Gino Pariani

Born: 21 February, 1928, in St Louis, Missouri, US. Died: 9 May, 2007, in St Louis, aged 79.

VIRGINIO "Gino" Pariani played inside-right for the mostly-amateur United States football team which stunned favourites England 1-0 in the 1950 World Cup, effectively knocking the English side out of the tournament in the first round. At the time, it was considered the biggest upset in the history of football and British newsdesks at first assumed there had been a telex misprint and England had won 10-1.

Pariani and the team's Scottish captain, Ed McIllvenny, from Greenock, who became known as "the Yank from the Tail o' the Bank" and died in 1989, played a crucial role in frustrating the mighty English, including Tom Finney, Alf Ramsey and Stan Mortensen, after the US scored in the 37th minute. McIlvenny, who had previously played for Wrexham, was the only full professional in the side, 500-1 outsiders, which also had a Scots head coach, Bill Jeffrey from Edinburgh.

After the tournament, the English Football Association protested that the US had three foreign-born players in its side, including McIlvenny and the goalscorer Joe Gaetjens, a Haitian who was born in Port-au-Prince. The International Football Federation in Zurich rejected the protest, saying the "foreigners" had all applied for US citizenship.

The 29 June, 1950, match in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and the lives of Pariani and his teammates, were the subject of a 2005 film The Game of Their Lives, co-starring Patrick Stewart and with Louis Mandylor playing Pariani. (McIlvenny's role, played by US soccer player John Harkes, was minimised in the film, which fictionally gave the captaincy of the side to another player, Walter Bahr, to add to the all-American melodrama).

Virginio Peter Pariani was born in St Louis, Missouri, in 1928, the son of Italian immigrants, growing up in the district known at the time as "Dago Hill", an Italian neighbourhood now known with more political correctness only as "The Hill". He grew up on the same street as his lifelong friend, Frank Borghi, who would go on to shine as the US goalkeeper in the 1950 match, keeping out shots from Finney and Mortensen with a lot of help from his woodwork.

A plaque on Daggett Street, on "The Hill", remembers the two local boys and their 90 minutes of greatness. Because of its European immigrants, St Louis was a hotbed of "soccer" in a nation where baseball ruled and "American football" was growing. Five of the 1950 team were born in the city.

Pariani's talent was obvious early on. He started playing in local leagues at the age of 15, winning a championship with a team called Schumackers. In 1948, aged 20, he won the national US Open Cup Championship with St Louis side Simpkins-Ford, financed by a car dealer called Joe Simpkins. They won the title again in 1950.

Pariani was also in the US side which underwhelmed in the 1948 Olympics held in London and southern English football grounds, going down 0-9 to Pariani's fatherland, Italy.

When it came to the 1950 World Cup in Brazil, the US was hard-pressed to find a squad that would not embarrass the nation. Adverts were put out among immigrant communities on the east and west coasts, notably in New York and Philadelphia, for a trial match to be held in St Louis. Once picked, Pariani interrupted his honeymoon to fly to Brazil.

As it turned out, he scored the Americans' first goal in the tournament, putting them ahead after 17 minutes in their opening first round match against Spain. But the Spaniards responded with three goals in ten minutes in the second half.

When the Americans lined up against England on 29 June, in Belo Horizonte, then a small mining town, only one US sports reporter, Dent McSkimming of the St Louis Post-Dispatch, was at the game, and he had taken holiday time off to cover it at his own expense. So confident were England that they left out Stanley Matthews, considered one of the best players in the world at the time.

After the US held on to their 1-0 lead, Brazilian fans invaded the pitch and hoisted goalscorer Gaetjens, a part-time dishwasher in New York who became known as "the Haitian sensation", onto their shoulders. A later defeat by Chile meant the US, along with England, went out of the tournament, eventually won by Uruguay.

During the shooting of the film The Game of Their Lives in his hometown two years ago, Pariani recalled that when he returned to the US, none of his neighbours knew the result of the England, or any other, World Cup match. It was almost half a century later before the American team's achievement was recognised. Pariani, McIlvenny, who later played for Matt Busby's Manchester United, and Scots coach Jeffrey, who died in 1966, were inducted in the US National Soccer Hall of Fame.

Gino Pariani is survived by his wife, Janet, and seven children.

PHIL DAVISON