‘Emotional’ Waddle wants to leave penalties in past
CHIEF FOOTBALL WRITER in Moscow creative players. He came out of non-league to sign for Newcastle United in 1980, a highly technical player who thrived despite the prevalent long-ball culture. At Marseille he would be venerated, taking on the great AC Milan side of 1991 single-handed.
“We are not producing enough flair,” he says. “That comes down to being patient and having the belief in kids that might not be able to track back and might not be able to put their foot in. Other countries don’t use their players like that. When I went to France, they said, ‘Don’t run back’. In England, if you don’t run back, you’re lazy.”
At Italia 90, Bobby Robson introduced a system of three at the back, and Venables briefly reconstituted it at Euro 96, although Waddle finds it hard to believe it has taken that long for it to come back. “We seem to have a structure now where the philosophy is to play from the back.
‘We lost it, bringing names in, throwing money at it. There was no plan but this is encouraging’
When I was in France, they used to say, ‘Why do you give the ball away all the time? And then try to get it back?’ We would have some banter and then I would think, ‘They’re right’.”
He came to Italia 90 having won the first of three league championships with Marseille, with a young Didier Deschamps in the side. That season, Waddle scored a famous goal against Paris Saint-germain when he flicked the ball over Joel Bats’s head and back-heeled it in. By the time of the World Cup semi-final he had started every game at the finals and was fifth in line for the shoot-out.
He had never taken penalties before, not even at school – “our centre-forward was a bully, the hardest kid in the year, so I didn’t argue with him” – and even having to score to keep England in the tournament, he says, he did not feel nervous. “There is a saying in football, stupid but true, ‘You hit it too well’. And if you hit a ball too well you do think, ‘Aaah, I needed to scuff it’. As I ran up I thought, ‘Blast it’.”
His penalty sailed over the bar and England were out. Cut to Robson looking away. “You can’t get away from it because wherever you go people will talk about football,” Waddle says. “If you are out you might get an idiot who thinks it’s clever in front of his mates to shout something at you.
“I do believe the media have been a massive part. Every tournament where there could be a shoot-out, we go on about how we will lose on penalties. A lot of countries lose on penalties. Italy have lost on penalties – Roberto Baggio missed in a final but I can’t imagine him sitting in a restaurant and people saying, ‘Oh, that penalty you missed’. But we are fixated with it.
“When I was in France, no one mentioned them at all. When France lost a shoot-out, they shrugged. They used to think it was not really part of the game. I will be in my 80s and people will still be going on about it.”
His England career ended in 1991, with Graham Taylor refusing to go back to him in 1993 despite a groundswell of support for his recall. He said Taylor called him and promised to keep an eye on his form. “I said, ‘Graham, I can’t play any better than I am now’.”
But there is no personal bitterness on Waddle’s part. His frustration has been that 1990 should have been lift-off for England, but the country failed to progress and as a result his penalty miss has stayed there, frozen in time.
“You get sick of it because you think, ‘What else is there to be said?’ I missed. I don’t think there is anything else I can say. People say to me, ‘You got emotional the other day’. It wasn’t because of anything to do with 1990, I was glad an England team has got to this level. But with our resources, we should always be minimum quarter-final.”