Rome Wasn't Built in a Day, Chapter F; The depth of my personal disappointment

Appropriately enough considering the events of last night, this week's book chapter is the story of the England team throughout the 1990s and into the start of this century. It's a rollercoaster ride.

f. the depth of my personal disappointment

Up to the summer of 1990, the career of Graham Taylor had been a rags-to-riches story. A fully qualified FA coach at 27 years of age, Taylor became the youngest manager in the Football League at Lincoln City and then to the Fourth Division Championship in 1976. From there he moved on to Watford, where he took the club from the Fourth Division to the First in five years and then, in his first ever season as a player or manager in the top flight, to the runners-up spot behind the mighty Liverpool team of the era in 1983. The following year he took Watford to their first ever FA Cup final. Having achieved that, he dropped a division in 1987 to manage Aston Villa back to the First Division and then to the runners-up spot in the First Division behind Liverpool in 1990.

Taylor was treated with suspicion in the press. Though successful, his Watford team had been driven up the divisions by a long ball game which was considered regressive even in the 1980s, and with the sense that he was an outsider accentuated by the fact that he’d never played or managed in the top flight until he got his Watford team up in 1982. For the first couple of years, England were largely unbeaten but still vulnerable. They lost just one of his first 23 games in charge of the national team, a 1-0 home defeat by a newly-reunited Germany in September 1991.

But they still struggled to qualify for the 1992 European Championships. The draw had been somewhat fortunate to them. Five of the seven UEFA groups had five teams but England were seeded in one of the two that only had four, alongside Poland, Ireland and Turkey, all very familiar faces from the last few years, but with only the group winners qualifying for another eight-team tournament. They beat Poland at home 2-0, and followed this up with two draws against Ireland and two drab 1-0 wins against Turkey. But in their final match against Poland in Poznan they found themselves a goal down until a late Gary Lineker equaliser gave them the point they needed to stay just ahead of the Irish, who had a better goal difference.