Four Lions

by Colin Shindler

  During the qualifying campaign at the start of the 1989–90 season, England secured a point in a goalless draw away to Sweden, a dull game best remembered for the image of Terry Butcher heading away crosses with a blood-stained bandage round his head. It made for a poignant image of England’s heroic captain, but of course Butcher only had temporary loan of the armband as Bryan Robson was out injured yet again. Lineker scored only twice in the six qualifying games, almost as if he were saving himself for when it really mattered, for yet again, with the eyes of the country on him and in full view of the rest of the world, he distinguished himself bravely in the tournament in Italy.

  Again England stuttered through the group stages, relaxing only after a Mark Wright goal against Egypt clinched qualification for the last sixteen. Belgium proved a tough nut to crack and it took a goal of sublime technical skill by David Platt in the last minute of extra-time to do it. The quarter-final against Cameroon was won through two well-taken penalties by Lineker, the first a vital equaliser eight minutes from the end of normal time. The other came in extra-time as England gained a somewhat fortunate victory and headed off to Turin for a semi-final against the newly reunified Germany which was to remain in the collective memory in the way 1966 did, but for different reasons. As in 1966, the Germans scored first, Andreas Brehme’s shot deflecting unfortunately off the onrushing Paul Parker and looping over the despairing, desperately back-pedalling Shilton. For those who remembered León 1970 it was a chilling echo of Uwe Seeler’s header looping over the despairing but static Bonetti. If England’s progress during the five games played so far had been decidedly unconvincing, that sickening goal seemed to bring the best out of the team. Again it was Lineker who brought England back into the game with an equaliser, this time nine minutes from the end, but the penalty Lineker scored in the climactic shootout after a goalless extra-time proved valueless. Waddle and Pearce missed from the spot and the nation dissolved into tears matched only by those shed by Paul Gascoigne; after his booking it dawned on him – and everyone else – that even if England were to win the semi-final he would not be allowed to play in the final. His response touched the nation.

  Gazza’s tears symbolised the agonising defeat but also something much more profound as far as the relationship between the England football team and the British public was concerned. Women, who had not taken much notice of England’s football players since Nobby Stiles danced his jig with the Jules Rimet trophy, were moved by the sight of the lachrymose Geordie. Getting nearer to the World Cup than at any time in the past twenty-four years had inevitably had the effect of drawing the nation closer together round the television set. The choice of Pavarotti singing ‘Nessun Dorma’ from the opera Turandot to accompany the opening and closing credits for the World Cup television programme was inspired. It certainly did more to promote ‘The Three Tenors’ than it did to increase audiences at the English National Opera but it gave football a ‘sophisticated’ veneer that took it ever further away from the nightmare of Heysel, Hillsborough and Kenilworth Road, Luton. Instead of the snarling face of the hooligan, football was able to present the tearful face of the clown, a much more engaging prospect.

  The tears, the music, the agony of defeat combined with significantly larger television audiences to create a soap-opera effect which would be intensified by the unholy alliance of the Premier League and BSkyB. In fact, the audience that watched that match in Turin was far less than the thirty-two million that had watched the 1966 World Cup final and the twenty-eight million that had seen the outrageous violence exhibited by Leeds and Chelsea in their 1970 FA Cup final replay. It was actually smaller than the twenty-one million who had tuned in to episode 837 of Neighbours that January but nevertheless it did symbolise the start of a new era in televised football and a new more sanitised relationship between the game and its audience. Perhaps just as importantly, that match joined the pantheon of games that no England supporter who watched it live will ever forget.

  The defeat in Turin hurt, as all such defeats do, but it didn’t hurt the way it had in 1970. England had done well to reach this stage and we didn’t think we owned the world the way we did in 1970. When Gascoigne disembarked from the plane at Luton Airport wearing a pair of comedy breasts it was regarded as admirably cheerful, typical of the ‘daft as a brush’ label which Bobby Robson had draped round his neck. In the unlikely event that Nobby Stiles had jigged round Wembley with the same accoutrements it seems unlikely it would have been greeted by anything other than total bewilderment and a feeling that some kind of moral line had been crossed. The country had changed and what it found funny and socially acceptable had changed with it.

