These have been an unusual few days for England’s players. Since beating Tunisia in their opening game they have gone bowling and ridden inflatable unicorns, they have seen the sights in St Petersburg or spent time with their families. The Guardian’s Daniel Taylor has beaten Kieran Trippier at darts and Jamie Vardy at pool. Though the team needed a stoppage-time goal to claim victory, the English media has been full of praise for the players and management, with Gareth Southgate’s only misstep being the one taken while jogging that resulted in a dislocated shoulder.
The contrast with many of their previous tournaments could hardly be greater. In a large number of them the only inflatables were the egos of the travelling Englishmen, destined to be swiftly and irreparably punctured. At many World Cups encouraging players to compete in similar darts or pool competitions would have been wildly irresponsible, principally because giving any member of the squad a sharpened object or long stick and putting them in the same room as a journalist would inevitably have led to a seriously injured writer.
At this point in 1990 England had drawn their opening game against the Republic of Ireland and were engaged in a sullen stand-off with the press, whose reporting in the run-up to the tournament – “In the name of Allah, go!” read the Mirror’s infamous headline about Bobby Robson after a warm-up draw with Tunisia – had enraged many.
When, in the buildup to the second match against the Netherlands, the same newspaper ran a fictitious tale about three unnamed players enjoying the company of a female member of their hotel’s staff, players vowed not to speak to the media again. “What are they trying to do, torpedo the players? Torpedo the team?” wondered Robson.
“For some of you to want to do this at this particular time, I find pretty disgraceful.”
England’s set-up this year, in a countryside hotel complex complete with private bowling alley, is uncannily similar to that they enjoyed in 1962, when a US copper mining company leant the FA at no charge, its executive Andean retreat. The team’s training pitch lay yards from their bungalows, and while at leisure they enjoyed unrestricted access to a spectacular private golf course, a cinema, a bowling alley and pristine tennis courts; their meals were lovingly prepared by a kindly, grey-haired matronly English lady named Bertha Lewis. The entire touring party watched the game between two teams in their group, Argentina and Bulgaria, and left feeling – in the words of Desmond Hackett in the Express – “confident they could lick both the Argentine and Bulgaria in the same afternoon”.
They then lost to Hungary in their opening game, could only draw with Bulgaria and by finishing second in their group were flung into a quarter-final against Brazil, who beat them comfortably.