yeah, must have been a simple admin error, Ancelotti has also been corrected, original date was his first game, now it's his actual appointment date, the rest all correct as well.

England's preparations for 1950 World cup...

Before flying to Brazil, the FA had deemed it too costly to leave early for the players to acclimatise to the high temperatures and humidity of South America. A kick-about in an empty Wembley Stadium was followed by three days of training at Dog Kennel Hill, the home of Dulwich Hamlet, where they were not allowed to use the first-team pitch because it was being reseeded.



On arrival in Rio after 24 hours plus of sitting on a plane
which made several stops en route...

The players were banned from visiting the beach during the day, for fear of getting sunstroke, and the heavy traffic and the firecrackers set off throughout the night by fans made it virtually impossible to sleep. “It was like Hyde Park Corner at four o’clock on a Friday afternoon,” one player recalled.

Built in 1917, the Luxor was a cheap, 10-storey edifice facing the ocean. It lacked air conditioning (the daytime temperature rarely dipped below 80F, 27C) and, while the players were used to sharing rooms, the catering was a disaster. Nobody at the FA had bothered to visit the hotel in advance, so it fell to Winterbottom to intercede.


Years later he remembered feeling “physically sick” when he inspected the kitchens and had to lay down a new set of rules for the chefs to follow. “All the food was being cooked in reams of black oil and garlic,” he recalled, “and the smell of it was dreadful and carried all through the hotel. Nearly all the players went down with tummy upsets at one time or another.”

“The food was terrible,” recalled Finney. “I remember the cold ham and fried eggs swimming in black oil. We were eating bananas, mostly.” Stan Mortensen put it more bluntly: “Even the dustbins had ulcers.”



It's going well....


Newcastle’s Jackie Milburn remembered the first morning of training. “Walter Winterbottom came and started talking to the press. He left us with three bags of balls. Normally when a bag of balls is left with a football team you’re lucky if you can get one. Everybody wants one, two, three of his own if he can possibly get them. But the whole bunch of us played cricket. What I’m trying to say is once the season is finished it doesn’t matter how willing you are, there’s nothing left.”

Missing from those early sessions was Matthews. At 35 it was widely thought the Blackpool wizard’s best days were behind him and he had not played for the national side for a year (though he would play for his country until 1957). The job of picking the team in Rio effectively fell to one man, the FA chairman Drewry, who ran a fish business in Grimsby and had been chairman of the local football club between the wars.




The FA would pay each player £20 per game, plus £2 a day expenses in Brazil. Even the referees earned £70 a week. The Sunderland defender Willie Watson was persuaded to give up a lucrative summer playing cricket for Yorkshire (he went on to play for England) to join the World Cup party. He would have earned more than £300 with the bat but fared less well with the ball.

“On my return from Rio,” he later said, “I received a cheque for £60 from the FA, being my fee for the trip – I didn’t play in any of the three games – and included in the letter was a note saying that I had overcharged my expenses by 16 shillings and three pence. I don’t think I have ever been so hopping mad.”



More at...


https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2020/jun/01/englands-first-world-cup-adventure-1950-brazil

Very enlightening,.. England's first world Cup experience.

I posted this so many times in the past it is not news.

All the goals in the 1986 final in Mexico City (3-2 Argentina v West Germany) were scored by players wearing odd numbered shirts (Brown 5, Valdano 9, Burruchaga 7, Rummenigge 11, Voller 17)
Alessandro Altobelli was a substitute in the 1982 final (3-1 Italy v West Germany), came on, scored in the 81st minutes, and was substituted.
Altobelli scored the last goal (81 min) in the 1982 World Cup and scored the first goal (44 min) in the 1986 World Cup (1-1 Bulgaria v Italy).

Morocco were the first country to have 11 players on the pitch where none were born in that country