  When qualifying began for the 1992 European Championships, England had a new manager and a new captain. Graham Taylor had taken Watford from the lower reaches of the Fourth Division to Division One in five seasons, eventually finishing as FA Cup finalists and League runners-up. He then accepted a new challenge at Villa Park, winning promotion for Aston Villa back to the top flight at the first attempt and again finishing as runners-up to Liverpool. To that extent it was no surprise that he was offered the England job by the FA but what worked in English football in the late 1980s and early 1990s, still divorced from Europe after Heysel, was too unsophisticated to work against decent international teams.

  Peter Shilton, who had captained his country on fifteen occasions, and Terry Butcher, who had performed that duty in seven matches (including the semi-final in Turin), taking over after Bryan Robson had dropped out through injury for the umpteenth time, had both been fairly anonymous captains. Far too much was made of Butcher’s bloodied bandage as if that in itself conferred an immortal sense of heroism on him. Both men had played their last games for England in Turin so Taylor needed a new captain and Lineker was the obvious choice as long as Bryan Robson was still hampered by injury. One of the best-remembered images of the game came shortly after the booking of Gascoigne, when a concerned-looking Lineker – in an aside that was certainly not intended for the television cameras – mouthed ‘Have a word with him’ to his manager Bobby Robson, the sort of consideration that should really have been the province of Butcher. He may have been the fist-pumping captain which England supporters might have thought was to be desired but Lineker had brains. The advice to the manager came not from the nominal captain but from a man with an instinctive understanding of what was going through the mind of his Tottenham team-mate and indicated to the country that here was a captain-in-waiting. He didn’t have very long to wait.

  Both manager and captain seemed honest and approachable with good communication skills and consequent good relationships with the press. Lineker wanted the captaincy but he was not going to get carried away with the honour since he has a fairly cool and rational attitude towards the office and his own fitness for it.

  I don’t think I was a natural leader. I developed a certain amount of confidence over a certain period of time that perhaps turned me into one in the latter stages of my career. You automatically think that the more vociferous players are the natural leaders. That’s not necessarily the case because vociferous people can spout a lot of nonsense. A good captain has an aura about him. It’s hard for leaders to get respect from fellow players if they are not good players themselves. You need someone who is prepared to speak up and speak sense, but it’s so different from cricket because once the game starts you have no influence whatsoever. People like to see the old fist pump but frankly anyone can do that. Generally it’s a mixture of his quality as a footballer and his intelligence because to be a good captain you have to have a degree of intelligence above that of the average player and you have to have the respect of your team-mates and the respect of the management.

  Taylor, who regarded Lineker with the respect that he inspired in most of his colleagues, sounded off confidently to Colin Malam, Lineker’s first biographer.

  He represented everything you wanted football to be represented by at that difficult time for the game. He had a very good
image and he handled the press very articulately – something I considered important in an England captain. He also had an opportunity to break Bobby Charlton’s scoring record, which I confidently expected him to do over the next two years.

  Unfortunately, the relationship was to prove extremely difficult for both parties. It wasn’t helped by the fact that Lineker’s attention was diverted from football in late November 1991 when his son George, who was not yet eight weeks old, was found to be suffering from acute myeloid leukaemia, his chances of survival being rated at no more than 50 per cent. Both parents showed immense courage in the face of every parent’s nightmare. Michelle effectively lived at Great Ormond Street Hospital for six months. Stan Hey, the football journalist and television screenwriter, was working with Lineker when George fell ill. He went to the hospital to leave a present and offer his sympathies to the distressed parents and then walked round the corner to the Russell Hotel to discuss the television series Stan was to write which was to be set in Spain with Gary as the adviser. As they were getting to their feet a woman approached the footballer and thrust an autograph book under his nose, rudely demanding a signature. Stan was incensed by her insensitive behaviour at such a difficult time but Lineker just smiled, signed the autograph and politely wished her good luck. Good manners and that kind of forbearance cannot be taught by media managers.

