In June 1996, at ten years old in the summer between primary and secondary school, I couldn’t even envisage turning eleven, let alone England winning a major tournament.
I belong to the lost generation too young to recall Gazza’s tears, Lineker’s tap of the temple and Nessun Dorma at Italia ‘90. While I can remember domestic games from 1992, I have no recollection of the European Championship that year and for this I can only be grateful. I have some vivid memories of 1994 – when England were absent – most notably the miniature McDonald’s football that came free with happy meals and was adorned with the names of the American host cities, as well as wildly celebrating Ray Houghton’s goal against Italy with my older brother. Any port in the storm for an England supporter.
It is safe to assume that by the time Euro ’96 came around, I had waited long enough for my first real experience of an international tournament. The first thing that stood out was hearing Baddiel and Skinner unveiling their unofficial England song on the Chris Evans Radio 1 Breakfast Show. It was a strange affair, with all three talking over the top of Three Lions in the manner of a director’s commentary. When it was Baddiel’s turn to sing, they all burst out laughing.
Switzerland, who had qualified under the management of Roy Hodgson, were first up for England. The result was a huge disappointment, with Kubilay Türkyilmaz snatching a 1-1 draw for the Swiss from the penalty spot in the 83rd minute. The best thing that could be said about the game was that, with hindsight, it made the introduction to Three Lions all the more perfect: “We’ll go on getting bad results…”
Scotland were next at Wembley and, because the Old Testament God is nothing if not angry, the game unfortunately coincided with my cousin’s bar mitzvah. The Jewish English experience is a peculiar one, not least because there are so few of us. My parents fought hard against the suggestion that we hang a St. George’s flag from the window of our house (“A cross? It’ll be a crucifix next.”) but, as time passes, I respect their reticence.
Still, the vast majority of the family have a keen interest in football, and a television was wheeled into the function room of a fancy London hotel so we could watch Gary McAllister’s penalty miss (Uri Geller, another Jewish football fan, would later take the credit), Gazza’s moment of genius and the iconic celebration that followed. I have no idea what my grandfather on my father’s side, a man who really didn’t enjoy football, made of all this. But we loved it.
We managed to score tickets for the Netherlands match in the final group game at Wembley. It’s often said that football became more exclusive and the financial behemoth it is today after the inception of the Premier League in 1992, but, as late as 1996, we were able to get tickets for an England game at a major tournament without being members of any kind of official supporters’ group.
It seemed as though everyone had tickets to watch England that summer and I recall bumping into my uncle, painted face and everything, by chance on Wembley Way. It was a carnival atmosphere with chants of “You can stick your Total Football up your arse” echoing around the streets. The following morning on GMTV there was a feature about kids in playgrounds across the country recreating England’s third goal, something me and my friends attempted ourselves.
Remarkably, England’s quarter-final win against Spain remains their only victory in European Championship knock-out games. And even then it came on penalties. More remarkably, we got tickets the day after the 4-1 thrashing of Holland simply by calling the number displayed on the scoreboard at full time and ringing up a large phone bill as we hung on the line.
Despite our excitement, it was a forgettable match in which only two things stood out: seeing the dad of a friend from school in the queue for the toilets (thus reinforcing my sense that the whole world was there), and actually being able to hear Stuart Pearce’s extraordinary scream of joy and relief from our seats when he converted his penalty and exorcised the demons of Italia ‘90.
In the same way we applied for Spain tickets, we tried to get into the Germany game – with my dad calling up the magic number and waiting in the queue for hours. While my father wasn’t getting much work done, Piers Morgan was busy concocting the infamous “Achtung! Surrender” Daily Mirror front cover. My grandfather on my mother’s side joined us at Wembley that night and, as a holocaust survivor, I can only imagine his horror at that particular editorial decision.
He was sitting beside me and, as is his wont, spent a large portion of the match putting his fingers in his mouth and whistling at a volume that invited attention. On my other side was Nicci, my best friend from primary school. After 120 gruelling minutes, Gazza’s outstretched leg and Gareth Southgate’s successful Pizza Hut audition – with Three Lions reverberating around Wembley throughout – it was all over.
Nicci and I exited the ground in floods of tears while my grandfather maintained a sense of perspective that I would only realise as I grew older. A well-meaning stranger informed us it was only a game but it doesn’t feel that way when you’re ten. With Nicci and I now brothers in arms, it was hard to believe this was the same boy who had called me after the 1995 FA Cup Final to, in the parlance of the times, cuss me out after Everton’s Paul Rideout had downed my team, Manchester United.
Although we would fall out of touch after moving to different schools we did meet again in Marbella, of all places, in 2002. I debated whether to say anything but, in the end, I couldn’t resist going over and discussing 1996 and that fateful night at Wembley. It’s the only conversation we’ve had in the last 15 years, taking place just a stone’s throw from Lineker’s Bar.
History has not been kind to Euro ’96. The tournament is no longer widely considered a classic and, even against Holland, there is a sense that England flattered to deceive. It is perhaps a cruel re-writing of the script.
For many of us, football is about the visceral experience of following your team and the iconic moments the game can bring. That summer seemed to be full of them. As the first experience of how an international tournament can transform a nation, it felt seismic. Two decades ago they sang that football was coming home. And it did.
