Don Morley – World Cup Reminisces
17th July 2026
In: News, Members' Articles
World Cup Fever?
As a Fleet Street Press Photographer who also enjoyed covering Sport, 1966 was a big year for me with the entire World Cup Soccer tournament being based in the UK, and with myself plus two other United Newspapers Colleagues deputed to cover the pre match training and, between us, every game.
My role started early on during the tournament’s build up with my being instructed to start each day at the Bank of England’s sports ground at Roehampton as that was where the England Team trained and, incidentally, I was not so instructed because I was in any better than either of my two wonderful colleagues, rather I just happened to live nearest to Roehampton,
I used to get to the sportsground with my M2 and M3 Leica’s ready primed with B/W and colour transparency film well before the bus carrying the players arrived so I could pick off a few individual portrait shots before training all started. Even then I could not help but notice the animosity between Manager Alf Ramsey and my own footballing hero at the time Jimmy Greaves.
Alf could be quite caustic and sarcastic anyway but I did think comments like ‘Are you thinking of joining us today Jimmy?’ when Greaves happened to be last off the coach were rather unpleasant and, although nothing to do with photography, it came as no surprise to me when Jimmy was not picked to play in the big games such as the World Cup Semi’s and Final
Once the tournament proper started I moved up North to cover Germany’s training in Ashbourne, Derbyshire, again at an ordinary roadside playing field with no privacy or security and completely open to anyone. It was here that Beckenbauer impressed me most. After Brazil’s Team arrived I then had to alternate between Ashbourne and Bolton where they trained.
My instructions for covering Brazil were to concentrate on someone I had not heard of called Pele. Remember there was no such thing as Social Media or Google so I did not have a clue what he looked like. I just stood by the coach door as they arrived at the Bolton Ground for the first time and just said to each player alighting ‘Pele?’ until one answered ‘yes’ and so I took a roadside portrait of the great man.
The rest is history really, England won that 1966 World Cup Final and I very nearly got fired because I decided to leave my slot by the goal mouth to go up instead into the crowd in hoping to get celebratedly throwing programmes and hats up into the air picture. But in so choosing idiot Morley also then missed getting a picture of Geoff Hurst’s winning goal! See Picture 2
Missing that very nearly cost me my job in those days of no contracts or job security where you could and sometimes were sacked on the spot, but on this occasion luckily I managed to keep mine, and went on to cover numerous more Soccer World Cups worldwide and also as many Olympic Games which every two years alternated between them. However as the copyright of the pictures I took always belonged to whoever was employing me at the time it means now I have very few to show here.
Most are off-cuts, shots deemed at the time as being not up to the mark but which have somehow survived in my own archive or others taken for myself when off duty whilst covering the tournaments in such as Mexico, Brazil, Germany, Ethiopia etc.
So, more about the pictures, Picture 1 is of Bob Austin (Left) Peter Abbey and myself on the right, taken by me with another M2 or M3 and shows our camera equipment (I was the only Leica user). The shot of Pele (Picture 3) was not taken in 1966 but later when I met him again in Brazil
The dressing room shot (Picture 4) was 1966 and at Wembley but I cannot remember which team? The shot of Bobby Moore (Picture 5) was taken at the first airport we landed at in S/America en route to the World Cup in Mexico in 1970 and I needed a cover pic, so in the transit lounge I persuaded him to put on a England shirt I had taken with so I could then send that film back to London.
Bobby then got arrested on a trumped up charge of stealing jewels from an airport shop!
Also the single player guarding the goal post (Picture 6) and the photo at the end of the match (Picture 7) were at the match where England had to beat Poland, but Poland virtually put all 11 players into the goal mouth for virtually the entire game so it finished 0-0, which meant Poland went through and England were knocked out.
The shot of The Berlin Wall at 1974 W Cup (Picture 8) was taken from my ****** awful digs in Berlin (My room being on the top floor of a Brothel!)
The shot of Maradona (Picture 9) at either Mexico or Brazil World Cup was a ‘throwaway’ which has somehow survived, as is the England Team (Picture 10) which was very underexposed.
Re Ethiopia African Nations World Cup Qualifying. They had just assassinated Haile Selassie and there was shooting everywhere including at one match when the crowds who could not afford entry tickets gate-crashed the ground.
