- The Glory Years

West Ham United’s success in the 1960s is due to for- mer player and manager . By 1958 the Club was at the top level of English football.

“Past the Boleyn on the corner, turn left, it was just a few shops down…you had a, the cafe on the corner where people like - he was a big men- tor for …. I obviously didn’t intrude but I’d sit as near as I could just to look at them not…in awe just to think, ‘Oh that’s my idol sitting over there and I’m in the same room as them.’ So that…I think there was a lot of tactical stuff talked by the first team squad in that cafeteria.” Michael (b. 1946, fan)

Bobby Moore played for the club throughout the 60s

Ron Greenwood took charge of the club in 1961:

“ was a very, very forward thinking manager and he excelled on tactics, and if you like continual training regimes and coaching and he en- couraged all the apprentices and young players to do coaching, because he thought, quite rightly that it made you think about your game….so I mean, he, he used to like to play the right back on the right wing, or the centre forward of the centre half, and, and you Ron Greenwood would realise the, the differences between the two positions, so, that was all part of your education as you were growing up” Robert (b. 1948, fan)

With young local talent on the pitch - , , and Bobby Moore - the first taste of success came winning the 1964 FA Cup in a 3-2 win over Preston North End.

In 1966 Bobby Moore lifted the World Cup as Eng- land won 4-2 against West Germany. This was seen as much a United win as it was for Eng- land.

“And then of course…West Ham fans’ll tell you it wasn’t that won the World Cup in 1966 it was West Ham because Bobby Moore, Geoff Hurst, Martin Peters, three players from West Ham at that time were in the England side, ” John (West Ham Historian)

Victory for West Ham in 1964

An Eastside Community Heritage exhibition. Visit our website www.hidden-histories.org.uk