The records indicate that it was in 1951 when England welcomed South American opposition to Wembley for the first time. In terms of official internationals only Scotland had played there before.
Argentina came to play a friendly and a crowd of 99,000 saw them take an 18th-minute lead. England wore red shirts, because both their normal white and change blue clashed with the visitors’ wide blue and white stripes.
Wearing red seemed to suit Walter Winterbottom’s England side. Stan Mortensen and Jackie Milburn scored in the last eleven minutes as England won 2-1.
They were the ‘Gentlemen in Red’ when Nat Lofthouse became the ‘Lion of Vienna’ after netting twice against the Austrians in 1952, when England beat world champions West Germany in a prestige friendly at Wembley in 1954 and when Bobby Moore made his England debut in Peru in 1962.
Under Alf Ramsey we wore red when the great Mooro put on the captain’s armband for the first time against the Czechs in 1963 and three years and seven ‘Red’ matches later we were officially the best in the world after a famous victory over West Germany at Wembley.
‘Blue’ England were less successful. We had blue shirts when USA shocked the football world by beating us during our first World Cup in 1950. It was 1-0 in the Brazilian mining town of Belo Horizonte, though the scoreline was misinterpreted as 10-1 to England by a press agency back home.
