Keough admired his teammate's tenacity.
"Charlie took a head-long dive and hit him right in the back of the knees, a tackle anybody in the NFL would have been proud of," he said. "The momentum they were both going, they both were at the penalty spot when they stopped. Charlie bulldozed him all the way. He [Mortensen] was mad as hell as anybody would have been... It would have gotten a yellow card, maybe a red in today’s game."
That tackle saved the day.
When Dattilo blew the final whistle, players on both teams were beside themselves for different reasons.
"It was like the Yankees losing to an amateur team from Massapequa [in suburban N.Y.]," Maca said about his hometown outside of New York City.
"We were 70-1 underdogs. I should have bet $10 on the game,” Colombo said with a laugh.
England forward Wilf Mannion and his teammates were not laughing at the surprising and embarrassing result.
"We were just going to go on the field, and it was all over, and we could do anything we wanted," he said at the 1987 reunion. "We didn’t."
Afterwards, the English press complained about the field ("narrow, rutted and stony," one writer reported) and about the three non-citizens who played for the U.S.- Gaetjens, Maca and right halfback Ed McIllveny [Scottish citizen]. They were residents of the country, which at the time was enough for them to represent the United States.
Afterwards, the crowd climbed a fence and ran through a moat around the field to lift the Americans players onto their shoulders.
"Gee whiz, all the people were hollering and got us excited," Pariani said. "It was like a hurricane ran onto the field. Most of them went to the goalie, Frank Borghi. He didn't know what was going on.”
