‘Emotional’ Waddle wants to leave penalties in past
Italia 90 fall guy was left choked by Sweden win and thinks England are finally on the right path
When Chris Waddle finally got away from Luton Airport in 1990 after the squad who had lost the World Cup semi-final had completed a brief bus tour around town, he did so hiding in the back of a camper van with Paul Gascoigne, driven by the latter’s father.
The crowds were so big that they saw no other way. Waddle had 10 days off before pre-season training began at Marseille and when he walked on to the pitch on his first day back he was greeted by the team’s new manager.
“Ah, my favourite Englishman,” said Franz Beckenbauer, who had been in charge of the West Germany team who beat England on penalties and then went on to win the final against Argentina.
Waddle laughs at the memory as we sit in the lobby of the Moscow hotel that has been his base camp as a BBC Radio 5 Live pundit for the World Cup. He has travelled as relentlessly as any other reporter covering games here, and loves watching and analysing football, but he knows now, with England in a semi-final for the first time since 1990, he is in even greater demand.
It was Waddle’s missed penalty in the shoot-out that ended England’s involvement. “I was the last man to kick a football in the semi-final of the World Cup for England,” he observes, although at the Luzhniki Stadium tomorrow that will change at last.
Always outspoken and calm in his views, there was an unmistakable quiver in Waddle’s voice when the presenter, Kelly Cates, went to him in the aftermath of victory over Sweden on Saturday. He admitted to being “a bit emotional” but, he explains, not because of any feelings that his personal history might at last be buried.
“In 1990, I thought that was it, we had arrived. I thought we would kick on. We lost it a bit and Venners [Terry Venables] got it back. Then we lost it. We started bringing names in, throwing money at it. No plan. We kept failing. I have been one of the biggest critics of the way English football has been run. They seem at the minute to be getting it nearly right. There’s still a bit to do, but St George’s Park and the younger teams doing well is encouraging.”
He is passionate about the England team, but also about 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. 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.”
‘We lost it, bringing names in, throwing money at it. There was no plan but this is encouraging’