The England national football team represents England in football and is controlled by the Football Association, the governing body for football in England. England are the joint oldest national football team in the world alongside Scotland, whom they played in the world's first international football match in 1872. England is one of the United Kingdom's Home Nations, meaning that it is permitted by FIFA to maintain its own national side. England's home ground is Wembley Stadium, London and their manager is Roy Hodgson.
England contest the FIFA World Cup and UEFA European Football Championships which alternate biennially. England won the World Cup in 1966, when they hosted the finals, defeating West Germany 4–2 in extra time in the final. Their best performance since was a semi final appearance in 1990. England have never won the UEFA European Football Championship – their best performance being a semi final appearance at the 1968 and 1996 Championships.
Read more about England National Football Team: History, Home Stadium, Media Coverage, Colours, Charity Support, Playing Style, Coaching Staff
Famous quotes containing the words england, national, football and/or team:
“Why should the generations overlap one another at all? Why cannot we be buried as eggs in neat little cells with ten or twenty thousand pounds each wrapped round us in Bank of England notes, and wake up, as the Sphinx wasp does, to find that its papa and mamma have not only left ample provision at its elbow but have been eaten by sparrows some weeks before we began to live consciously on our own accounts?”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“I, with other Americans, have perhaps unduly resented the stream of criticism of American life ... more particularly have I resented the sneers at Main Street. For I have known that in the cottages that lay behind the street rested the strength of our national character.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)
“In football they measure forty-yard sprints. Nobody runs forty yards in basketball. Maybe you run the ninety-four feet of the court; then you stop, not on a dime, but on Miss Liberty’s torch. In football you run over somebody’s face.”
—Donald Hall (b. 1928)
“I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its bed and would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency and bad dreams; or I was waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as if some one had driven a team against my door, and in the morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and a third of an inch wide.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)