Tragedies and triumphs of England's Italia 90 heroes

Telegraph

18 hours ago

They are the men who made modern football. The England players' heroics at the 1990 World Cup came at a time of desolation and despair for the beautiful game. Almost overnight the horrors of hooliganism were forgotten as the brilliance of Paul Gascoigne, Gary Lineker and co made the nation fall in love with football again. On this wave of euphoria, the Premier League kicked off and football was never the same again. Now, 35 years after the Italia 90 tournament, we analyse what happened next for the England squad – and discover a host of off-field traumas added to noteworthy triumphs.
Football through a new lens
It's Epsom Derby day in 1990 and ITV is about to broadcast live from Sardinia for an unusual segment. Poolside at the Is Molas Hotel and Bryan Robson and Peter Shilton are taking charge of a sweepstake for the 22-man England squad.
Jim Rosenthal, ITV's roving reporter, is overseeing the fun. He will later also bring a chocolate cake to one live transmission – which inevitably ends up all over Gascoigne's face – and was himself thrown in the hotel pool when the players returned the following month. It was certainly a far cry from the expectation of hooliganism and supposedly dark-age football – BRING THEM HOME! urged The Sun after only one game – that was the grim backdrop when England arrived.
An island base in Sardinia was deliberately chosen by the Italian organisers in the hope that England would never even progress beyond a series of group fixtures in Cagliari, some 12 hours on the ferry from mainland Italy. The BBC was so convinced that England would not progress past the last 16 that it had not booked any hotel rooms for its team of reporters. By the end of the tournament, once-critical summarisers like Jimmy Hill were purring. 'We used to be laughed at – not any more,' declared Sir Bobby Charlton.
'Football did an absolute double-somersault with tuck... it was a month that changed the beautiful game completely,' Rosenthal now says. 'Football was not something you spoke about at dinner tables – now you had three-quarters of a million people lining the streets.
'We literally lived with the team. It helped that the people liked what they saw coming through the televisions. They were a hell of a good group – very strong characters.
'TV was getting better and better – and so you had those images like Gazza's tears. Some people think football started with the Premier League. That's madness. Italia 90 changed the way people thought about football. It paved the way for everything that followed.'
When you consider what has followed – the growth of a multi-billion-pound juggernaut, state-of-the-art stadiums and a domestic game that is the envy of the world – there can be no doubt about the historic influence of Sir Bobby Robson's England. It also helped that they were so relatable. And, as they largely now approach pensionable age (Shilton, Robson and Terry Butcher are already there), just about all human life and experience can be found.
Rise of the craftsmen
Chris Waddle has never actually stopped lacing up his boots during a steady journey back down through the pyramid after leaving Sheffield Wednesday with cult-hero status in 1996. 'I'm actually playing for Worksop Town – well, Worksop Vets – a week on Saturday,' he says, ahead of his 65th birthday later this year. 'I'll find a position where I don't have to run around and I can get the ball at me feet – we'll be all right.' Waddle was combining working in a sausage seasoning factory with turning out for non-League Tow Law Town when he was signed for £1,000 in 1980 by Newcastle United.
By the time of Italia 90, Waddle had moved to French champions Marseille, for whom he would reach the Champions League final the following year. 'Marseille was 80 degrees for six or seven months – you couldn't run around like a chicken with no head – and they liked skilful players,' he explains. 'Even though I had a mullet, I let my hair down and I just went to enjoy it.'
Zinedine Zidane, no less, still cites Waddle among his boyhood heroes and, at a time when English clubs were banned from Europe, he brought a tactical know-how as well as technical class to an England squad that was far better than most had appreciated.
'[Gary] Lineker was as good a goalscorer as anybody, then you had [Peter] Beardsley or [John] Barnes,' says Waddle. 'The midfield three that night [for the semi-final against West Germany in Turin] was me, Gazza and David Platt. No hard man. Me and Gazza just balanced off and we kept saying to David Platt to get in the box alongside Lineker when the ball went wide.
'Mark Wright was a great sweeper, Terry Butcher left, Des Walker right, Paul Parker right wing-back who could play centre-half. Stuart Pearce loved to bomb on. We definitely thought we could win it.'
Waddle had been among those advocating the more flexible tactics that Robson would ultimately employ and witnessed first hand a big change in how English football was perceived abroad. Average top-flight attendances for the 1989-90 season were just over 20,000. They now stand at more than 40,000.