  Lineker predictably retains an admirably composed memory of the trauma he and his wife experienced.

  We all know that our family’s health is so much more important than a game of football but when what happened to George started it brings it home to you with a vengeance. The media presence was intrusive at first. George was rushed into hospital that night and we were told the bad news and then the very next morning there’s a hundred journalists outside the door, but you know that if you’re in the public eye that’s what happens. Your focus is obviously the health of the child but on the plus side to get sacks and sacks of mail arriving from all over the country all through the day is overwhelming but it’s incredibly supportive.

  Even in the midst of this dark time, in an interview given to Rob Hughes in the Sunday Times Lineker managed a moment of calm detachment.

  You would have to be an oddball not to realise there are wars and people dying of famine. It has taken this horrible disease happening to George to show us that the vast majority of people are kind caring people. [They] reaffirm your faith in human nature. I have always realised that football is not the most important thing in the world.

  It was a sensible, mature, admirable sentiment, but for those people who failed to see the irony in Bill Shankly’s much-repeated observation about football, life and death it suggested a semi-detached captain of the England football team.

  Lineker’s devotion to the cause remained as strong as ever, and he certainly appreciated the honour attached to the captain’s armband. But he also appreciated the true nature of the captain’s role and, in particular, its limitations as to what he can do in the course of a match.

  You become a much more significant public figure when you become the captain of the England football team. You are now the spokesman for the team which I liked. I thought it was one of my strengths that I could articulate on behalf of the players. You become the key linkman between the players and the manager and the players and the press. That’s much the more important role of being the captain because on the field nobody really behaves any differently when they get made the captain. You get to spin the coin but that’s about it. You certainly can’t change the tactics on the field. A football captain is hugely different from a cricket captain who can have a massive say on tactics. The tactical side of things in football all comes from the manager. Some people use captains more than others but by and large once you’re on the pitch your job is to be the link between the manager and the players, the players and the press and the players and the general public. What you’re trying to do is to create a better atmosphere for everybody. Frankly on the field, beyond tossing up and encouraging the other players, which everyone should do anyway, I’ve never seen a captain influence a substitution, or play this way or that way. You might go to the side of the pitch if things are going wrong and say, come on, we have to do something about this but that’s as far you can go. The ultimate responsibility to change things is the manager’s. The captain getting involved is just a no-no. I’ve never seen that happen anywhere.

  George Lineker, thankfully for all concerned, survived his childhood leukaemia. His father, meanwhile, was increasingly aware of the march of time as he entered the evening of his playing career. Not that his predatory instincts showed any decline. In 1991–2, his last season at White Hart Lane, he scored twenty-four goals out of the total of fifty-eight scored by the entire Spurs team, which finished a disappointing fifteenth in the league. He was also given the Footballer of the Year award for the second time, having previously won it in 1986 at the end of his season at Everton. Lineker and Holmes discussed how he might best go out at the top and not slide down the divisions. He was mentally tired by 1992 and lacked the motivation to continue, but he was still captain of his country and determined not to let it down. He told Taylor he did not wish to continue beyond the 1992 European Championships and from that moment it appeared as though a fissure opened up in the relationship between manager and captain, which went into permanent decline. Jon Holmes observed the collapse as soon as Taylor started dropping hints to the press that he was thinking of replacing Lineker as captain. Holmes invited Taylor to lunch to discuss the problems but the England manager replied that the question of the captaincy was none of his business, suspecting Holmes of briefing against him to the press.

