Gabriel Gatehouse

Now, Bobby Moore is eventually released through some kind of skullduggery to do with contacts with the local Colombian intelligence chief.

And he goes to Mexico and he does join the team just in time to start the World Cup.

But in these government documents, I found that

References to a possible, quote, Latin American plot against British football.

They say British football for some reason, rather than English.

I interviewed the diplomat, the British diplomat, who was the...

change d'affaires in Bogota at the time so basically his boss the ambassador had left and he was left in charge his name Gordon was Keith Morris I don't know if you've ever come across a Keith Morris when you were at the BBC yeah cameraman it's Keith's dad

yes oh wow right so gordon and i used to work at the bbc we used to work with this camera man called keith morris i was with keith in uh crimea when putin annexed it um and when i found out about this diplomat who the 90 year old diplomat who was involved in this story i was like this name is really familiar and can you believe it it's keith's dad anyway um

So he said that even though at the time he thought this was far-fetched, he said that what people were talking about was, as he called it, a put-up job by Brazil.

That's what people suspected, that Brazil was somehow involved in trying to destabilize the England team.

And I think this really is the point that we probably ought to talk about motive.

I mean, maybe one of you two want to pick up on this, because that for me was one of the most implausible aspects of this.

It's like, why the hell would the Americans care who wins the World Cup?

I mean, 1970, are they into soccer?

I don't think they're into soccer, really.

Do they even know about like, you know, so for me, this was one of the big kind of stumbling blocks initially.

Like, why?

go together you know politicians can see the benefits of success in sporting tournaments but particularly i think in some countries the world cup that's the point isn't it yeah and a little sidebar on that so harold wilson was uh leading in the polls by about he was seven points ahead in the gallup poll when england kicked off in their quarterfinal against west germany

And then England lost, they crash out, the election is held four days later, and guess what?

Harold Wilson lost.