The newspaper cutting (Picture 12) spelt the end for me in terms of my covering football. Disasters such as the Heysel stadium and Sheffield disasters were still to come, But the English fans behaviour had got so bad they wrecked the stadium in Paris for the European Championship final between Leeds and Bayern Munich. I was working by the side of the goal but next thing I knew woke up in hospital having been hit on the head by a metal chair which had been ripped out of its moorings by fans way up above me in the grandstand. That for me was enough!
Then should our esteemed Editor so wish; maybe he will also include one or two recent efforts, for although I am now almost 90 and of course long retired I do still like to keep my hand it so often visit my local park so as to take a few action shots with such as a Leica SL or SL2.
Whatever. As a parting shot one think I certainly do know despite virtually every camera tester or pundit always claiming such as Leica’s SL or SL2 auto focus speed is so poor that these lovely cameras cannot cut it for action work compared to the likes of the Canons. Nikons or Sonys etc is that the SL and SL2 (I have never used a SL2s or any SL3) do still focus far faster and better for me than either my own eyes, or any of the Leica M’s I used in my own heyday.
Don Morley
Picture 1 - Bob Austin (Left) Peter Abbey and myself
Picture 2
Picture 3
Picture 4
Picture 5
Picture 6
Picture 7
Picture 8
Picture 9
Picture 10
Picture 11
Picture 12
Picture 13
Picture 14
As a Fleet Street Press Photographer who also enjoyed covering Sport, 1966 was a big year for me with the entire World Cup Soccer tournament being based in the UK, and with myself plus two other United Newspapers Colleagues deputed to cover the pre match training and, between us, every game.
My role started early on during the tournament’s build up with my being instructed to start each day at the Bank of England’s sports ground at Roehampton as that was where the England Team trained and, incidentally, I was not so instructed because I was in any better than either of my two wonderful colleagues, rather I just happened to live nearest to Roehampton,
I used to get to the sportsground with my M2 and M3 Leica’s ready primed with B/W and colour transparency film well before the bus carrying the players arrived so I could pick off a few individual portrait shots before training all started. Even then I could not help but notice the animosity between Manager Alf Ramsey and my own footballing hero at the time Jimmy Greaves.
Alf could be quite caustic and sarcastic anyway but I did think comments like ‘Are you thinking of joining us today Jimmy?’ when Greaves happened to be last off the coach were rather unpleasant and, although nothing to do with photography, it came as no surprise to me when Jimmy was not picked to play in the big games such as the World Cup Semi’s and Final
Once the tournament proper started I moved up North to cover Germany’s training in Ashbourne, Derbyshire, again at an ordinary roadside playing field with no privacy or security and completely open to anyone. It was here that Beckenbauer impressed me most. After Brazil’s Team arrived I then had to alternate between Ashbourne and Bolton where they trained.
My instructions for covering Brazil were to concentrate on someone I had not heard of called Pele. Remember there was no such thing as Social Media or Google so I did not have a clue what he looked like. I just stood by the coach door as they arrived at the Bolton Ground for the first time and just said to each player alighting ‘Pele?’ until one answered ‘yes’ and so I took a roadside portrait of the great man.
The rest is history really, England won that 1966 World Cup Final and I very nearly got fired because I decided to leave my slot by the goal mouth to go up instead into the crowd in hoping to get celebratedly throwing programmes and hats up into the air picture. But in so choosing idiot Morley also then missed getting a picture of Geoff Hurst’s winning goal! See Picture 2
Missing that very nearly cost me my job in those days of no contracts or job security where you could and sometimes were sacked on the spot, but on this occasion luckily I managed to keep mine, and went on to cover numerous more Soccer World Cups worldwide and also as many Olympic Games which every two years alternated between them. However as the copyright of the pictures I took always belonged to whoever was employing me at the time it means now I have very few to show here.
Most are off-cuts, shots deemed at the time as being not up to the mark but which have somehow survived in my own archive or others taken for myself when off duty whilst covering the tournaments in such as Mexico, Brazil, Germany, Ethiopia etc.
So, more about the pictures, Picture 1 is of Bob Austin (Left) Peter Abbey and myself on the right, taken by me with another M2 or M3 and shows our camera equipment (I was the only Leica user). The shot of Pele (Picture 3) was not taken in 1966 but later when I met him again in Brazil
The dressing room shot (Picture 4) was 1966 and at Wembley but I cannot remember which team? The shot of Bobby Moore (Picture 5) was taken at the first airport we landed at in S/America en route to the World Cup in Mexico in 1970 and I needed a cover pic, so in the transit lounge I persuaded him to put on a England shirt I had taken with so I could then send that film back to London.
