Amateurs shock football nation! This is the biggest World Cup upset ever | OneFootball

What could possibly go wrong when a World Cup favorite, packed with top stars, faces a team of amateurs? When not even the media, the fans, or their own coach believe in the underdog. Exactly — everything!

In 1950, eleven American amateurs shocked all of England at the finals in Brazil. A win that should give plenty of World Cup nations a huge boost of courage 76 years later.

Because, in principle, the USA had no chance ahead of their second group match against England. The Three Lions were appearing at a World Cup for the first time, were considered one of the tournament favorites, and felt more than confident against the USA.

📸 Ron Burton

So confident, in fact, that coach Walter Winterbottom (yes, that really was his name) simply didn’t even play his superstar. Stanley Matthews, who in 1956 became the very first Ballon d'Or winner ever, had to watch in Belo Horizonte (Germany fans know that place) as World Cup disaster unfolded. Okay, we’re exaggerating. At first, everything looked like a mere formality.

The Three Lions kept the USA under constant pressure and had already hit the post twice by the 20th minute. And when the woodwork wasn’t in the way, Roy Bentley and the rest of the attack were repeatedly denied by goalkeeper Frank Borghi.

"I had hoped they wouldn’t score more than five or six goals that day," the hearse driver, whose day job was outside football, later recalled (source: FIFA.com). A small spoiler here: his hopes were exceeded by a mile. England would not score a single goal that day in Belo Horizonte — the USA would.

In the 37th minute, Joe Gaetjens — a dishwasher and accounting student — powered a header into the favorite’s net. He had been set up by Walter Bahr — a teacher from Philadelphia. Crazy. But not even the craziest part of the story. Gaetjens was only discovered, called up, and turned into an international by US coach William Jeffrey on the eve of the World Cup. Speaking of doing: England then threw everything into turning the game around — in vain. The USA beat the Three Lions 1-0. 

The English media also thought the result was impossible and assumed it was a typo — surely England had won 10-1. In North America, the press even suspected fake news.  

As reported in the podcast 'Was bisher geschah', the New York Times initially didn’t believe the report from Brazil. Back home, no one even noticed the sensational win in Belo Horizonte. Hopefully, though, this story is very much on the minds of this year’s World Cup underdogs.

Because unlike the US amateurs, who were tactically and physically far inferior to the English, teams like Cape Verde, Curaçao, Haiti and others are made up entirely of trained professionals. And if things do get tough for the smaller nations, we have one tip.

Keep an eye out for American hearse drivers. They tend to be pretty good goalkeepers.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇩🇪 here.

📸 Tim P. Whitby - 2014 Getty Images