  In the summer of 1991 there was an England tour to Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia. Many clubs withdrew players but Lineker wanted to go, though Spurs also had a summer tour and they didn’t want him to go with England. A compromise was eventually reached in which Lineker pulled out of the tour to New Zealand and flew from Wellington to Tokyo for ten hours to help Spurs lose a meaningless game 4–0. Taylor had his suspicions that Lineker travelled to Japan to play in that game so that he and his agent could start negotiations with Nagoya Grampus Eight. Taylor complained to Malam:

  Here we have a man who is England captain, and when I made him captain he said he didn’t want to look any further than the finals of the European Championship in Sweden. Yet a year later he is in Japan looking for his future… I’m sure Lineker wanted to play for England all the time. The point I’m making is that he or his agent also saw a very good opportunity in terms of where there was some more money to be earned.

  Holmes and Lineker responded by pointing out that a Japanese delegation came to Taylor and the FA and formally asked that Lineker be released from the England tour. Lineker seems to have done his best to accommodate everyone by playing for England and then flying halfway round the world to Japan but Taylor told Malam that he was not convinced of his captain’s commitment to the cause and the relationship continued to disintegrate.

  People look to the captain to see what the captain’s doing. It’s not so much the manager as the captain the other players are looking towards: seeing if he’s out training, seeing if he’s enthusiastic for training. As captain of England, he had a responsibility to come out onto the training pitch. I’m led to believe he didn’t do it previously.

  The sad end to Lineker’s international career was like a motorway pile-up. Everyone could see it coming but nobody appeared able to do anything about it. Taylor dropped his captain for a game against France in February 1992, claiming he wanted to have a look at David Hirst and Alan Shearer together. The armband was given to Stuart Pearce as Lineker sat stoically on the bench until the second half began, at which point he came on and scored. It had been Lineker’s goal against Poland in Poznań in November 1991 that had ensured England qualified for the 1992 European Championships. Taylor took a volley of criticism for his neglect of his captain but it was nothing worse than what previous England manage
rs had suffered. What was obsessing the press and therefore the England football supporters was whether Lineker would be able to break Bobby Charlton’s record of forty-nine goals. He scored his forty-eighth with a minimum of six matches – three friendlies and three group games in the European Championships – to go. Unfortunately, in a match against Brazil at Wembley, he missed a penalty and played poorly. Taylor implicitly criticised Lineker by praising David Platt’s performance. After the twenty-man squad for Sweden was announced, Taylor gave interviews to two Sunday newspapers in which he said: ‘When somebody is a national institution it’s almost as if you can’t touch them. I’m not into all that. Looking at it realistically, we could perhaps argue that we played Brazil with ten men.’

  Taylor, according to Lineker, apologised to him in private, but when Lineker then effectively released the apology in public just by answering a journalist’s question, Taylor then denied he had ever apologised. Then he apologised again. It was a shambles – much like the performance of the England team. In Sweden the first two games were goalless draws against Denmark and France. Lineker rarely looked like scoring; his touch seemed to have gone.

  England and Taylor were not helped by the unavailability of Gascoigne who had tried hard to destroy his own career by his ludicrous performance in the 1991 FA Cup final. Taylor had already dropped him for a Euro qualifying match against Ireland at Lansdowne Road in November 1990, clearly regarding Gascoigne’s unpredictable behaviour as not conducive to team morale and so might not have included him anyway. However, now that England had to beat the hosts in Stockholm to get out of the group, most of the country mourned the absence of one of the very few world-class players England possessed. Happily, they went in at half-time 1–0 up after an unexpectedly bright display. Lineker had created a goal for Platt after only three minutes. However, Ekstrom came on for Anders Limpar at the start of the second half and the pendulum swung decisively towards Sweden. Centre-half Eriksson headed in from a corner after fifty minutes and England found they could scarcely get out of their own half. Ten minutes later came the substitution that ended Gary Lineker’s international career and defined Graham Taylor’s international team management.