ON THIS DAY

Kevin Keegan's £500,000 transfer from Liverpool to Hamburg in June was a record for a British player. He made his debut for his new club on 26th July 1977 in a pre-season friendly against Barcelona and, as the picture shows, Barcelona players seem to be taking the pee out of the Hamburg colour scheme. But Hamburg had the last laugh, Keegan scoring in their 6-0 defeat of the Spaniards.

Bobby Charlton scored two and Eusébio one as England beat Portugal 2-1 at Wembley in the semi-final of the World Cup. England would play West Germany - who had beaten the Soviet Union 2-1 the previous evening at Goodison - in the World Cup Final.

Following the end of the Second World War the first major world sporting event to be held was the 1948 Olympic Games in London. The official opening ceremony took place at Wembley on July 29th but three days earlier - Monday July 26th 1948 - saw the Olympic football tournament kick off with two Preliminary Round ties. In those matches Luxembourg beat Afghanistan 6-0 at the Goldstone Ground in Brighton (attendance 5,000) and the Netherlands defeated Ireland 3-1 at Fratton Park, Portsmouth in front of a 8,000 crowd. Great Britain were later to start their Olympic campaign beating Netherlands in a First Round tie at the more traditional London venue of Highbury with GB eventually progressing to the bronze medal match where they lost 5-3 to Denmark in front of 50,000 at Wembley. The top football crowd was 60,000, also at Wembley, who witnessed Sweden defeat Yugoslavia 3-1 to win the gold medal. One member of the GB team in 1948 was Scottish goalkeeper Ronnie Simpson who, 19 years later, was one of Celtic's Lisbon Lions who beat Inter-Milan to become the first British team to win the European Cup.