'I remember speaking to Franz Beckenbauer [the West Germany manager] who became coach at Marseille after the World Cup,' says Waddle. 'He said: 'We knew our hardest game would be England. There was nothing between us – whoever won it would win the final.' When he's talking like that, all of a sudden you think: 'Yeah, we did have a very good side.' That team turned heads.'
Triumphs, tragedy and a search for normality
Lineker was not even 30 at Italia 90 but was already being nicknamed 'Junior Des' in reference to his desire to follow in the footsteps of the BBC's Des Lynam. It was Gascoigne who came up with the moniker and, while Lineker has since barely left the public eye, others have forged decidedly different paths.
According to the Professional Footballers' Association, the average top-flight salary was £41,600 in 1990, between two and three times more than the average wage. That would soon rise dramatically (Barnes became the first £10,000-a-week player by the time of the Premier League's launch in 1992-93) but even those experiencing a small taste of the subsequent riches would need to keep working. Many followed Lineker into broadcasting and some sort of punditry, notably Waddle and Butcher, who were popular BBC commentators on England matches across several decades.
Coaching and management have been predictably popular. Butcher, who captained England in the knock-out phase, also managed 10 clubs but was touched by unimaginable tragedy in 2017 when his son Chris, a captain in the British Army, died of an enlargement of the heart combined with the effect of drugs 'against a background of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder'. It followed stints in Iraq and Afghanistan. After the inquest, Butcher described Chris as a 'victim of war'.
Butcher's former Rangers team-mate Gary Stevens, who is now a physiotherapist in Australia, also suffered the heartbreaking loss of a child – in 2021, his four-year-old son Jack died from a rare form of leukaemia – and he has since formed the Forever Four charity with wife Louise to raise awareness of stem-cell donation.
Platt, who famously scored the last-16 winner against Belgium that was a turning point in the competition, has been another to combine media work with coaching, He managed Sampdoria and Nottingham Forest before working alongside Roberto Mancini at Manchester City. His response to an interview request before the last World Cup indicated his shifting priorities. 'I'm afraid I don't do media any more,' he said. 'I am happy living how I am doing. It's exciting searching for anonymity.' As even Lineker has found, it is a younger generation of former players now generally moving into prime positions in broadcasting and coaching.
🌍🏆 World Cup iconic moments:
📆 26 June, 1990
🏟️ Stadio Renato Dall'Ara, Bologna
Substitute David Platt grabs an extra-time winner for @England to send the Three Lions into the quarter-finals of Italia 90 pic.twitter.com/Uhsp20Gxn4
— ITV Football (@itvfootball) June 2, 2018
Beardsley, another wonderfully skilled player from the North East, would lose his job coaching at Newcastle United after a Football Association panel found he made racist comments to three players. Beardsley had denied the charges – and would receive a character reference at the hearing from his former England and Liverpool room-mate John Barnes – but has not returned to a professional coaching role. He does apparently still play five-a-side twice a week and is in regular contact with old mentors and strike partners Lineker and Kevin Keegan. Indeed he made a surprise appearance on Lineker's Rest is Football podcast. Beardsley's departure from Newcastle was ignored on the show but it felt striking to hear him talk about the cultures he experienced after moving into football from a ship-yard factory in the late Seventies. 'The banter the minute you walked through the gate is unbuyable,' he said. 'In that era, that we were lucky enough to play in, anything went. Nobody got offended.'
Others have stayed more permanently out of football's bubble. Neil Webb, who had also helped Manchester United win the FA Cup in 1990, sparked headlines in 2002 when it was revealed that he was working as a postman. It was put on the front page of The Sun, with Webb feeling moved to apologise to his colleagues over coverage he felt had belittled their jobs. 'Football doesn't owe me a life – I had a 2½-hour walk every day and it kept me quite fit,' he later said.
Webb has since worked in various jobs, including as a delivery driver, and put his first England cap and shirt up for sale two years ago. 'My generation earned good money and you could buy a nice house, a nice car – but it is a different world for today's players,' he said.'
