Half-a-century after that triumph of teamwork and character, allied to the talents of three, perhaps four truly world-class players, England’s football followers have witnessed yet another frustrating failure from those representing them on the field as the national team has departed Euro 2016 at the round-of-16 stage following a 2-1 defeat by Iceland.

For commentators to opine, as they have, that this was the greatest humiliation for the England football team since the 1-0 defeat by United States at Belo Horizonte during the 1950 World Cup finals in Brazil is nonsense.

That US team was not much more than a hasty gathering of willing semi-professionals. Walter Bahr was a high school teacher. Frank Borghi drove a hearse. Others worked as postmen or dishwashers.

They were only able to train together once, on the day  before leaving for Brazil. The scorer, Joe Gaetjens, was one of three non-US citizens added to the squad just before the game by coach Bill Jeffrey, whose pre-match message to the press was either a supreme mind game or a piece of obvious candour, depending on how you view it: "We have no chance," he said. "We are sheep ready to be slaughtered."

The Daily Express newspaper commented before the match: "It would be fair to give them three goals of a start."

By contrast, the Iceland team which departed the competition with honour undamaged by their ultimate 5-2 defeat by the hosts, France, was a powerful, well-drilled unit of fully functioning if underrated professionals which had previously beaten Austria and, for all Cristiano Ronaldo’s graceless post-match comments, earned a hugely creditable draw with Portugal.

No - it was simply the latest minor humiliation for England. Think Poland 1973 – until it became clear that they were really good, and they finished third in the 1974 World Cup finals. Think Norway in the 1981 World Cup qualifier - "Your boys took a hell of a beating…" Think Ireland at the 1988 Euros – a goal by Ray Houghton did the damage. Think Croatia in 2008, inflicting a 3-2 defeat upon England at Wembley which ended their interest in the final stages of the Euro 2008 tournament and put paid to the career of the Wally with the Brolly, England manager Steve McLaren. Rain, rain go away, come again another day…

Any coach will tell you that consistency is a key factor in footballing success. By that token, over the last decade or so, England’s players have deserved so much more as consistent under-performers.

Football is known as the "Beautiful Game" - and the range of its beauty extends beyond the obvious elements, such as, for instance, the impossibly acute volley from virtually out on the right wing with which Marco Van Basten earned the Netherlands victory in the 1988 European Championships, or the inside-out turn by Van Basten’s illustrious predecessor in an orange shirt, Johan Cruyff,  which left Sweden’s full back Jan Olsson tackling air during the 1974 World Cup finals.

Last week Wales’s Hal Robson-Kanu performed his own version of the Cruyff  turn, a moment of physical drama which precipitated an exit stage left for three Belgian defenders and an opportunity to steer the ball past a defenceless keeper to give his side a 2-1 lead in the Euro 2016 quarter-final.

But what was equally beautiful about the Welsh victory was the certainty and directness with which they moved the ball around, a confidence that is the sign of a well-drilled, well-coached team.

By contrast, as so often before, England at Euro 2016 were a collection of largely talented individuals playing without any sense of cohesion or security.  In his resignation speech after the Iceland defeat, England manager Roy Hodgson praised his players, saying they had “done everything that was asked of them.” As one observer subsequently asked – “So what the f--- was the question?”

England’s players under the charge of Alf Ramsey during the 1966 World Cup campaign were never in the slightest doubt about what questions were being asked of them.

There were minor changes to the team - John Connelly, Terry Paine and Ian Callaghan each had one group stage appearance, and of course Jimmy Greaves missed all the knock-out stages as he recovered from the gashed shin he had suffered in the 2-0 win over France.

But by and large Ramsey knew his best team, and the same 11 players appeared in the last three matches. Whoever came in and out was working within a template of tactics and formation that had been arrived at through logical process over the previous two years, and which was adhered to.

The reverberations of England’s victory within the home viewing public were enormous.  The Final was watched by a record 32.3 million British TV viewers. I was one of them, as was my father, and, popping in and out from the kitchen, my mother. Not sure how those circumstances fit with the official viewing estimates - but we move on.

After the Cup was finally won, after Geoff Hurst had claimed his hat-trick, after Nobby Stiles had danced, dentureless, with the Jules Rimet trophy on that sunlit early evening in north-west London, I demanded of my Dad that we went straight out to play football in the back garden. Naturally I was to be Geoff Hurst. He would have to make do with being Roger Hunt.

To slightly misquote William Wordsworth: "Bliss was it that evening to be alive,  but to be young, and pretending to be Geoff Hurst, was very heaven…"

Not that everybody saw things that way, of course.

England’s victory led to demonstrations across South America at what was seen as an "Anglo-German fix". Confidential Foreign Office papers released in 2000 reveal internal concerns about England’s "fair play" image.

Cited as evidence of the "conspiracy" was England’s 1-0 quarter-final win over Argentina, whose captain, Antonio Rattin, was sent off by German referee Rudolf Kreitlein for "violence of the tongue".

Rattin licked the referee so hard that his whistle melted.

Actually no. But he harangued the official to the point where he appeared on the brink of a nervous collapse. That was never accepted by the Argentinians as a legitimate reason for a dismissal.

In one of the other quarter-final matches, Uruguay had two men sent off in their defeat by eventual finalists West Germany.

There was a widespread belief in South America that Stanley Rous, the former referee who had become President of the world football body, FIFA, had "fixed" the referees.

The man who would eventually replace Rous in FIFA, Brazilian Football Federation President João  Havelange, said match officials had been "hand-picked political referees" who had received "financial advantage".

John Shakespeare, the first secretary at the British embassy in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, dismissed Mr Havelange's allegations, saying he was simply looking for a scapegoat for the Brazilian team's disappointing performance. "I will not weary you with a complete account of his ravings," he told London. "You may consider that such behaviour is unworthy of a leading personality - and you would be right - but this is Latin America."

As far as Brazil were concerned, however, their chances had been diminished by the cynically attritional attention paid to Pele by Bulgaria and Portugal during their group matches.

Ironically, West Germany were among the most aggrieved nations leaving England after the tournament.

They claimed, and still claim, the shot with which Hurst regained England’s lead in the 98th minute, bouncing down from the crossbar, had not crossed the line. And the fact that the linesman, Tofik Bakhramov, who helped persuade Swiss referee Gottfried Dienst that it was a legal goal was a Soviet official, from Azerbaijan, who may have had memories of Germany’s incursions into his Motherland during the Second World War, and who would certainly have remembered that they had beaten the Soviet Union in their semi-final.

And there was widespread cynicism too over the easy passage England had through the tournament in terms of being able to play every match at Wembley. They were due to play their semi-final at least at Goodison Park, but the match was switch to England HQ, officially because of Wembley’s larger capacity.

Maybe such arrangements are simply a part of the term "home advantage". Looking at this year’s Wimbledon tourmanent, for instance, home darling Andy Murray seems to have had a very helpful run of matches on Centre Court, thus obviating the risk of being rain-delayed, as was, for instance, defending champion Novak Djokovic.

So in conclusion, I feel confident in asserting that England’s victory at the 1966 World Cup finals was entirely merited/an outrageous distortion of justice*

*please apply geographical bias