GAZZA THE ENGLAND LEGEND
“BRYAN ROBSON TOLD ME THE ONLY TIME HE GOT THE HAIRDRYER OFF FERGIE WAS AFTER THE FIRST TIME HE FACED GAZZA AT NEWCASTLE”
You can tell that something genuinely remarkable is happening, just from Colin Hendry’s face. The rugged Scotland centre-back always had a distinctive look – fierce Highland warrior with the face of an old Russian woman – but suddenly that stoic frame crumples with confusion. Against the run of play, a supposedly portly and past-it Paul Gascoigne lifts the ball into a perfect orbit over Hendry’s head, sprints like a naughty kid and prepares to apply the coup de grace.
It wasn’t supposed to happen; according to a number of newspapers, Gascoigne shouldn’t even have been part of the England squad. A Mirror survey suggested that 86 per cent of readers wanted him expelled from Euro 96, after the Three Lions’ boozy warm-up antics in Hong Kong. It’s now widely forgotten that he had been in consistently superb club form during 1995-96, but no matter: that bewitching move against Scotland turned popular opinion on its head.
Two days later, the Mirror famously published a public climbdown: “To Mr Paul Gascoigne: an Apology,” conceding the “fat, drunken imbecile” was now his country’s saviour. Again. But then Euro 96 summed up the player’s international career: heavy scepticism, followed by breathtaking brilliance and a climatic, agonising near-miss.
“He was a bunch of contradictions,” explains journalist Henry Winter, who devoted a whole chapter to the midfielder in 2016 book, 50 Years of Hurt. “I’ve always thought that Shakespeare – without going too Alan Partridge here – would have had an absolute field day with Gascoigne.”
Despite his well-documented (or, more accurately, badly documented) off-stage exploits, Gascoigne is arguably England’s most popular player ever. He is Gazza. Today we tend to view that story as more tragedy than comedy, but he packed more joy and drama into 57 appearances than umpteen golden generation centurions put together.
His is a tale of
