the England Members Club. In other words, it mattered not one bit whether you were a member or not. You would sit where you were told.
With little more than a week to go, Smith fired off a stinging letter to Stephano Caira of the Italian Football Federation, demanding a reply by return to her earlier missives. ‘You must understand the seriousness of this matter,’ she wrote. ‘We are very worried that you seem to have chosen to stop communicating directly with us about these extremely important matters.’ No reply. Graham Kelly, the FA’s Chief Executive, then wrote to Dr Giorgio Zappacosta, the Italian Federation’s General Secretary, pleading for some kind of response. He sent a copy of his letter to FIFA – which seemed to put the wind up the Italians. The next day, a fax was winging its way from Rome to Smith – but the contents were far from reassuring.
‘We apologise for not having informed you day by day about the situation,’ it said, ‘but our silence was due to the fact that no final decision was taken to solve the matter and all the suggestions and hypotheses were subject to frequent changes … we kindly ask you to communicate all the necessary information you have regarding the transfer of your supporters directly to the attention of Mr Francesco Tagliente.’
A fiasco was assured. The only question was whether it would be a bloody fiasco.
At Bisham, Hoddle was living up to his reputation as being expansive when he wanted to be and virtually monosyllabic when he didn’t. ‘Are you aware of this business involving Paul Gascoigne and an Italian photographer?’ was the opening gambit in the Warwick Room.
‘That’s private and I won’t discuss it.’
What Hoddle wished not to discuss was the rumour that Paul Gascoigne would be served with a writ on landing in Italy. Lino Nanni, a photographer who Gazza had attacked in Rome on 27 January 1994, during his Lazio days, had instructed lawyers to seek compensation. Gascoigne was convicted in his absence and given a suspended jail sentence of three months, but Nanni, a well-known paparazzi snapper, wanted personal revenge.
Hoddle’s plans for Gascoigne in Rome were simple. No one would talk to him before the match and he would only be seen in public during the team’s one open training session twenty-four hours before the game. ‘But will you take extra security for him?’ Hoddle was asked.
‘We will take security but not extra security.’
‘He’s going to get pretty hyped up, isn’t he?’
‘Actually,’ said Hoddle, ‘before the Moldova game he was far more mature. He wasn’t getting carried away by all the hype. As a result I think he could be a better player now. He used to run a lot with the ball. Now he plays delicate one-twos. He’s reaching that age, around twenty-nine or thirty, when there is a new set of curtains that opens for a footballer.’
Exit Hoddle, enter David Beckham and Graeme Le Saux, who took up their respective places behind the tables. I joined the Beckham huddle. You don’t get a lot of circumspection from Becks, but he has a mischievous grin that frequently breaks into a huge smile. He had a reputation for petulance, but as he sat sheepishly at that table he came across as nothing other than Posh Spice’s almond-eyed little lamb.
Beckham is the son of a kitchen maintenance man and a hairdresser. He left Chingford High at sixteen, having failed all his GCSEs, but he didn’t care because he had known since the age of eight when he played for Ridgeway Rovers on Sunday mornings that he wanted to be a footballer. And here he was sitting in front of a dozen scribblers all hanging on his every word, every nuance. Because, deep down, every man in the room would have given anything to be David Beckham.
‘You’ve got a bit of a cold, David.’
‘Nah, not really. Nothing serious. Bit bunged up.’ He was asked to describe what it had been like in the last few months when his face had stared out from the back, front and middle pages of newspapers and magazines. When sponsors and ad-men had been queuing outside his gate. And when Bobby Charlton had called him a sensation.
‘It’s been incredible. People now expect a lot from me. When I don’t score they say something is wrong with me, but I don’t mind. I would rather people were talking about me than not talking about me at all. I haven’t scored for England yet and I would love to grab one on Saturday. A long shot – something spectacular. As a young boy I had dreams of doing something like that. It would be amazing.’
That afternoon, some of the players went to see the film Spawn, a sci-fi romp about a government assistant who returns from hell half-man, half-demon. Gascoigne went fishing. Le Saux read his book. And Adams went further into himself. Hoddle could not wait to get his players out of the country and into their Italian camp forty-five minutes from Rome, where they would not read English newspapers, not be offered alcohol, and would eat only food prepared by the team chef, Roger Narbett, on loan from the Lygon Arms in the Cotswolds.
It was pouring at Luton Airport. The under-21 squad arrived first, greeted by about forty admirers, mostly schoolgirls and professional autograph-hunters. A man with a centurion hat was waiting in the rain to have his picture taken. Then an FA official swept up in a blue Rolls-Royce Corniche. Rio Ferdinand led a charge into the airport newsagents to begin a run on strawberry splits, while other members of the squad stocked up on reading material – Loaded and FHM and Maxim. Several of the schoolgirls followed the players into the terminal and no one turned down requests for autographs or refused to pose for photographs. All were unfailingly polite with the woman at the till. ‘They always come in here on their way out to big games’, she told me, ‘but this time I didn’t recognise any of them. Where was Gazza and that David Seaman?’
If you blinked you would have missed them. Hoddle was running the operation like some secret underground mission. He was about to take his men deep behind enemy lines, where they would be immunised from the outside world.
There was just enough time to raid the shop in the departures lounge, where Gascoigne, Ince and Merson headed for the pick’n mix sweet stand. Gazza began to pop sweets into his mouth, but spotted a security camera on the wall staring at him. He found it unbearably funny. Merson was into mags in a big way. Hello!, in which he had starred recently after being taken back by his wife following his drug, drinking and gambling rehabilitation course, was on top of his pile.
Hoddle and his backroom staff wore Paul Smith suits and gold ties – and obligatory World Cup 2006 badges pinned to their lapels. The players were allowed to wear tracksuit bottoms and sponsored jackets. David Seaman was taller than I had imagined, Ian Wright shorter. Walking across the wind-swept tarmac in driving rain to board Britannia Flight 808, I discussed the blustery weather with Seaman. When I told him it was close to 80 degrees in Rome, he seemed pleased. He climbed the steps at the front and I went up the ones at the back. That’s the way it is. Players in the front, media at the back, and FA officials and assorted bottle-washers in the middle.
Shortly before landing, the captain gave his team-talk: ‘I want to wish you the best of luck on Saturday,’ he said, and then added, ‘But it’s not luck of course. It’s skill. Thank you and goodbye.’
The Italian staff at Rome’s Ciampino airport were pleased to see Gascoigne and Gascoigne seemed pleased to see them. He signed his name a few times and went merrily on his way. It could not have been more different to the only other time I had travelled on the same plane as Gascoigne. It was the summer of 1992 when, after recovering from his self-inflicted injury sustained in the Cup Final, he finally went out to join Lazio.
It was some arrival. The pandemonium began immediately on landing at Leonardo da Vinci airport, where TV crews had been allowed into the arrivals area to film the man who was meant to lead Lazio to the top of Serie A. Once we had shown our
