, the match descriptions are dramatic and vivid (especially England -v- Brazil) and the story of England's world cup defence, eventually doomed, is lifted by the wonderful story of Pele and Brazil winning the cup. Interlaced with this is the story of Bobby Moore and the infamous "Bogota Bracelet" and an astute link to what was going on Back-Home in Britain whilst the first ever world cup to be televised in colour was going on. Highly recommended and fun reading.