November 24 – Déjà Vu All Over Again

THE Spanish philosopher, poet and novelist George Santayana once said “those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” If Brian Barwick and his cronies had paid attention in philosophy class then last November’s sorry mess at the sodden Wembley Stadium might not have happened. Today we’re going back to last time the Three Lions failed to reach a major tournament, as it was today in 1993 that Graham Taylor decided that, unlike Steve McClaren, he would try and save a semblance of dignity and resign as England manager.

The similarities between the depressing end to McClaren’s reign and England’s last low-point are there for all to see. Like McClaren, Taylor inherited a team who had been knocked out of the World Cup on penalties and the fans never took him to their hearts. Taylor did manage to get England to the European Championships in 1992, but this tournament will always be remembered for Gary Lineker’s substitution against Sweden, leaving him a goal shy of breaking the England scoring record when England were chasing the game.

The tabloid media had a field day. “Swedes 2 Turnips 1″ was The Sun’s headline in 1992 and the vegetable theme was something that Taylor never managed to shake off. A loss to Spain saw him dubbed a “Spanish Onion” and the headlines soon escalated quicker than McClaren’s umbrella in a rainstorm, with “Norse Manure” and “Oslo Rans” as the obvious puns following a particularly bad loss to Norway that left qualification for USA ’94 hanging by a thread.

That thread involved beating San Marino by a cricket score. In a textbook example of England messing with your emotions worse than any woman ever could, a computer salesman called David Gualtieri was pinching himself after ten seconds, wondering if he really had just scored the quickest goal in World Cup qualifying history.

England did manage to put seven past the minnows, but it wasn’t enough and meant that Holland pipped them to the place in the finals. Before you could say “do I not like that” Taylor had decided to do the honourable thing and jump before he was pushed.

We could go on about rubbish England managers all day, but Capello seems to be doing a suspiciously good job at the moment so we’ll leave it there. We’ll leave you with a bit of Channel 4′s often hilarious documentary that followed Taylor and his staff through the 1994 qualifying games and come back tomorrow for more football trivia.