USA stunned England in 1950 while Senegal provided the first big upset of the 21st century tournaments
The biggest World Cup upset up to that point in the competition’s history and one so shocking that some newspapers assumed the wire report of a 1-0 final score was a typo and so instead reported that England had won 10-0. That is a myth, apparently, but nobody could blame editors at the time for not believing the turn of events in Belo Horizonte. An England team featuring players such as Billy Wright, Tom Finney and Stan Mortensen were meant to wipe the floor with an American side made up largely of amateurs and who had arrived in Brazil having trained for only a week together. Even their own manager, Bill Jeffrey, described them as “‘sheep ready to be slaughtered” but in their second group game they performed like lions, taking the lead through a 38th-minute header from Joe Gaetjens, a Haitian-born dishwasher from New York, and holding on during a second-half onslaught from England to complete the so-called “Miracle on Grass”.
