In the space of 13 second-half minutes against Ukraine, England butted in three headers – a feat never achieved in a single match by any other team in the history of the Euros. Euro 2020 is an English tournament now, with the last three matches all at Wembley. The fearsome aerial bombardment that levelled Ukraine has fuelled a sense that Frank Skinner's prophecy is coming true at last.
His song speaks of 30 years of hurt – strictly English hurt, of course. For those who observe England from afar, these last 30 years have been truly magical, a real trentes glorieuses. We stand with foreboding at the beginning of a week that could usher in a new and strange order of English footballing dominance. In the spirit of a song by another Frank S, about all the times it was a very good year, one closes one’s eyes and thinks back to all the happier days that led us to this moment.
Thirty years ago England were managed by Graham Taylor, a man who believed in keeping it simple – so simple that his England sides were repeatedly outfoxed by Scandinavians playing basic 4-4-2. World Cup semi-finalists only two years previously, England have perhaps never seemed more inept than at Euro 92. 0-0s against France and Denmark were followed by a one-nil up, two-one down collapse against Sweden, as England's defenders were bamboozled by the sorcery – that is, the one-twos – of Brolin and Dahlin.
Craftiness
When England failed even to qualify for USA 94, the FA decided a change of direction was required. Taylor's replacement, Terry Venables, brought a worldliness, a craftiness and cunning which seemed to find expression in the team's performances at Euro 96. Gascoigne's goal against Scotland and Sheringham's disguised pass to Shearer for the spectacular third against the Netherlands: at last England seemed to have stumbled upon a precious synthesis between the strong players like Shearer and Adams and the creative ones like Gascoigne, Sheringham and McManaman.
The magic proved fleeting. It’s usually forgotten now that England needed kind refereeing decisions to get past Spain en route to that famous semi-final defeat, when they should have beaten a mediocre German side before it ever got to penalties.
Alas, the popular Venables's craftiness and cunning extended to his business dealings in such a way as to persuade the FA he could not continue as England coach. The new guy, Glenn Hoddle, ticked a lot of boxes. He was young, progressive, tactically astute. The only problem was, he seemed to hate a lot of his players. He was especially tough on the two biggest young stars of England's 1998 squad. Hoddle announced that Michael Owen was "not a natural goalscorer" and reacted to Beckham failing to nail a free-kick routine in training by telling him "obviously you're not good enough to do this skill" in front of everyone. Hoddle eventually yielded to the national clamour to include both Owen and Beckham in his starting team, but Beckham got himself sent off against Argentina and another World Cup ended in the round of 16.
Hoddle followed Venables in losing his job for non-football reasons, after he gave an interview in which he suggested that disability was punishment for sins committed in a former life. Kevin Keegan came in with a brief to recreate the helter-skelter attacking football of his famous Newcastle team. At Euro 2000 he obliged, with exciting 3-2 defeats to Portugal and Romania sandwiching a win over Germany, only for people to decide this Newcastle-style emotional rollercoaster was not what they wanted after all.
Keegan resigned after losing a home qualifier to Germany in the autumn of 2000, declaring he wasn’t good enough to continue in the job. His personal crisis of confidence seemed to have engulfed English football as a whole. The FA decided the time had come to appoint a highly-regarded foreigner and see what he could do. The thinking was that the foreign coach would bring the crucial element of tactical sophistication that was evidently missing from the English footballing DNA.
Trust England to choose a foreigner who had learned everything he knew about football from studying Roy Hodgson’s Halmstad side in the late 1970s. Sven-Goran Eriksson inherited what was called a golden generation, but looking back his time in charge was a golden age for the anti-English cause. Seldom had English expectation and entitlement soared so high and yet ended in such consistent withering anticlimax, with three quarter-final exits in a row.
Sven’s tactics were 4-4-2 and his strategy was to keep his big names happy, to the extent that he would pick them even when they were injured. His teams had an uncanny and wonderful ability to add up to less than the sum of their parts.
So elementary was his management that when it was time to hire his replacement the FA decided perhaps the job could be entrusted to an Englishman after all, and appointed Steve McClaren. Astonishingly, McClaren failed to even qualify for Euro 2008. Thus chastised, the FA went for another foreign coach in Fabio Capello.
Shambles
Capello could not really communicate with the players but he was a big name, which was deemed more important. His only tournament with England was the 2010 World Cup, which ended with a stunning 4-1 defeat to Germany in Bloemfontein. England had never seemed further behind the top teams. Before he could confirm this impression by leading England at another tournament, Capello chose to die on the hill of insisting John Terry continue as his captain even though he was being investigated for allegedly racially abusing Anton Ferdinand.
When the FA appointed Roy Hodgson as the new coach it felt like an admission of defeat: we know we won't win anything, but Roy is available and crucially, compared to Eriksson and Capello, he is cheap. Hodgson's three tournaments add up to the worst finals record of any England manager, but barring the amazing 2-1 defeat to Iceland, the Hodgsonian shambles lack the epic quality of the Sven-era failures. Aficionados understand that for the downfall to be truly memorable, England must first sincerely believe in the possibility of success, and with Hodgson as boss nobody ever did.
"We could not help but be energised by his personal perspective on England's future," said then FA chief executive, Martin Glenn, on appointing Hodgson's successor, Sam Allardyce. Glenn's view was enthusiastically shared by most veteran England-haters. Tragically, a press sting ended Allardyce's reign after one game. At a loss what to do, the FA installed their most readily available coaching-badge-accredited functionary as interim manager. Five years later that accidental coach, Gareth Southgate, stands on the brink of glory.
Things have come together for England in a way that looks ominous for those of us whose blood teems thickly with It's Coming Home antibodies. But even if they do win the title at Wembley this week, they can never take those 30 years away from us. Remember the words of Dr Seuss. Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.
