English to Employ Blood, Sweat, Tears Against Germans : Soccer: Semifinal matchup pits powerful offense against ‘Masters of Muddle’ as former World Cup winners try to reach final.

On the day in 1966 that England played West Germany at London’s Wembley Stadium for soccer’s World Cup championship, a front-page editorial in an English newspaper prompted its readers to keep their chins up even if their lads were victims of another blitz.

The newspaper said: “If West Germany does beat England at Wembley, we have the satisfaction of knowing that, if they have beaten us at our game, we have twice beaten them at theirs.”

When England plays West Germany today in the World Cup semifinals at Turin’s Comunale Stadium, allusions to wars long past are virtually lost on two generations that know the two countries as enemies only through the pages of history.

That is not all that has changed in the past 24 years. Founder of the modern game, England once considered itself so superior to the rest of the soccer-playing world that it did not even enter the first three World Cups.

But now there is a question whether soccer is even England’s game. In a London Times poll last year to determine England’s favorite sport, respondents listed track and cricket ahead of soccer. English television ratings revealed this year that soccer is the second-most watched sport behind snooker.

As for its superiority on the field, England also has lost claim to that. It was not blitzed that day at Wembley in 1966, beating the West Germans, 4-2, in overtime. But that remains its only World Cup championship. This is the first time since then that the English have made the semifinals.

The sport’s super powers today are Italy and Brazil, each of which has won three championships, and West Germany, which, despite having won the championship one fewer time, otherwise dominates the record book.

No other team has won more games, played more games or scored more goals in the World Cup. In the past seven tournaments, West Germany has reached the semifinals in six. It has played in three of the past four championship games, including the past two.

With an arrogance that somehow does not detract from his charm, West German Coach Franz Beckenbauer, undoubtedly among the best to ever play the game and perhaps also to coach it, boldly predicted his team will play in its third consecutive final on Sunday in Rome.

The opponent is irrelevant, he said. If it is Italy, the West Germans will avenge their loss in the 1982 championship game in Spain, he said. If it is Argentina, he said, the West Germans will avenge their loss in the 1986 championship game in Mexico.

As it turns out, Argentina it will be, the Argentines having bounced Italy out of the tournament Tuesday night in Naples.

Beckenbauer is comfortable with his boasts because of an exceptional midfield, including perhaps the tournament’s most skilled player, Lothar Matthaeus, and opportunistic strikers Rudi Voeller and Juergen Klinsmann.

With 13 goals in five games, the West German offense has more than compensated for the four goals that the talented but not invincible defense has allowed.

Beckenbauer is not the only coach who has been impressed.

“They’ve got it pretty well worked out in all phases of play,” England’s Bobby Robson said Tuesday at his team’s headquarters. “They’re watertight. In this tournament, they’ve shredded everybody and have, to me, looked like the most impressive team.

“Germany has the ability to really take the game to the opponent, to go for it.”

Asked by a Swedish reporter if he feels like David vs. Goliath, Robson laughed but declined to answer.

“I can see that headline in papers all over the world,” he said.

Yet, England is the most unlikely of the semifinalists.

No one seems more startled than the English themselves. As David Lacey, a columnist for England’s Guardian, wrote in Tuesday’s editions, “Robson is nearing the end of his eight years as England’s manager with his brave and battered team out on a limb, clinging to a creaking branch and wondering how on earth they got there in the first place.”

How indeed?

Two weeks before the World Cup began, Robson announced he would leave England after the tournament to coach a Dutch team, PSV Eindhoven.

There was speculation that Robson was hounded out of the job by the London tabloids, which were competing for sensational stories about his alleged extramarital affairs.

The more respectable London dailies reported that he quit because the English Football Assn. announced it would not renew his contract unless his team won the World Cup.

Even to Robson, that seemed too much to ask. His players have experienced playing against one another in the English League but not against outside competition. Because of their fans’ notoriously rowdy behavior, English clubs have been banned in recent years from playing in Europe.

Also because of the hooligans, England was exiled to the island of Sardinia for its first-round games and drew two potentially dangerous opponents, the Dutch and the Irish.

England tied both, advancing to the second round as the group winner only because of a 1-0 victory over Egypt.

Meantime, the English captain, Bryan Robson, no relation to the coach, had no success with a faith healer he flew to Sardinia and returned home for an operation on his injured heels.

England won its second-round game by beating a more skilled Belgian team, 1-0, with a goal in the final minute of overtime. Then, Sunday night in the quarterfinals against Cameroon, England tied the score, 2-2, with a penalty kick in the 84th minute and won in overtime, 3-2 with another penalty kick.

The indomitable English?

The English press, which cannot be accused of scurrying to catch the bandwagon, prefers, “The Masters of Muddle.”

Attempting to relax on the veranda of a resort hotel in a region known for its pseudo champagne, Asti Spumante, Robson was agitated when it was suggested Tuesday that his team is not the real thing.

“We have not gotten this far on luck,” he said.

But he also acknowledged that his team, unlike the West Germans, has not reached the semifinals because of its overwhelming talent.

He used words such as heart, spirit, fight and mental toughness.

“It wasn’t our football that got us this far,” he said. “It was the other ingredients that got us through. We’re here because we don’t want to lose.”

England’s soccer, for the most part, is less artistic than functional. Dull is another word for it.

Like many other teams in this tournament, the English build a moat around the goal, relying on their 40-year-old keeper, Peter Shilton, to save them. On those rare occasions when they shoot, they do so cautiously. In five games, they have scored six goals and allowed three.

But it is playing well back home. The largest television audience for a sporting event in Great Britain is the 16 million that watched a tape-delayed fight between Mike Tyson and Frank Bruno in 1989. In a country of 55 million people, the game against West Germany tonight is expected to have an audience of 20 million.

“Even my mother, who has never watched a sporting event in her life, is going to watch this one,” a London Times correspondent said.