Golden Generation 101 Why England’s talented bunch of megastars didn’t come close to winning a major tournament
words were, ‘ Whatever you lot decide, us Man United players are going on strike’. A few more people put their hands up, but the others were looking around. I said, ‘ Hang on Gaz, this is not right – you can’t have a vote like this, with guys under immense pressure – you need to do it properly so they can have their say and not be vilified for it’.
“He mumbled and grumbled, said, ‘ OK’, then everyone went out and wrote yes or no on a piece of paper. The news came out the next day, and I think Gary said it was unanimous to go on strike. I can guarantee that was not the case. It really annoyed me – I’d voted not to because I didn’t believe it was the right thing to do, and Rio was in the wrong. How badly he was in the wrong was irrelevant.”
Even Ferdinand himself wasn’t that keen on the strike threat. “I felt uncomfortable,” he later told FFT. “It was a nice gesture, but it was my problem and I didn’t want them to sacrifice anything on behalf of me.”
“It was a massive story,” says Henry Winter. “But with England, you always find a little bit of comedy amid the chaos. A couple of old ladies had gone into Sopwell House for a sherry, and one of them said, ‘ Look, it’s that nice Michael Owen’, so they asked Owen and David Beckham for autographs. There was absolute carnage going on around them – headlines like ‘ Traitors’ and ‘ You’ve Let Your Country Down’ – but there they both were, being incredibly nice and polite to two ladies from the sherry- drinking bridge club.”
Only a call from Alex Ferguson – worried the media backlash would affect his players’ club form – talked Neville out of striking.
“PLATINI SAID ENGLISH PLAYERS WERE LIONS IN THE WINTER AND LAMBS IN SPRING. IT WAS TRUE”
“We were getting slaughtered in the press, and rightly so,” says Mills. “In the end they didn’t go on strike, did they? They caved and played. It was all for nothing – we played the game, got through to the Euros and Rio got banned.”
That the situation had been driven by the Manchester United players in the squad was perhaps symptomatic of the club divides between the top Premier League teams in that era. Heskey believes much of it was down to human nature.
“If me and you are from Liverpool and we go into the England squad, I’m going to sit with you,” he says. “Sure, everyone will train together, but most of the time I’ll be with you. It was just like that. I don’t think we particularly meant to do it, but the rivalry was very fierce back then – and there weren’t only two teams involved, but a few.
“With social media now, they’re more connected. We weren’t back then – I wouldn’t call up Rio or Frank and say, ‘ Hi, what are you up to?’ Now, regardless of which club they’re from, they message each other and have some banter.”
FAKE SHEIKHS AND A GERMAN CIRCUS
At Euro 2004, things looked promising when England beat Croatia 4- 2, then led hosts Portugal three minutes into their Lisbon quarter- final. However, it all fell apart when Rooney hobbled off injured after half an hour – referee Urs Meier controversially disallowed Campbell’s header, then Beckham was thwarted by an exploding penalty spot during the shootout. Darius Vassell’s miss confirmed defeat.
Despite boasting a midfield quartet of Beckham, Lampard, Gerrard and Scholes, England couldn’t find a way to dominate without Rooney. Utilised out of position on the left as Eriksson insisted on sticking to his 4- 4- 2 formation – disregarding the difficulties of that Lampard- Gerrard partnership in the centre – Scholes retired from international football the next day, at 29.
“Maybe that’s the window into the failure of the Golden Generation,” says Winter. “Scholes was the best player in that squad. If you’ve got a talent like him, you should be lifting trophies, but he resigned on the plane coming home from Portugal.”
Without him, England were stunned by Northern Ireland in qualifying for the 2006 World Cup, as off- field difficulties returned. Previously in the headlines for a tryst with Ulrika Jonsson, this time Eriksson’s love life embroiled Palios too: both were reported to have had relationships with FA secretary Faria Alam, and Palios resigned.
