England national football team
England national football team
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England national football team

The England national football team have represented England in men's international football since the first international match in 1872. It is controlled by the Football Association (FA), the governing body for football in England, which is affiliated with UEFA and comes under the global jurisdiction of world football's governing body FIFA. England competes in the three major international tournaments contested by European nations: the FIFA World Cup, UEFA European Championship and UEFA Nations League.

England are the joint oldest national team in football having played in the world's first international football match in 1872, against Scotland. England's home ground is Wembley Stadium, London, and their training headquarters is at St George's Park, Burton upon Trent. Thomas Tuchel is the current head coach.

England won the 1966 FIFA World Cup final on home soil, making them one of eight nations to have won the World Cup. They have qualified for the World Cup sixteen times, with fourth place finishes in the 1990 and 2018 editions. England have never won the European Championship, with their best performances to date being runners-up finishes in 2020 and 2024. As a constituent country of the United Kingdom, England are not a member of the International Olympic Committee (as English athletes compete for Great Britain), and so do not compete at the Olympic Games. England are the only team to have won the World Cup at senior level but not their major continental title, and the only team representing a non-sovereign country to have won the World Cup.

The England men's national football team is the joint-oldest in the world; it was formed at the same time as Scotland. A representative match between England and Scotland was played on 5 March 1870, having been organised by the Football Association. A return fixture was organised by representatives of Scottish football teams on 30 November 1872. This match, played at Hamilton Crescent in Scotland, is viewed as the first official international football match, because the two teams were independently selected and operated, rather than being the work of a single football association. Over the next 40 years, England played exclusively with the other three Home Nations—Scotland, Wales and Ireland—in the British Home Championship.

At first, England had no permanent home stadium. They joined FIFA in 1906 and played their first games against countries other than the Home Nations on a tour of Central Europe in 1908. Wembley Stadium was opened in 1923 and became their home ground. The relationship between England and FIFA became strained, and this resulted in their departure from FIFA in 1928, before they rejoined in 1946. As a result, they did not compete in a World Cup until 1950, in which they were beaten in a 1–0 defeat by the United States, failing to get past the first round in one of the most embarrassing defeats in the team's history.

Their first defeat on home soil to a foreign team was a 2–0 loss to Ireland, on 21 September 1949 at Goodison Park. A 6–3 loss in 1953 to Hungary was their second defeat by a foreign team at Wembley. In the return match in Budapest, Hungary won 7–1. This stands as England's largest ever defeat. After the game, a bewildered Syd Owen said, "it was like playing men from outer space". In the 1954 FIFA World Cup, England reached the quarter-finals for the first time, and lost 4–2 to reigning champions Uruguay.

Although Walter Winterbottom was appointed as England's first full-time manager in 1946, the team was still picked by a committee until Alf Ramsey took over in 1963. The 1966 World Cup was hosted in England and Ramsey guided England to victory with a 4–2 win against West Germany after extra time in the final, during which Geoff Hurst scored a hat-trick. In UEFA Euro 1968, the team reached the semi-finals for the first time, being eliminated by Yugoslavia.

England qualified automatically for the 1970 World Cup in Mexico as reigning champions, and reached the quarter-finals, where they were knocked out by West Germany. England had been 2–0 up, but were eventually beaten 3–2 after extra time. They then failed to qualify for Euro 1972 and the 1974 World Cup, leading to Ramsey's dismissal by the FA.

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