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On July 23, 1966, in a World Cup quarterfinal in front of 40,248 at Everton’s Goodison Park, Portugal and North Korea played one of the most frantic and celebrated matches in soccer history. Led by the brilliant Eusebio, playing in his only World Cup, the Portuguese had torched Hungary, Bulgaria and a disappointing Brazil by a combined 9-2 to advance to the knockout rounds, while North Korea had finished a surprising second in their group, losing badly to the Soviet Union and drawing with Chile before shocking Italy, 1-0, in Middlesbrough and eliminating one of the tournament favorites.
The North Koreans continued riding the wave of underdog energy early on. In a quick transition during the first minute of the game, Im Seung-Hwi fired off a shot from long range; it was blocked, but landed at the feet of Pak Seung-Zin, who scored from a closer distance. They kept going. In the 22nd minute, Portugal keeper Costa Pereira misplayed a cross, which quickly led to a tap-in for Lee Dong-Woon and a 2-0 lead. Two minutes later, it was 3-0.
However, the upstarts would quickly run out of gas. From the 27th minute on, Portugal attempted 22 shots to North Korea’s four. Eusebio scored an incredible four goals in 33 minutes to give the favorites the lead, and Jose Augusto finished off a 5-3 win with a short-range finish in the 80th minute. Probably the best team in the tournament, the Portuguese fell victim to a pair of Bobby Charlton strikes and lost to the English hosts, and eventual champions, 2-1 in the semis.
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Thanks to some brilliant archival work, you can watch extended highlights of the match on FIFA’s website. (You’ll also quickly come to realize how far ahead of his time Eusebio really was.) You can read more about it here, and thanks to the work of the data collectors at Stats Perform, we can dive into the data, too.
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The teams attempted 47 combined shots, 43% of which were on target and 51% of which were from inside…
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