The current flood of football documentaries shows no sign of abating; the recognition certain teams and individuals enjoy means that it’s not likely to any time soon. Geoff Hurst, the hat-trick hero of the 1966 World Cup final, is no doubt a natural subject for the “legacy” strand of these things: along with the likes of Jack Charlton, Bobby Moore and Bobby Robson, Hurst stands for a misty-eyed idea of Proper Football, when men were gods on the pitch and ordinary semi-dwelling blokes off it.
Hurst was all this and more, even if this profile focuses, football-wise at least, on that three-goal game at the expense of almost everything else. (Though that title might need a bit of nudging since Kylian Mbappé pulled off the same feat in 2022.) A rollcall of greats line up to heap praise on his sterling work against West Germany, with Gary Lineker (his nearest equivalent) being particularly enlightening on how Hurst exemplified the striker’s art – it’s all about “percentages”.
