If only Paul Gascoigne’s stud had been an inch longer or Darren Anderton’s shot from Teddy Sheringham’s cutback had found net rather than post.
Fine margins so often prove decisive in the outcome of a result in elite sport. England’s Euro 96 squad learned that in brutal fashion during their agonising semi-final defeat to Germany.
With every watch, Gascoigne’s miss in Golden Goal extra-time is more excruciating. Rather than have a shot at immortality in the final against a youthful Czech Republic, England instead were glorious losers, just like at Italia 90.
A few weeks earlier even that prospect seemed unlikely. England’s pre-tournament get-together in the far east had ended in disgrace, as players engaged in ill-timed, alcohol-fuelled debauchery in a dubious Hong Kong nightclub.
Media reaction was unforgiving: “DISGRACEFOOL” screamed the Sun’s headline, alongside a picture of Gascoigne, Sheringham and Steve McManaman, all soaked in booze with garments clinging to their bodies by a thread. Gascoigne took the brunt of it: “Look at Gazza.. a drunk oaf with no pride” read the sub-headline.
England’s players were portrayed as out-of-control louts, in no small part due to their predilection for the club in question’s notorious “dentist chair” where bartenders would pour spirits and liqueurs into the open mouths of their thirsty patrons.
“We were allowed on a night out and it got a bit rowdier than what was expected,” Sheringham admitted to ITV Sport’s Euro 96: The summer football came home documentary. “That rowdy night hit the front pages of the papers and the headlines and the news back home and we were in deep trouble.”
Their actions were condemned by outraged tabloids and indignant supporters alike but as many players have stated subsequently, the night itself and the vociferous fallout to it helped bind the players – drawn from 11 different clubs – together.
“I was first in the chair because it looked like a laugh,” Gascoigne told Four Four Two magazine. “Then a few of the other lads did it. It was good for team spirit.”
“I can’t remember it,” joked Darren Anderton to the ITV Sport Euro 96 Relived podcast. “A lot has been said about it, of course, we didn’t start the tournament well, didn’t play well in that first game against the Swiss, but for me and for all the lads that were a part of that, it created a team club environment which is what you need.”
Nevertheless, that incident had piled suffocating pressure on Terry Venables and his squad and it showed when they laboured to an insipid 1-1 draw against a Switzerland side deemed to be the weakest in the group.
A response was required against the ‘Auld Enemy’ Scotland. An Alan Shearer header put England in front, but Scotland had a golden chance to equalise when Tony Adams upended Gordon Durie inside the box. Instead, David Seaman miraculously kept out a firmly-struck Gary McAllister penalty.
Less than two minutes later, Gascoigne, then of Rangers, had doubled England’s advantage to settle the contest with an ingenious piece of individual skill. Latching onto a hopeful hook forward from Anderton, Gascoigne flicked the ball over a bewildered Colin Hendry with his left foot for his first touch, before burying a first-time volley on his right foot with his second.
“Gazza’s come in like a train… how he’s seen Hendry there I’ll never ever know,” Venables recalled on Euro 96: The summer football came home. “He just flips it over his head and on his laces boom [smacks the back of one hand onto the other]. I mean it was just absolutely brilliant.”
It is one of the iconic England goals for a variety of reasons: it was scored by one of the country’s most talented ever players, it came against Scotland and was in a home tournament. The “dentist’s chair” celebration which followed ensured that Gascoigne’s moment of magic has endured the test of time.
Choreographed celebrations are par for the course these days, but were far less so in the 90s. Not on this occasion. On seeing the ball satisfyingly slap the net, a hurried Gascoigne rushes over to a water bottle by the side of the pitch, beckons his teammates to follow him and falls flat on his back.
First onto the scene is Jamie Redknapp, closely followed by McManaman and Shearer, who proceeds to pour the contents of the bottle onto Gascoigne’s face. Sheringham, never renowned for his pace, belatedly arrives on the scene and gives him a squirt for good measure.
“Gazza was groundbreaking with that celebration in terms of a kickback to the press,” says ITV presenter to Gabriel Clarke to Sheringham. “That’s exactly what it was,” he responds. “If it happens… if you score or you score let’s do it. So we did it.”
Just 17 days after the “Disgracefool” headline and clamour for his removal from the squad, the Daily Mirror published “An apology to Mr Gascoigne” signifying his and the team’s redemption. Hong Kong had been forgotten.
If only there had been a trophy to go with it.
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from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3hevwHw
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