June 17 – Swedes 2 Turnips 1 | On This Football Day

June 17 – Swedes 2 Turnips 1

ANOTHER day, another England disappointment. With much of the nation realising that England not qualifying for this summer’s fun and games in Switzerland and Austria means that we don’t have to put up with penalty heart ache and a summer reading about shoes the current set of WAGs will be wearing, we thought we’d bring you back down to earth by looking at one of the Three Lions’ most disappointing European Championship exits.

It was today in 1992 that Gary Lineker’s international career was ended prematurely, with the housewives favourite being marooned on 48 international goals, one short of Sir Bobby Charlton’s England record, after being subbed by Graham Taylor in the do-or-die clash with Sweden in Euro ’92.

Failing to build on the momentum of the Italia ’90 campaign that saw England reach the semi-finals, Taylor’s side had backed themselves into a corner before their final group game against the host nation after a pair of goalless draws against Denmark and France. Only a win against the Swedes would be enough to make it to the knockout stages and the match started brightly enough with David Platt scoring in the fourth minute, but reality kicked in soon enough.

A tactical switch at half-time by Swedish boss Tommy Svensson, bringing on Jonny Ekstrom in place of Arsenal midfielder Anders Limpar befuddled the English defence, leading to a Swedish equaliser early in the second half. England began to toil, searching for that all-important winner. Then, in the 64th minute Graham Taylor made one of the biggest gambles of his career: taking off captain and leading scorer Gary Lineker, who had announced he was hanging up his international boots after the tournament.

It was a brave move and had substitute Alan Smith grabbed a late winner Taylor would have been lauded as a no-nonsense and ruthless winner. But it didn’t. Lineker refused to even look Taylor in the eye as he made his way to the bench, which considering he was never even booked during his England career, was a fully-formed tantrum in his book, akin to an Antonio Cassano moment.

England went crashing out, losing 2-1 to a brilliant late Tomas Brolin strike and Taylor was public enemy number one. The Sun ran the first in their series of vegetable puns, declaring “Swedes 2 Turnips 1″, with a picture of Taylor’s head on the afore mentioned root vegetable.

Lineker meanwhile went over to Japan to spend two seasons goal-hanging for Grampus Eight before returning as a crisps figurehead and pundit on the BBC. See highlights of the shambles in Stockholm below and we’ll be back tomorrow for a peak at much better England performance.