to take one …’ He looked down at the steering-wheel and then at me and then his eyes began dancing about the dashboard. ‘If it means going to take a penalty … then I will have to take one.’
‘But you would rather not.’
‘If it happens it happens. You have to have guts to take a penalty. You need a lot of bottle.’
‘Do you think about it much?’
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I would feel so awful if I missed.’
‘ENGLAND DROP DRINK-DRIVER’ ran the headline above a two-paragraph story on the front of the Daily Telegraph. ‘Rio Ferdinand, the West Ham United footballer, was yesterday withdrawn from England’s squad to face Moldova next week after being convicted of drink-driving. Glen Hoddle made the decision because of “sensitivity towards the offence following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in a car driven by a man who had been drinking”.’
It was a sound move by Hoddle, even though he had been put under pressure by Keith Wiseman, the Chairman of the Football Association. The country was in an alien emotional state. The funeral was about to take place in London amid scenes never witnessed before in the United Kingdom. For nearly a week, people queued patiently to sign books of condolence in memory of someone they had never met but felt they knew as if she was a member of their own family. On day two there were five books of condolence at St James’s Palace; by day four there were forty-three. Flowers piled up outside buildings and in parks. Priests, politicians, analysts and all manner of ‘royal experts’ tried to make sense of it, but by the end of the week it was not always clear for whom people were grieving, or why. It was profoundly moving and it was deeply disturbing. The only certainty was that the country had surprised itself by the manner of its reaction.
I visited Kensington Gardens just after Diana’s coffin had arrived from St James’s Palace. The park was choked. There were businessmen carrying briefcases and mothers cradling babies; there were teenagers and pensioners, cynics and sentimentalists, the buttoned up and the washed out. There were Japanese students and American tourists. Every tree had been turned into a shrine and thousands of people were camped out along the funeral route to Westminster Abbey. Two billion people around the world would watch the procession on television.
Five days later, England were supposed to play a football match. An important football match. Losing would plunge the country into deeper despondency and ensure that for the second time in eight years the world’s biggest sporting extravaganza would take place without England.
Meanwhile, the Scottish FA was sinking into a quagmire by insisting that their equally crucial game against Belarus would go ahead as planned at 3 pm on Saturday 7 September in Aberdeen, a little over thirty minutes before Diana was to reach her final resting-place at Althorp. True, football matches had been played on the day of Winston Churchill’s state funeral, but this was a different matter altogether. Estonia failing to turn up twelve months previously for their game against Scotland had nothing on this. The Lord Provost of Aberdeen said that if Scotland was intent on playing she would stay away as guest of honour. Then Donald Dewar, the Scottish Secretary, made it clear that he was ‘particularly concerned’ about the decision ‘in the light of tragic events’. Tony Blair disapproved as well. And then three senior players, Andy Goram, Gordon Durie and Ally McCoist, told their coach, Craig Brown, that they did not wish to be selected. Late on Wednesday, the Scottish FA ate humble haggis and moved the match to Sunday. Scotland 4 Belarus 1.
There was no such dilemma for the English FA, but 16 Lancaster Gate would have to tread carefully. The first David Davies, the FA’s Director of Public Affairs, heard of Diana’s death was at 5 am on the morning she died, when Sky Sports telephoned, wanting to know the FA’s official position about that afternoon’s game between Liverpool and Newcastle going ahead as planned. And if the Liverpool game was cancelled then the only other scheduled League match, Crewe v. Port Vale, would also have to be stopped. Davies telephoned Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, at 8.30 am. He and Straw were friends from their respective university student days at Sheffield and Leeds. Wait and see was the agreed policy, but not for long. By 10 am, both games had been called off.
Rio Ferdinand was going to miss out on gaining his first cap and becoming, at eighteen, the youngest player to represent England since Duncan Edwards in 1955. Hoddle, already almost a year into the job, had been generous in offering players clemency for their untidy private lives. He had stuck by Paul Gascoigne after he admitted beating up his wife, and he had been prepared to give Ian Wright the benefit of the doubt on more than a couple of occasions. There were those who thought Hoddle was guilty of double standards, but the idea of allowing Ferdinand, a convicted drink-driver, to face the Royal Box and sing the National Anthem and then stand in silence to honour the ‘People’s Princess’ so recently killed by a man three times over the limit would have been an absolution too far.
Instead, Hoddle suggested that Ferdinand might like to talk things over with Tony Adams, who had spent eight weeks in Chelmsford Jail for driving across a dual carriageway while almost four times over the limit. It was a sobering lesson for young Rio, not least because his timing and grace on the ball were being compared variously to Bobby Moore and Franz Beckenbauer. His mother went into the witness-box on his behalf. ‘Rio’s devastated,’ she said. ‘When he went out on Saturday to celebrate he went in a taxi and came home in a taxi. Then on Sunday he went out for a meal with friends and was dropping them off when he was stopped by the police. He was breathalysed and was just over the limit. We believe that that must have spilled over from the evening before. We are not drinkers in this house and none of us realised that was possible. At home he only ever drinks water and fresh juices. Rio has such a solid head on his shoulders. He has been very strong and positive about keeping away from temptation. He’s really walked the straight line.’ And what had he been drinking? Alcopops.
Hoddle told his squad to disperse on Friday for the funeral and meet up again on Sunday evening. The players had been affected by Diana’s death. Hoddle had been discussing with Diana’s office how his players could become involved in raising money for some of her charities. ‘We were hopeful that it would be settled after we had qualified,’ he said. ‘Whether it would have been a match or something else had not been decided. It was just in the pipeline.’
There was never any doubt that the game would be played. And there was never any doubt that there would be a minute’s silence and that the players would pin black ribbons to their shirts. But what else should happen? Elton John’s ‘Candle in the Wind’ was going to be a poignant moment at the funeral, and several FA officials wanted to invite Elton to sing it live at Wembley. Davies was keen. Graham Kelly, the Chief Executive, was worried that it would put too much of a dampener on the occasion. He feared that the players and the crowd would lose their enthusiasm for what was a crunch game. But Davies pressed on, making contact with Elton’s manager in New York. Elton, he was told, would not be available but was in favour of having the song before the kick-off. Hoddle then insisted that ‘Candle in the Wind’ should be played before the players emerged from the tunnel because ‘the sadness and the emotion of 75,000 people at Wembley might be too much for some of them’.
England had no captain. Hoddle’s potential leaders were all ruled out – Shearer injured, Adams injured, Ince suspended, Pearce injured, Sheringham injured, Platt not selected. That left a choice between Gareth Southgate and David Seaman – or Gascoigne as an outside bet. It went to David Seaman.
‘Some people pick captains for their experience and the respect they’ve got from the players,’ said
