2026 FIFA World Cup Countdown: The Miracle on Grass

65 Days to Go: The Biggest Upset in International Football History

The country of England has a long and proud history when it comes to football, not least because the Three Lions were the official inventors of the modern-day game.

Boasting some of the biggest clubs both on the European continent and in the world, and with a list of legendary personalities longer than most people’s driveways, many who have never watched the game before (can’t be that many) would assume that they were multiple-time champions of the world, the unyielding, dominating superpower of the football world.

Well, as English fans, we can tell you first-hand how wrong you are and will cite an agonisingly lengthy list of examples: Maradona’s Hand of God, Gascoigne’s tears, Kane’s penalty miss vs France, and Rob Green’s howler against the USA.

🌎🏆 2026 FIFA WORLD CUP COUNTDOWN

Day 3/100: Rob Green's Career-Defining Blunder

Arriving at the 2010 World Cup as a surprise pick for England's number one shirt, with just a handful of caps to your name and next to no major tournament experience ... Rob Green simply wanted… pic.twitter.com/0a7lHvLwhB

— Football Park (@FP_CentreCircle) March 6, 2026

But by far the most shocking result in English football history, and perhaps the biggest upset the World Cup has ever seen, came all the way back in 1950 at just the fourth ever edition of the tournament. Worse still, it was at the hands of the nation which the English had played a large part in populating just over 300 years earlier – the United States of America.

A Global Superpower

Football has been one of the few enigmas that the citizens of the USA have never fully been able to crack. While they may have the largest GDP in the world, some of the richest individuals to ever live, and five times the population of the entire British Isles, they have never managed to win, or indeed come close to winning, a major cross-continental tournament.

Though they managed to reach as high as fourth in the FIFA rankings all the way back in 2006, when the likes of Landon Donovan and Clint Dempsey were entering their prime, it speaks volumes that their best result at the tournament in fact came in the first ever World Cup, where they managed a third-place finish.

Seven-time champions of the Gold Cup, with only Mexico boasting more with 10, it is a surprise to many that the USA has not yet figured out how to break their glass ceiling when it comes to international football.

The only feasible reason that the USA has consistently been falling short at World Cups is down to their other sports, in which a larger portion of the population shows more interest. It may sound foreign and strange to us, but for the most part, football is a more marginalised sport on the North American continent, completely flipping the interests of most European nations.

Of course, football is now becoming more mainstream thanks to the sustained funding and promotion of the MLS, which has certainly been aided by the arrivals of David Beckham, Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard and, of course, Lionel Messi over the years, but while the domestic scene has undergone rapid improvement, the international set-up is still as shaky as ever under Mauricio Pochettino.

🚨🚨| 𝐑𝐄𝐂𝐎𝐑𝐃: Lionel Messi becomes the FIRST goalscorer in Inter Miami's brand new Nu stadium. ✨🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/RU4ALXwcWJ

— CentreGoals. (@centregoals) April 5, 2026

It was very much the same case 76 years ago, and that is why their game against England at the 1950 Brazil World Cup is still able to hold its own in the discussion of biggest World Cup upsets of all time.

David vs Goliath

Heading into the 1950 tournament, the USA harboured very little ambition of making an impact at the tournament. Sure, they had managed to reach the semi-finals 20 years previously, but since then, almost every participating nation had stepped up their game, not to mention that just 13 nations participated in that tournament.

Placed in Group 2 alongside Spain, England and Chile, it didn’t boost American confidence when England ran out as comfortable 2-0 winners against Chile in their group opener, while the US fell to a convincing 3-1 loss at the hands of Spain.

Of course, football was less strategic back then and had the potential to spit out more random results than the modern-day game. However, this England side was no transitional squad – containing the likes of Sir Stanley Matthews and Chelsea legend Roy Bentley, the Three Lions cast a shadow over the US team with their talent.

Indeed, the players themselves were so confident of a win that they didn’t train properly, instead amusing themselves by having a squad snooker championship, with eyes on their final fixture and taking top spot in the group.

The only concern was Stanley Matthews' absence – left out of the XI because of injury, the future Ballon d’Or winner would be missed, but his sideline status was unlikely to affect the outcome of the game.

Did you know? The great Stanley Matthews played for Stoke until he was 50-years old. pic.twitter.com/ed6Q7TWYXE

— Football Tweet ⚽ (@Footballtweet) November 26, 2016

Unlikely, but not impossible.

Class on Grass

The English media were as equally expectant of a commanding victory as the players themselves and thus were labelling the USA as 500-1 outsiders before the game even started.

