Davies - One Night in Turin

Contents

It was the World Cup semi-finals. On 4th July, 1990, in a stadium in Turin, Gazza cried, England lost and football changed forever.

This is the inside story of Italia 90 - we meet the players, the hooligans, the agents, the journalists, the fans. Writer Pete Davies was given nine months full access to the England squad and their manager Bobby Robson. One Night in Turin is his thrilling insider account of the summer when football became the greatest show on earth.

Pete Davies is the author of a number of critically acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction. He lives in West Yorkshire, England.

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Catching Cold

The Devils Music

American Road

For Joe
who at the age of eight months just got his first football

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Version 1.0

Epub ISBN 9781446443033

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Published by Yellow Jersey Press 2010

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Copyright Pete Davies 1990

Pete Davies has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

First published in Great Britain, as All Played Out, in 1990 by William Heinemann Ltd

Yellow Jersey Press
Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V 2SA

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9780224083348

This book could not have been written without the extensive and generous co-operation of many of the English footballers who went to Italy in the summer of 1990.

Above all, it could not have been written without the help and time given me by their manager, Bobby Robson help and time that was always courteously given, even when he certainly had better things to do than talk to me about, for example, 442: to 442, or not to 442

I doubt theyll like everything in this book but I hope, in the end, theyll believe it to be fair. And speaking of fairness given the common image of footballers as dim and greedy individuals I must stress that in the months leading up to and during the World Cup, no player ever asked for money from this book.

I must also thank those people at the FA who always answered my many questions and requests so politely in particular Glen Kirton, David Bloomfield, and Michelle Rogers. And I must give special thanks to Jane Nottage of Italia 90, without whom my weeks chasing football round Italy would have been mightily more awkward and uncomfortable.

Finally, my thanks to Rebecca, who may well have thought it was daft to begin with but who, like thirty million others, ended cheering England on, as their cruel and brave finale unfolded in Turin.

As I rode the glass lift down the outside of the vast grey bulk of the San Siro, hordes of jubilant people spilled round the squat spiral walkways to either side of me. They were mostly Milanese, but theyd become, for a day, honorary citizens of an African country whose national gold reserves are smaller than the personal wealth of Diego Maradona.

At the foot of one of the pillars, an enormously tall rasta, naked to the waist, knelt among a throng of photographers on the red, yellow, and green flag of Cameroon; he repeatedly bowed his head to the Tarmac, arms outstretched before him in exultant triumph and amazement.

In the parking lot, another man stood with his wife and two small sons all four were dressed from head to foot in the blue and white of Argentina. The man raised his hands above his head and chanted at a TV crew, with a frantic and lonely grin, Ar-gen-tina! Ar-gen-tina! and he tried to get his family to join in.

But the wife and the kids looked embarrassed and miserable; they knew whod won, and they knew the man of the family looked ridiculous. Argentina 0, Cameroon 1. It was the most sensational opener in the history of the World Cup and one of the wackiest afternoons I ever had in my life.

And I felt thrilled to the core because in Cagliari and Rome, in Naples and Turin, there was so much more to come

This book is not exclusively for people who love football.

People who do love football will, I hope, enjoy vehemently disagreeing with at least half of whats said in it, since thats at least half of what being a fan is all about.

We all picked our own teams then we thought the manager was a wart when he picked someone else. We all thought Brazil were either brilliant, or terrible what are the artists doing, we cried, playing this defensively dreary Euro-formation? And we all thought England were either lucky, or magnificent at last, we cried, the yeomen are playing that fluid and flexible Euro-formation

A lot of us probably thought, at one time or another, that Brazil and England, to stick with those two, were brilliant, terrible, lucky, magnificent, so unlucky its daylight robbery, the best team in the world, the worst team in the world, Sodbury Mechanicals could put a hatful past em with a hangover on a Sunday morning it all depends on where youre sitting.

Chris Waddle said on the eve of the Belgium game in Bologna suddenly giving up on a detailed criticism of the way England had traditionally played football, and the way that had tended to limit his contribution But whos to say Im right? Every systems there to be beat, and its all opinions, isnt it? Thats why its such a great game.

With football at its peak, these opinions this turbulent Babel over whether this man should play instead of that, over whether our system works better than theirs, over whether this teams a bunch of cheating slime, or whether that other team has eleven heroes, when last month you thought they were all playing in diving boots all these opinions, when footballs at its peak, have about them a passion that no other sport can generate with such intensity, for so long, among so many.

In the reception at Anfield, a couple of days after Liverpool were beaten by Crystal Palace in the FA Cup semi-final, I watched two angered and grieving men come close to blows as they discussed the merits or otherwise of Dalglishs team selection Why? Why does it matter so much? Why, at Italia 90, were some games seen by forty per cent of all the people on this earth? And why did a total of thirty billion people tune in, at some point, to those fifty-two games?

For those whod not normally think of themselves as people who love football I hope this book might go some way towards answering those questions.

In England, thirty million people watched the semi-final against West Germany in Turin on 4 July 1990 the biggest TV audience in the countrys history for any single sporting event, and not far short of twice the previous record held by the TysonBruno fight.