Bobby then got arrested on a trumped up charge of stealing jewels from an airport shop!
Also the single player guarding the goal post (Picture 6) and the photo at the end of the match (Picture 7) were at the match where England had to beat Poland, but Poland virtually put all 11 players into the goal mouth for virtually the entire game so it finished 0-0, which meant Poland went through and England were knocked out.
The shot of The Berlin Wall at 1974 W Cup (Picture 8) was taken from my ****** awful digs in Berlin (My room being on the top floor of a Brothel!)
The shot of Maradona (Picture 9) at either Mexico or Brazil World Cup was a ‘throwaway’ which has somehow survived, as is the England Team (Picture 10) which was very underexposed.
Re Ethiopia African Nations World Cup Qualifying. They had just assassinated Haile Selassie and there was shooting everywhere including at one match when the crowds who could not afford entry tickets gate-crashed the ground.
The newspaper cutting (Picture 12) spelt the end for me in terms of my covering football. Disasters such as the Heysel stadium and Sheffield disasters were still to come, But the English fans behaviour had got so bad they wrecked the stadium in Paris for the European Championship final between Leeds and Bayern Munich. I was working by the side of the goal but next thing I knew woke up in hospital having been hit on the head by a metal chair which had been ripped out of its moorings by fans way up above me in the grandstand. That for me was enough!
Then should our esteemed Editor so wish; maybe he will also include one or two recent efforts, for although I am now almost 90 and of course long retired I do still like to keep my hand it so often visit my local park so as to take a few action shots with such as a Leica SL or SL2.
Whatever. As a parting shot one think I certainly do know despite virtually every camera tester or pundit always claiming such as Leica’s SL or SL2 auto focus speed is so poor that these lovely cameras cannot cut it for action work compared to the likes of the Canons. Nikons or Sonys etc is that the SL and SL2 (I have never used a SL2s or any SL3) do still focus far faster and better for me than either my own eyes, or any of the Leica M’s I used in my own heyday.
Don Morley
Picture 1 - Bob Austin (Left) Peter Abbey and myself
Picture 2
Picture 3
Picture 4
Picture 5
Picture 6
Picture 7
Picture 8
Picture 9
Picture 10
Picture 11
Picture 12
Picture 13
Picture 14
Comments
By David Askham: Such rich memories of those distant times, Don. I like the picture of Pele. Such a joyous expression! Thanks. And welcome to the 90's club, whenever that might be. By Keith Walker: Fantastic read Don and high quality images to match (excuse pun). Pleased our ‘esteemed editor’ included the recent stuff and Don’s thoughts on the SL range.
Can I be bold and ask Don for a piece on the Berlin Wall memories Another iconic moment in history. By Cled Lewis: Congrats. to our Editor for choosing such a timely piece, a different outcome unfortunately but what a story!
Fantastic to share Don’s experiences which are beyond our imagination.
Thank you Don. By Alan Humphries: Than you Don for a fascinating story, which made me ask the question. Where was I when I heard the result of the result of the England vi Germany final? On the beach at Budleigh Salterton.
I love the photo of Pele. what a face..... By Don Morley: Thanks all for your kind comments, and in answer to Keith Walker's question I should actually have explained for although I provided my own camera equipment the precious film was provided by my various employers, and VERY sparingly, so for instance five rolls of B/W Kodak Tri-X per week at The Guardian with one roll hopefully to cover up to three assignments per day. We processed our own 'Roll' each night when we got back to the office and then handed it over to the Picture Editor to select which frames would get printed, only then would we be issued with another new roll of film to replace it. Never would any of us dare to use any part of any frame of those films to take such as even the occasional private pictures with. Hence I now have so few such negatives now. However on some of the more interesting or important occasions such as visiting the Berlin Wall I did sometimes put my hand in my pocket and buy a film or two myself for use in a spare 'Non Work' camera body, and I do still have quite a few such, though very few have ever got as far as being printed as I have not got a darkroom. But yes Keith I do have more featuring The Berlin Wall. Best wishes to all, Don