As a matter of fact, football was so small at the time that being an American citizen was not even a requirement to play for the national team back then – it was simply show up, present some papers, and you could don the jersey.

Joe Maca of Belgium, Ed McIlveny of Scotland and the Haiti-born Joe Gaetjens all made the final squad through this medium, and the fact that the USA were unable to field a full squad of citizens only pushed the English media further into the realms of cockiness – there was simply no way that England could slip up here.

#OnThisDay in 1950, Uruguay won the World Cup after beating hosts and favourites, Brazil, in front of 200,000 fans at the Maracana. The man who scored the winner later said: pic.twitter.com/2lplnQlrIb

— ESPN UK (@ESPNUK) July 16, 2019

Well, you can imagine the brief surprise and then visceral horror when, the next morning, English citizens bought the newspaper, flicked to the sports pages and saw the scoreline – USA 1-0 England.

For a good couple of days, much of the public, as well as some of the media, thought that the result was a typo, hoping that it was actually supposed to read USA 1-10 England, but an investigation revealed that the first print was in fact correct.

The result provided such a sudden, shocking surprise that even the reporting was more than a little shoddy – the American paper The New York Times failed to keep their excitement under control to such a degree that they listed the scorer of the only goal as Ed Souza, when in fact, it Gaetjens.

The goal reflected the scrappy nature of the win; Walter Bahr, who delivered the vital cross into the England penalty area eight minutes before half-time, couldn’t even identify if Gaetjens' goal was intentional – it could have been a ricochet, a deflection, or it could have been deliberate. Either way, it found the back of the England net, sparking wild celebration in the US dugout and no shortage of long faces in the England section.

🌎🏆 2026 FIFA World Cup Countdown

Day 35/100: The Miracle on Grass

The 1950 World Cup, Brazil. England participating in their first-ever tournament. The USA, entering off the back of a third-place finish 20 years earlier.

Anyone would have thought the USA were favourites, but… pic.twitter.com/NVwfWlE8dj

— Football Park (@FP_CentreCircle) April 8, 2026

Up until that point, England had dominated the game, and after the goal, that pattern would quickly resume, but as if pre-determined by the football gods, England simply couldn’t respond. US keeper Frank Borghi was forced into a smart save to deny Stan Mortensen before Mortensen saw penalty shouts waved away eight minutes from time, with the referee convinced that the foul had occurred outside the area.

Though they became increasingly desperate amongst the roars of the anti-England Brazilian crowd, who were chanting “One more!”, there would be no late breakthrough for the Three Lions, as the final whistle sealed one of football’s most unlikely results.

It was a remarkable achievement for both Gaetjens and the USA. Gaetjens had been washing dishes in a German restaurant as a part-time job in the lead-up to the tournament, and the fact that he came from the tiny island of Haiti only saw the tale grow taller.

Meanwhile, the USA had accomplished a win that would be talked about for generations – England were 70-1 favourites to win the tournament before the opening game kicked off, and while those odds could be considered English media bias, this was before any nation truly dominated world football, and England winning was more than just a possibility.

Their post-tournament futures couldn’t have been more wildly different. With both eliminated in the group phase, with Spain going through, the USA would not qualify for another World Cup until 1990, a stunning 40 years later.

Meanwhile, England would become tournament regulars, even lifting the Jules Rimet trophy 16 years later on home soil, completing their redemption arc.

Both sides will be forever linked by the events of 1950 – though such a long time stands between the present day and the 1950 tournament, the “Miracle on Grass”, as it would come to be known, is still marked as a hugely significant point in the evolution of football (or “soccer) in America.

Football History in colour 🎨

An amazing shot of the USA’s Joe Gaetjens as jubilant fans celebrate his incredible winning goal against England. At the time, the victory, now dubbed ‘The Miracle on Grass’, was the World Cup’s greatest shock! (1950)

Colourised: @Garswoodlatic pic.twitter.com/aGw8xEYmrl

— The Football History Boys (@TFHBs) March 8, 2023

Moreover, after the two sides met again on the world stage in 2010 and played out a 1-1, the 1950 result means that the USA still boasts World Cup bragging rights over England, a point they can hold over the heads of very few other countries, let alone one going into the 2026 tournament as one of the favourites.

With the USA hosting this year's tournament, the nation has never had a better opportunity to take a step forward in their football development – placed in a group alongside Paraguay, Australia and Turkey, they will rarely get a better opportunity, and should they emerge from the group unscathed, they will likely be presented with an opportunity to perform a shock repeat of the miracle on grass.