From dentist’s chair to days at the museum
THERE was a time when a ‘cultural excursion’ for an England squad meant a booze-up in a foreign nightclub.
In one infamous incident, Paul Gascoigne and Paul Ince braved the ‘dentist’s chair’ when the team visited a Hong Kong bar on a Far East tour ahead of Euro ’96.
Strapped into the chair, they lay back as a barman poured Drambuie and tequila down their throats. Other players were pictured the worse for drink, their shirts ripped.
But these days, under Gareth Southgate’s more sophisticated stewardship, ‘down time’ has come to mean something quite different with some of the players showing a genuine appreciation of history and the arts during Russia 2018.
Last week a number of the squad, including Eric Dier, Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Gary Cahill, visited the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, home to the largest collection of paintings in the world. Fellow players Jordan Henderson and Fabian Delph posted a number of images on Instagram.
A guide said the team had enjoyed the museum ‘enormously’ and hoped to return in the future.
One unidentified player was so taken with a Leonardo da Vinci painting that he asked a guide how much it cost.
There are some things, however, that even the eyewatering salaries of Premiership footballers cannot buy.