England played against the Rest of the World 60 years ago this week in a match specially arranged to mark the 100th birthday of the oldest football organisation in the world.

Almost every superstar was there to set the seal on a year of celebratory events to mark the century which had passed since the foundation of the Football Association (FA) in 1863.

FIFA took out a policy of £2 million ($2.4 million/€2.3 million) to insure the participants, at the the time this was considered a staggering amount, in today’s money it equates to approximately £51.5 million ($62.5 million/€60 million).

Sir Stanley Rous, FA Secretary, had already started planning the celebrations by the time he was elected FIFA President in 1961.

Organisers included tournaments for amateurs, universities and a youth representative match.  

Norman Creek, a former international player who was the manager of the British Olympic team at the 1960 Olympics, even wrote a poem.

"One hundred years, a century of time has winged its way across the football seasons,” Creek began.

“More than a hundred nations now can play, with each new football flag that is unfurled,

"The message comes from every game and past time, that soccer is the greatest game in the world!” 

England against the Rest of the World was to be in the last week of October but staged in midweek so as not to disrupt domestic league matches at the weekend.

Some 750 officials were invited to a banquet and each visiting FA was presented with a specially published pictorial history of football, and a print depicting the 1962 FA Cup Final, which had been  commissioned for the anniversary and was painted by artist Terence Cuneo.

It was perhaps surprising that the Royal Mail did not produce a special stamp, the void was filled by the Post Office of Monaco.

FIFA cast the net wide to recruit its team.

The selection committee was chaired by Harry Cavan, a future FIFA vice-president then in charge of the Irish Football Association.

An initial squad of 18 included Real Madrid superstar Alfredo Di Stefano.

"England deserve only the world’s best footballers at Wembley and they should get them," Di Stefano declared.

"It is up to us all to see that England, the country that taught us to play football, has a match to fit the occasion."

Di Stefano had been released by Real Madrid to play and called on other clubs to make a similar gesture.

England had been chosen as host nation for the World Cup in 1966.

They had been knocked out in the first round of qualifying for the 1964 European Championship by France which meant the squad  faced three years without competitive tournament play as they prepared for the biggest event in football.

They were managed by Sir Alf Ramsey, then still plain Mr Ramsey, a former international player who had masterminded Ipswich Town to the  League Championship in 1962. 

He was renowned for building a bond with his players. 

Ramsey boldly predicted, correctly as it turned out, that England would win the 1966 FIFA World Cup,

"Their players come with outstanding reputations and will have to play up to them or we will destroy them," Ramsey said of the FIFA squad for the special match.

His own side has just beaten Wales 4-0 at Ninian Park in Cardiff in the British Championship.

Substitutes were then only permitted in the event of an injury, but FIFA proposed that they should be allowed without restriction.

"This match is unique and can only be played once," Cavan said.

"We have tried to look at it from this point of view and of the spectators and players themselves, we have tried to satisfy both, we decided to take the course of giving all our players available here a game."

It was not a proposal that the England manager backed.

"This is really surprising to me," Ramsey responded.

"I cannot accept the excuse they have made about the necessity to break their own rules, the public want to see a competitive match, they are entitled to it."

The noble aim of gathering the world's best players for a one-off match soon hit problems.

"When the idea was first mooted we had practically unanimous support of all the countries," Cavan complained as players were withdrawn by their clubs.

"Now sectional and club interests have begun to appear making our task very hard."

Italians Cesare Maldini and Gianni Rivera, stars of AC Milan’s European Cup Final victory at Wembley earlier in 1963, were not allowed to play and Brazil’s Garrincha was forced to cry off with a knee injury.

As holders of the Copa Libertadores, Pelé's club Santos were in Europe to meet Milan in the first leg of the Intercontinental Cup, the forerunner of today’s FIFA World Club Championship in the week before the centenary match.

Santos lost 4-2 and they flew home immediately afterwards because they were due to play a match against Portuguesa in the São Paulo Championship.

"t it had been possible to postpone the match Pelé might have been able to stay in England, unfortunately this is not the case," Santos President Georges Coury said.

There had apparently been protracted arguments between Santos and FIFA.

“We want Pelé to play but this dithering cannot go on," FIFA secretary Helmut Kaser said.

Ferenc Puskás, then 36, but still a revered name with Real Madrid, was summoned as the replacement.

A decade before, he had skippered the Hungarian team which defeated England 6-3 at Wembley.

It was the first time that England had lost to overseas opposition at the stadium.

The encounter had been Ramsey’s final cap as an England player.

"I am sure that British fans will regard him as an adequate replacement." Cavan told the media.

The decision came so late that it Pelé's name was even printed in the official match programme where he was described as "a brilliant individualist with remarkable ball control and soccer sense."

The sun shone as Di Stefano led out his team alongside England captain Jimmy Armfield.

The teams were introduced to Prince Philip,the Duke of Gloucester, who was FA President, and the Earl of Harewood, soon to take up the role.

"Never before has such an array of talent been assembled," intoned the cinema newsreel announcer.

The match was also transmitted in 23 European countries by the fledgling Eurovision television link to reach an audience claimed to be some 250 million.

Russian Lev Yashin kept goal for the Rest of the World in the first-half, for once not wearing the all black uniform for which he was well known.

At half time it was 0-0 as the first of the substitutions were made.

Tottenham Hotspur's prolific goalscorer Jimmy Greaves had a effort disallowed, but England eventually broke the deadlock through Terry Paine of Southampton.

Scottish striker Denis Law, who had scored in the same Stadium for Manchester United in the FA Cup final in 1963, pounced for the equaliser for the Rest of the World.

Late in the match, Greaves struck from close range to give England victory.

"I have never more enjoyed an international," Greaves said afterwards.

Fernando Riera of Chile, the coach of the FIFA team, admitted the addition of the Brazilians could have turned the match in their favour.

"I thought England were superior in the second-half," he admitted 

"We could have done with Pelé and Garrincha, they would have changed the trend of our Game."

In fact ,Pelé, the world's greatest player, was destined never to appear at Wembley Stadium, the world's most famous football ground.

A fortnight later, Wembley also staged a "Youth Representative Match," when England captained by Ron "Chopper" Harris of Chelse beat the Rest of the United Kingdom 5-2.

Liverpool's Tommy Smith scored twice. 

In goal for the rest was Pat Jennings, later to appear 119 times for Northern Ireland, Scotland's George Graham, later to play for and manage Arsenal with distinction. 

In contrast to the big match, only 8,000 were there to see the youngsters.

Such star studded matches have been much rarer since, though even Diego Maradona could not prevent Argentina from losing to another star studded Rest of the World team in 1979.

This included Michel Platini of France, Ruud Krol from The Netherlands, Polish star Zbigniew Boniek and the Italian quartet Franco Causio, Marco Tardelli, Antonio Cabrini and Paolo Rossi,

By a twist of fate, Maradona was also the star turn in a similar match at Wembley in 1987 to commemorate the centenary of the Football League.