more civilised than their English counterparts. It is one of the great myths of the modern world that England is a sophisticated country. It is a myth reinforced by other countries who still like to see England as it was in 1850, when it could genuinely claim to have international influence. The tabloid press is one such symptom of the breakdown within English society. We do not have a tabloid press, so the players can come to a press conference and say what they like without thinking that anyone will twist their words into something completely different. You could see what a helpless country Britain has become by the reaction to Princess Diana’s death. People were lost. They did not even know what to do during the funeral. Should they clap or remain silent? People have been clapping at funerals in Italy for years and years.’
We were getting off the point.
‘Well, in football terms England has taken great steps to improve. You have gone from thinking some years ago that you have nothing to learn from foreigners to thinking now that only foreigners are worth having in your teams.’
It was only when I asked him who he thought would prevail on Saturday evening that he clambered on to the fence. ‘Pound for pound, Italy have more ability, more flexibility, more skill, but the difference now is not as great as it was. Anything could happen on Saturday night.’
That evening I had dinner with Jeff Powell, from the Daily Mail, David Miller, from the Daily Telegraph, Roy Collins from the People and James Lawton, from the Express. We all named the team we would like to play on Saturday and then we named the eleven we thought Hoddle would play. None of us got it right. Powell and Miller thought Hoddle might easily do something stupid, as he did for the home game against Italy when he picked Le Tissier. Powell went as far as saying that he thought Shearer might become to Hoddle what Lineker was to Graham Taylor, because the England coach ‘doesn’t want anyone to become too big a star while he’s around’. There seemed little evidence of this, but whereas the majority of the main football writers – known as the Number Ones or The Groins, as in groin strains – had swung four-square behind Hoddle. Commentators like Powell, Miller, Collins and Lawton – the elder statesmen – were a long way from being convinced. They doubted he had the character for the job. They disliked his haughtiness, his lack of clubbability. ‘We are not fans with typewriters,’ said Powell.
Italians woke on Friday to discover that they were without a prime minister. Romano Prodi had resigned after his far-left Communist cohorts withdrew their support over the government’s 1998 budget proposals. No one seemed overly concerned in the Stadio Olimpico when the Italians arrived for training. It was a glorious morning and an awe-inspiring sight as twenty-two footballers ambled around the pitch looking like lions on the prowl. The huge empty stands made these millionaires look even more impressive, more dangerous. They trained for ninety minutes, concluding with an eleven-a-side game using only half of the pitch. Afterwards, I wandered down the tunnel and waited for the players to emerge from their dressing room. They were polite and patient. Gianfranco Zola looked so at ease that you had to remind him that Italy could possibly fail to qualify for a World Cup for the first time in their history.
‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘Really, I don’t think so.’
I began to see Charlie Sale’s point. Then Lawton started reminiscing about the days when he used to give Bobby Charlton a lift home after training.
‘Now no one trusts anyone,’ he said. ‘I live in Cheshire, just down the road from Liverpool’s young sensation Michael Owen. The other day I was thinking how I would like to go and knock on his door and tell him we are neighbours, and that if he ever wanted to chat I was just up the road. I thought I could be a sort of uncle figure to the young boy, help him along, take an interest in his career. But of course he wouldn’t dare talk to me. His agent will have told him not to open the door unless there was money up front. It’s very sad and there is nothing we can do about it.’
Things changed shortly after the 1970 World Cup when newspapers began signing up footballers to write columns. The footballer talked on the telephone to a journalist and the journalist produced a few words consistent with the player’s general train of thought. Tabloid circulation battles didn’t help retain much trust, and then along came the agents, 15-percenters who rammed a wedge between the players and press. So who could really blame Hoddle for his obsessive secrecy and slavish cosseting of his team?
‘Look,’ said Davies later that day as England arrived at the stadium for a final kick-about, ‘I know what people are saying. I know there are complaints about the way we have gone about this, and, who knows, we may do it differently in France if we qualify, but this was our plan all along. We just wanted the team to be completely shielded. Call it control if you like. We think it’s what is needed at this particular time.’
By this stage, Jeff Powell was desperate to unburden himself. He had been grumbling all week. That morning he wrote in the Daily Mail: ‘Get behind the lads, is the order of the day, issued by everyone from the national coach and the team captain to the sanitation consultant operative responsible for the lavatories at Lancaster Gate … Getting behind the lads obliges constant repetition of this mantra: We are the greatest. Never mind that Italy won at Wembley earlier this year. Never mind that their World Cup record makes “Football’s Coming Home” sound more like a cracked old satire than the new anthem of our national game. Never mind that the last time England won in Italy the Sixties had only just started swinging. This is triumphalism gone mad.’
I didn’t get it. I couldn’t detect an abundance of triumphalism in the England camp, and there seemed to be a healthy dose of scepticism simmering through the press corps.
There was an intensity about England’s training that made the Italian session look casual, complacent even. It was a muggy evening. And a muddled one, too. But that, it later transpired, had been the big idea all along. Hoddle had told his squad before leaving London what his team would be – but with twenty-four hours to go he was determined to keep the world guessing. You couldn’t help thinking he was doing this more for his own sake than anyone else’s. Would it really make a huge difference to the Italians if McManaman was to play instead of Beckham or if Gary Neville would play at the back instead of Southgate? Hoddle must have believed so, because as the rest of the squad divided up into teams to play a game of one-touch, Southgate sat forlornly by a corner flag with the physio doing some stretching exercises, and Beckham was asked to impersonate that man on the bus with a blocked-up nose who is in desperate need of a packet of Tunes.
The Number Ones were not sure what to make of it. Their respective sports desks were waiting for their copy to drop, in which they would announce the ‘probable’ team. At least they would get the name of the captain right. Hoddle had announced in the morning that contrary to what he had led everyone to believe, Adams – thirty-one that day – would not be in charge after all. Paul Ince was to have the job. ‘Paul is coming back to Italy and that will give him a lift’, said Hoddle. ‘He’s in the hub of the side and vital to the team. The Italians respect him and slightly fear him, so that was an important consideration in my decision. Tony’s been out for a long time. He’s done a lot of good work in a short period but I just don’t want to put that extra responsibility on his shoulders. It simply comes down to the fact that I don’t think Tony is quite mentally prepared to be captain on such an occasion.’
Beckham suddenly bent double and called out: ‘I can’t breathe.’ He was escorted off.
The streets of Rome were filling up. I took an evening stroll to the main train station, where groups of English fans were gathering in bars and on street corners. The police looked nervous. They moved swiftly into a bar to break up a group of Englishmen who looked more menacing than they were. There was a scuffle. A few chairs were thrown across the bar and about six of them were marched off into police vans waiting outside. The huge crowd that had gathered on the opposite pavement to watch this showdown gave it an importance it never warranted, and the