Mark Wright had kept seven different shirts from Italia 90 – including Shilton's semi-final goalkeeper jersey – and sold them at auction for more than £100,000. Wright, who managed Peterborough, Chester, Southport and Oxford United during an eclectic career, also became a foster parent in 2008 and has been a vocal ambassador in raising awareness for the importance of foster care and adoption. He is also a board member at Fair Result, a divorce resolution service which is designed to ease costs and stress following a marriage break-up. Footballers, including those from Italia 90, have long been in disproportionately high need for such help once retirement sets in.
The best shirt-sale story, however, still belongs to former Nottingham Forest midfielder Steve Hodge. He was in the 1990 squad but did not play a match, leaving the 1986 quarter-final against Argentina as his last World Cup finals appearance. That was on the night when Diego Maradona's sleight of hand and genius feet ended England's hopes and Hodge made the inspired snap decision in a corridor after the game to ask him to swap shirts. Even more astutely, he then bided his time and, two years after Maradona's death in 2020, the original 'Hand of God' World Cup shirt fetched £7.1 million at auction. Waddle is adamant that no one in the squad would begrudge Hodge the payday.
Rather different financial headlines were prompted last year when it emerged that Barnes had been banned from acting as a company director until 2027, after a business – which went into liquidation in 2023 – had previously failed to pay £190,000 in taxes.
Other jobs away from football have included Des Walker's work as an articulated lorry driver. Walker was the only member of the squad in 1990 who would routinely dodge poolside interview requests. 'He wasn't rude, he would just say 'I don't like doing it',' says Rosenthal. Walker did, however, grant Telegraph Sport a rare interview in 2021 while coaching a UK-based team of Indonesian footballers. He revealed that he had actually taken his Class One HGV test when he was playing – 'it's hard work and a lot of concentration' – and was as unsentimental as you might expect about his career. 'I can only live for tomorrow,' he said. 'I don't look back. I can't live yesterday. Football for me, as a player, is over. '
Facing addiction
Flanked by his wife Steph on the sofa of their living room in West Mersea, Shilton is reflecting on the 'gut-wrenching' experience of going closer to winning the World Cup than any England team for almost 60 years. Shilton's wider contribution to England's World Cup campaign can sometimes be obscured in the context of that semi-final when West Germany scored with such a freakish deflection. 'You set up for a shot – so you come off your line a bit to narrow the angle and you are square on,' explains Shilton. 'Then, before you know it, it's going over the top. You can't run backwards when you are square. I never conceded another goal like it in my whole life. But Italia 90 was special: Nessun Dorma, being in Italy, that homecoming in Luton... there wasn't a lamppost without someone climbing up, or a window that someone wasn't looking out. Football just took off.'
As well as the Derby day sweepstake, Shilton and Lineker would host horse racing nights in Sardinia by using footage of American meetings. Gascoigne, though, was able to get hold of one of the results in advance from the physio Fred Street without the knowledge of bookies Shilton and Lineker. 'We were doing quite well after three or four races – and then this sting happened and it took all the winnings,' says Shilton, chuckling. 'I remember they did a samba around the swimming pool to rub it in.'
Shilton stresses that he never let an interest in more serious gambling impact on his football – 'I would completely block it out of my mind' – but would face serious problems following a monumental 1,387-game career.
The turning point arrived in 2015 after yet another costly weekend and Shilton found himself calling an agent to request an advance on a future appearance. 'When I looked around, Steph was there,' he says. 'Something in me, which had been building up, said: 'What are you doing at your age? You've had 40 years to win. You're an addict. I've finished with it.' I knew I loved Steph. I didn't want to lose her.'
After helping Shilton confront his addiction, Steph is now a therapist and works as the family-liaison lead for the Epic Restart Foundation.
Shilton has also become an outspoken campaigner, not least on how football must further phase out its links with gambling companies. He was instrumental in the campaign to end front-of-shirt sponsorship and received the CBE at Windsor Castle last year from Prince William. 'I want people to know that you can stop,' he says. 'I was in denial. As soon as I stopped, I realised I had wasted so much time. I'm far more relaxed, I've got peace of mind, and I feel as though I've never been happier. It is not easy to come out and admit to it. When I received the CBE from Prince William, I was taken aback because the first thing he said was, 'I believe you have been doing a tremendous amount of work with gambling harm.' I was pleased but there's still a lot to be done. TV is saturated.'
Another man who has faced serious addiction is, of course, Gascoigne who, after various relapses and spells in rehab, is said to be holding up pretty well just now in Dorset amid what has become a lifelong battle with alcohol. To a man, his team-mates report how his elevation into the England team in 1990 was a game-changing catalyst.
