On July 4th 1990, England faced West Germany in a World Cup semi-final that became legendary for a number of reasons. Paul Gascoigne was reduced to tears after knowing he would be suspended for the last game of the tournament had England made it, and the customary penalty shoot-out misses courtesy of Stuart Pearce and Chris Waddle.
Football is like politics and religion, in that a cult can be built around any defining event or individual. Thus a mythology passes to inspire future generations, even those that ultimately fail to live up to standard. How does this relate to England’s almost-but-not-quite success in Italia 1990?
To many, it was a turning point from English football after the trials and tribulations of the 1980s, which would change the game forever. Yet, this may not have been so evident at the time, when the foreign presence in English football was only a trickle, even though the clubs had been signing import players since the late 1970s.
The bottom line was that England were still a respected international force and still considered a realistic contender for honours, which is not the case in 2015. And in 1990, England had a team that could, and really should have won the World Cup, for they have not had a group of players since then remotely capable of realising such a goal. This is one area where the English game has deteriorated, some fear irreversibly so, in the last 25 years.
Sir Bobby Robson’s eight-year tenure as England manager was, at times, rocky. The failure to qualify for the 1984 European Championships and the failure to win a game in the 1988 edition were contrasted by the World Cup runs of 1986 and 1990. It does seem that Robson learned his lesson from the Euro ’88 failure, which explains the inclusion of Stuart Pearce and Des Walker in an England defence that kept six clean sheets in the 1990 World Cup qualifiers. Very few, if any teams have ever been able to accomplish this in qualifying.
But the defence – with Peter Shilton still in goal and normally composed of Walker, Pearce, Gary Stevens and Terry Butcher – was not only a strong point of the squad Robson took to Italy in 1990. A midfield that boasted David Platt and the mercurial genius of Gascoigne, and the gifted wing pair of John Barnes and Chris Waddle, plus the strikeforce of Gary Lineker and Peter Beardesley, and no few capable players in reserve, presents a stark contrast to a seemingly desperate search for English talents of remotely similar stature in the Premier League today. They could even call upon a Second Division striker, Steve Bull of Wolverhampton, who saw his fair share of action in the tournament.
While this was a World Cup best remembered for serving up tedious football – England’s opening game against Ireland a case in point – they would be involved in some of the more memorable moments of the tournament, an epic quarter-final with Cameroon which the Three Lions won 3-2 and, of course, that semi-final with the penalty shoot-out cruelly depriving a place in the Final, and prolonging the wait for a second World Cup.
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Italia 1990 is often cited as a turning point for English football, or as some kind of dividing line between ‘old’ and ‘new’ styles of the game. It would be too simplistic to say that this is the case. The Premier League came into being in 1992, and England hosted Euro ’96 in which they came again within a whisker’s of making the Final on home soil. Really it was after then that the big influx began in earnest, changing the top flight of English football beyond recognition, and not necessarily for the better.
That is just one of many factors why England struggles to produce a team that can come even remotely match the squad of 1990. Would it have been different had they actually won it in 1990? Would English football’s governing authorities been more assertive in developing home-grown talent?
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