England braced for homecoming party
THE national euphoria around the England team is such that there could be crowds to greet their homecoming to match the return of Bobby Robson’s side in 1990.
There were 300,000 at Luton Airport and on the open-bus top route through the town after England reached the semi-final at Italia 90.
A proportion of the current massive positivity will disappear if England go out at the quarterfinal stage to Sweden tomorrow as manager Gareth Southgate referenced yesterday.
But some of the feel-good factor around Southgate’s young side will survive going out at the last-eight stage and would be off the scale were England to reach the last four or beyond.
The FA say they have yet to even discuss a 1990-style homecoming. Rather than at Luton 28 years ago, the England squad charter flight is due to land back at Birmingham airport, from where they set off for Russia.
And what could be strategically better for the FA than to celebrate their World Cup showing with the second city, especially with another Midlands city Leicester staging an England friendly against Switzerland in September.
However, what is pretty certain if the parade takes place, is that no one — not even team joker Jamie Vardy — will be wearing a set of fake boobs like Paul Gascoigne did on the bus in Luton. THERE is some upset among the blazers on the FA Council, many of whom have put in two decades of service to football, that they have not received any freebie invites from the FA for the World Cup. Yet Kate Tinsley, chief executive of builders merchants Buildbase, was in Moscow for the Colombia match at FA expense having attended less than a handful of board meetings since her appointment as an FA non-executive director.