Players publicly backed Eriksson, eager to stop him being forced out. But in January 2006, the Swede made headlines again – duped into meeting ‘ the Fake Sheikh’, an undercover News of the World reporter, posing as a prospective new owner of Aston Villa. Eriksson expressed an interest in joining Villa if England won the World Cup, while making indiscreet remarks about several players. Bombarded by more media criticism, Eriksson announced he would stand down after the finals.
The mood didn’t improve at the World Cup: England never found top gear in Germany, surprise inclusion Theo Walcott didn’t play a minute, and media focus switched to the antics of the WAGS in Baden- Baden.
“The whole thing was a circus,” remembers Winter. “The media were utterly obsessed with the WAGS. Personally I wasn’t that interested – I was staying in their hotel and thought, ‘ This is going to be chaos’, so went and checked into another hotel. The culture was wrong, but the press shouldn’t get off completely scot- free. Maybe we were reflecting the public’s interest in celebrities at the time, or maybe we added to it. Either way, it created a distraction.”
It exacerbated tensions between press and players, there for much of the decade. “There was always going to be pressure from the media, and you had to deal with it,” admits Heskey. “I don’t think they meant to be negative, but it was negative.”
For some, it was in their head before games had even started.
“I remember talking to one player about the excitement of standing in the tunnel, going out to represent your country,” continues Winter. “He said that all he could think about was the press, and what rating he was going to get in the paper.”
Frustrated as he tried to find form after injury, Rooney was sent off in the quarter- final against Portugal, then a shootout hurt England again – Lampard, Gerrard and Jamie Carragher all missed, the latter brought on as a 119th- minute substitute to take a spot- kick. “I’d done so well in training – I hadn’t missed in five weeks,” sighed the defender.
LIKE LAMBS IN A DOWNPOUR
If three consecutive quarter- final losses was seen as a failure, things got worse when Steve Mcclaren took over – despite the appointment of Terry Venables as his assistant. England lost in Zagreb and Moscow, but a draw at home to Croatia would still have sent them to Euro 2008. They lost, and the man nicknamed ‘ Wally With The Brolly’ was gone.
Unbelievably, the Golden Generation had failed to qualify for a major tournament – even if many of them didn’t start that showdown with Croatia. Rooney, Owen, Terry and Neville were injured, Ferdinand was suspended after two yellow cards, Cole was left out for Wayne Bridge, while Beckham was a half- time substitute – dropped from the squad at the start of qualifying, then awkwardly recalled to the line- up, then benched for that decisive fixture.
“Some players thought that by dropping Beckham, he was just trying to show, ‘ I’m the big man, I can drop the biggest player’ – like going to a new school and taking on the biggest guy on the playground,” says Winter. “You soon sensed that the players didn’t really rate Mcclaren. He was a crazy choice as manager. A great coach, but not a manager.”
A decade that had started with such hope was ending in complete fiasco. The Golden Generation tag – reported to have been first coined by Adam Crozier in his time at the FA – had become a stick to beat the players with; a reminder of unfulfilled potential.
“The Golden Generation thing is frustrating,” said Lampard in 2009. “We didn’t make it up, Crozier did. The Golden Generation should only be said once you’ve won something. It was said too early about us. By calling us that, it was almost as if people were waiting for us to fail.” Sadly, fail they did, in their ultimate goal of lifting a trophy.
“With all the players we had, we were more than capable of winning something,” reflects Heskey. “But we ran into some teams who were better organised and more together.”
“Tactical decisions, issues with the media, the intensity of the season – they inhibited the Golden Generation,” concludes Winter. “They were less than the sum of their considerable parts. England could have won Euro 2004. The 2006 World Cup was frustrating, too. Players were just exhausted after long seasons – Michel Platini said that English players were lions in the winter and lambs in the spring. It was true.
“I just feel sad that a nice bunch of people didn’t achieve what they could have done. If they’d been tossers I wouldn’t have had sympathy, but they were nice lads and I know it hurt – they carry it with them.”
When Germany were dismantled 5- 1 in Munich, it seemed like the noughties would be the decade when England finally won something, for the first time since 1966. Instead, it proved to be a decade of what might have been.