GAZZA TAKES A NATION FROM THE RIDICULOUS TO THE SUBLIME
Let’s be clear: as a nation, England has been guilty of, and despised for, multiple crimes across its history. And the Scottish, Welsh and Irish have more reason than most to harbour anti-english feeling which rarely strays too far from the surface, even when benignly expressed as individual patriotism.
By contrast, during the post-imperial half of the 20th century, the English largely wore an apologetic air and what The Independent’s Bryan Appleyard called a “chain of guilt that has been hung around the English neck”.
“Think how hard it now is to be patriotically English,” he wrote in June 1996. “Professional Scots, Welsh, Irish, French and Americans are everywhere, flaunting their idiosyncrasies, but the English cower, occasionally making fun of themselves.” For many people in England, waving a flag was an embarrassing relic of colonialism or hooliganism – until Euro 96 and a seismic Saturday afternoon in the Wembley sunshine, that is.
The week didn’t start well for England. The press piled in after their draw with Switzerland, printing paparazzi shots of Teddy Sheringham, Jamie Redknapp and Sol Campbell swigging away inside an Essex nightclub. At England’s Bisham Abbey HQ, Venables upped the verbal ante, accusing the team’s critics of treason.
“It’s awful but we’re getting hardened to it,” Venables told the press pack. “We just don’t understand why it’s necessary to do what you are doing. Some of you feel like traitors to us. They’re turning the public against the players, which can turn them against us in the ground.” Paul Gascoigne summed up the Three Lions’ attitude by punting a camera crew’s football into a Bisham Abbey lake.
Having sided with his players, Venables also made tactical plans. He’d played a back three in some friendlies, and after the false start of the Swiss game, he wanted to make a switch that had been a long time coming.
“We had a meeting with all the staff and he said that we could play like Holland and how they set up,” Venables’ No.2, Bryan Robson, tells Fourfourtwo. “Don Howe was a little bit nervous about it, but myself and [goalkeeping coach] Mike Kelly said, ‘Yes. We have got the players to do that’.”
Elder statesman Howe had been involved in football since 1950 but he was associated with tactical nous, as the brains behind Arsenal’s 1971 Double and Wimbledon’s 1988 FA Cup Final upset over the mighty Liverpool. He may not have shared Venables’ confidence, but he had no problem in explaining the plan to the players. “Don was excellent at going onto the training pitch, setting everyone up and saying, ‘This is the way we need to play,’” remembers
Robson. “That was a massive learning process for me, just watching the players soak it all in.”
Venables didn’t leave it all to Howe, though. Paul Ince liked Venables’ distillation of complex tactics into simple instructions. “Players don’t have a great concentration span but he would simplify it for each of us,” he tells FFT. “While the session was going on, he’d walk round to the full-back and say, ‘Listen, this is where we want you – do that, perfect’. We all knew our jobs when we got onto the pitch. They weren’t complicated, but he gave you the belief that if you did what he was telling you, we’d win.”
A back three wasn’t a new concept. As well as the Dutch, it was still the default system for Germany, whose Euro 96 sweeper Matthias Sammer came as close as anyone to equalling the incomparable Franz Beckenbauer. Even Graham Taylor had a go, disastrously, losing a key USA 94 qualifier in Norway with a back
three of Des Walker, Gary Pallister and Tony Adams. Venables’ approach was considerably less clod-hopping, however.
“Terry was clever,” says Ince. “He could play Gary Neville at right-centre-half, because as a right-back he was used to going out on the wing. The same went for Stuart Pearce on the left. Terry was so intelligent about the game.”
“The three central defenders were all very comfortable playing close together,” explained Venables, “and if one of the flank men had to move out and deal with any danger, Paul Ince dropped back into the space. And we also had Teddy Sheringham in a position where he could make up the numbers in midfield but still stay in touch with Alan Shearer.”
Venables’ first England back three, in a 0-0 draw with Croatia at Wembley in April 1996, had Pearce and Neville sat either side of Mark Wright. The Liverpool sweeper’s knee injury in the next match, a 3-0 victory against Hungary, created an opening for a fresh-faced Gareth Southgate. By the time of the Asia friendlies, Adams had returned to a back four alongside him, but Southgate could also play in midfield. The decision was made: Scotland would face a back three who had never played together.
About 30 miles east of Bisham Abbey, Fleet Street had its own tactics to tweak.
The press had pilloried England’s players, but by midweek the English public were preparing for a derby. Suddenly the papers switched to their version of patriotism, namely nationalism bordering on jingoism.
The tabloids were knee-deep in references to centuries-old skirmishes, recently brought back into focus by Mel Gibson’s historically extravagant 1995 film Braveheart. The Battles of Bannockburn and Culloden were invoked;