'I was buzzing... about three seconds ahead of everybody else,' says Gascoigne, of what was surely the peak of his career. He was brilliantly handled by Bobby Robson who, in the last outing of a life cut short by cancer, was at St James' Park in 2009 for an emotional charity rerun of that semi-final. On his way home, Robson's first question to his family was: 'How did Gascoigne play?' He would die only five days later.
'There were so many Gazza stories,' says Rosenthal. 'The day before the semi-final, he came down and said to Bobby: 'Have you ever had one of those saunas?' Bobby said, 'Of course – why?' Gazza said: 'I couldn't sleep last night, I spent five hours in one.' I've always said about him, the only place he was genuinely happy was on a football pitch. Bobby got the best out of Gascoigne. Typical Geordie – would give you the last spoon of sugar out of his cup of tea. Hopefully he seems to be in a reasonable place now. These players should not be forgotten. You sometimes just want to remember them the way they were... but the real world doesn't work that way.'
Stuart Pearce, a proud patriot who would go on briefly to manage England as well as the Under-21s for six years, says that he has never known a football player so loved as Gascoigne. Now a regular Talksport pundit, Pearce would himself suffer a very serious health scare this year when, on a flight back from Las Vegas after watching Warrington Wolves play rugby league, he began to feel significant pressure on his chest. His heart-rate surged beyond 155 beats per minute, and he turned to his wife Carol and said: 'I don't think I'm going to make Heathrow.' The plane duly made an emergency stop in Canada following an onboard ECG, and Pearce spent 10 days in hospital. Spurred by an outpouring of goodwill, he has thankfully made an excellent recovery. 'It's been very humbling,' says Pearce.
Finding purpose
A quiz question. Name the select group of former England players who played in 10 or more League title-winning teams? Paul Scholes and David Beckham might come easily to mind but it is a fair bet that Trevor Steven, a multiple champion with Everton, Rangers and Marseille, might take a little longer. Steven would finish both the quarter-final and semi-final matches in 1990 after moving the previous summer from Everton to Rangers. The fact that he turned down Manchester United to move north to Rangers – then Britain's richest club – underlines the contrasting state of English football.
Steven had been on £1,000 a week in England. Nowadays, Erling Haaland can command £500,000 a week, but there is no trace of bitterness from any of the players about the riches they would help inspire but not directly receive. 'I'd love the flat pitches, the technical stuff but I'm not saying I'd swap it,' says Steven. 'What I don't like, and wouldn't enjoy, is their exposure with social media... it can be a horrible place. I do find it sad that they get criticised for having a drink every now and then.'
Steven also wonders what it does 'to your mindset, your psyche' to be financially set from such a young age. He is 61 now and the chief executive of the Mindflow mental health charity, which is using football to help a crisis in the construction industry in which 600 lives are being lost to suicide every year. 'It is such a short career but, when you are in it, you don't feel that because every day is intense,' he says. 'You take your breathers when you can and then all of a sudden you are almost relieved it is over. Then the years start to go by and you think, 'I lived the best days of my life before I was 35' and it is quite sobering. You are a long time retired.
'I was a football agent for two years but I hated it. I liked it at the start... then it became deregulated and got all sorts of people into the industry. I got out in 2010 – went to Dubai – and came back in 2020. I was a lost soul. There are many players in the same boat.' Steven, though, then got talking with an Everton fan and businessman called Phil Brown and their mutual interest in mindset sparked a conversation that ended up with the charity today. 'We decided to draw the dots between football, construction and mental health,' says Steven. 'Two people are dying every working day. Football is a fantastic platform. We said to each other: 'Wouldn't it be great if we can save one life?' I came back with a purpose – that was four years ago.'
Lineker and Pearce are among those from Italia 90 who have sent supportive videos for the charity to use. After attending the recent Goodison Park send-off with Stevens and Beardsley, Steven hopes that a reunion dinner can be organised while all the players are still seemingly in relatively good health.
It then prompts a rather touching memory of Bobby Robson at a tribute dinner for him in London. 'Arsène Wenger was talking... Alex Ferguson was talking and then Bobby talked for 55 minutes – just off the cuff,' says Steven. 'You could hear a pin drop. You could hear roars of laughter. The man was mesmerising. He could have gone on forever and we would have loved it.'