Lost in France: The Story of England's 1998 World Cup Campaign. Mark Palmer
‘He was probably the greatest centre-back in the world, so it’s a bit over the top to compare me with him. I try to do my own thing. I like to pass the ball and I like to have it at my feet. It’s flattering the things people have been saying, but I have to make sure I don’t get big-headed.’
Hoddle already had the spine of a team in his mind, and was looking at about thirty or thirty-five players who had a chance of making it by June. Rio Ferdinand’s recall raised the question of whether Hoddle still hoped to play a sweeper system or if he would stick to his three central defenders and two wing-back formation. Much to Adams’s displeasure, England had abandoned the flat back four. ‘If I had fourteen games in which to experiment it might be different, but I don’t,’ Hoddle said. ‘You can play with a sweeper in training and think to yourself, this is fine, but then you try doing it at Wembley in front of 75,000 people or during a World Cup and it can all go horribly wrong. I don’t think we’ve got the players at the moment to do it – although Rio might do it in the future.’
Not one question was asked about Hoddle’s personal life, and how the break-up of his marriage might affect his work.
It was an uninspiring game on a damp, uninspiring North London evening. The lions failed to roar. England won 2–0, with well-taken goals shortly before the end of the first half by Paul Scholes and Robbie Fowler. For Fowler it was particularly important to make an impression and move up a notch in the striker’s stakes, especially with Shearer still injured and Wright suddenly finding it impossible to score for Arsenal.
But it’s all so unfair. Chris Sutton came on with just over ten minutes of the match left, and could so easily have walked into the departure lounge for France if a cross from Fowler had been a few inches more accurate.
Hoddle gave Nigel Martyn an outing in goal, but he hardly got a touch. As it happened, his only real contribution was when he went down on one knee to stop an innocuous shot and let the ball roll out of his arms. He grabbed it again and managed a rueful grin.
There was one significant moment in the thirty-ninth minute when Rio Ferdinand trotted on to replace the injured Southgate. Suddenly there was a buzz about the place. Hinchcliffe shook his hand and then immediately passed him the ball. Ferdinand’s international career was effortlessly into its stride.
England were now ranked sixth in the world – 100 places higher than Italy – and FIFA said they would take that into consideration when deciding which countries would be given one of the eight seeded places. Past World Cup performances were going to come into the equation, which meant England’s failure to qualify last time round could cost them dear. The ghost of Graham Taylor was about to haunt Hoddle as the FIFA suits deliberated in Zurich. Everyone put a brave face on it. Sir Bert Millichip, the FA’s former Chairman who now sat on the all-important FIFA committee, was banging the drum for England. Hoddle appeared unfazed, even suggesting that if England were not seeded it might be an advantage to be in the same group as Brazil – which was tempting fate, especially if that group was also to include countries such as Nigeria and Croatia. In the end it was a choice between Holland, Romania and England for the two last seeded places.
Holland and Romania got the nod. ‘A shade disappointed’ was Hoddle’s immediate response, before taking solace in the traditional chirpy get-out that ‘Come what may you have to go out there and beat whoever you come up against.’ Manager and captain stood shoulder to shoulder. Shearer, who dropped into Marseille for twenty-four hours shortly before the draw to sign the world’s second biggest boot deal – £15 million with Umbro until the year 2000 – played Hoddle’s parrot. ‘You have to meet the best in the end anyway, so it doesn’t really matter which group you are in,’ he said.
Meanwhile, Graham Taylor, now back where he belonged as manager of Watford, emerged from his vegetable patch to defend himself. ‘I’m used to getting blamed for many things, but it is not my fault this time. If people think England have been left out of the seeding because of what happened in 1994 they should look at the rules. It’s not just about non-qualification in 94. You have to take friendly games since then into account, because every international match counts.’
For the French, the Tirage au Sort de la Compétition Finale – The Final Draw – was a chance to road-test their organisational machinery. The media centre at the Stade Vélodrome was big, but not nearly big enough to accommodate the 1,200 visiting journalists. There were smiling girls with badges pinned to their chests, and goodie bags stuffed with watches, calculators, pens and key-rings – stocking-fillers galore. There was red carpet everywhere. The woolly baseball cap with flaps to cover the ears came in handy during the exhibition match between Europe and the Rest of the World before the draw, when the temperature at the top of the arched main stand plummeted. Europe scored within the first minute to begin a goal-fest. Gabriel Batistuta scored a couple, as did Ronaldo, who looked awesome. The 38,000-odd crowd seemed to enjoy it, but they could have done without the French cheer-leader who only highlighted the lack of competitive edge by urging spectators to join him in an inane chant for one side or the other.
It felt more like the opening ceremony than the draw, with a big blue stage at one end where glass pots into which the names of the competing countries would be poured were installed in front of an oversized football. Thousands of schoolchildren sporting different coloured T-shirts filled one stand, VIPs and the media in the other, and the rest sat behind the goal opposite the stage. There was a reproduction of an ancient mosaic in one corner, with XAIPEO in Greek lettering written on it. Greetings.
More than 1,500 people from the worlds of football, politics and show business were invited. Many of them had been in Marseille most of the week, being wined and dined by the sponsors who make sure FIFA’s cup is always full to overflowing. During the second half I wandered through the sponsor’s village just outside the stadium and was handed a Snickers bar and a Coke. And then another Snickers bar and another Coke. A man at the Adidas stand with an American accent was longing to talk to someone. He told me that most of the matches would be broadcast to more than 120 countries and that some games would be seen by 500 million people worldwide. I told him that only that week I had read somewhere that Nike was willing to spend £20 million – almost exactly what Adidas was paying to be an official sponsor – in an attempt to steal the limelight from their rivals. ‘That’s none of my business,’ he said. ‘What I know is that this is going to be far bigger than any Olympics, and with the extra teams in the final this will be the biggest sporting event the world has ever known. No one really knows exactly what it’s costing us but I know it’s worth it. Do you want a sticker?’
At the end of the match, there was a pitch invasion. Sepp Blatter would not have been pleased, since only twenty-four hours earlier he had called for all perimeter fences to be taken down by June because, he said, ‘prisoners and wild animals should be behind bars, not football supporters.’
It took the stewards more than fifteen minutes to clear the pitch. One boy came on with his football and dribbled the length of the field until he got to the penalty spot in front of the empty goal. This was his moment. He missed, shooting high and wide into the stand, and no one would give his ball back. Others performed cartwheels and danced around in the centre circle until the stewards were told to show some muscle. France’s superstar Zinedine Zidane had his shirt ripped from his back and had to be escorted off the field by police. And all of this from a hand-picked crowd, made up mainly of schoolchildren.
In the official programme, Michel Santini and Fernand Sastre, the joint tournament chiefs, made much of the decision to hold the draw outdoors in front of such a large crowd, but I am not sure the plan had been for Blatter and the Chairman of the French FA to be roundly booed whenever they appeared on stage. There was already a hostile atmosphere brewing in Marseille.
Dividing the thirty-two countries into eight groups of four could be done in a matter of minutes, but that would spoil Blatter’s fun. A short, tubby man with a round, jovial face, Blatter was on course to succeed Havelange. He slowly unscrewed the little balls and pulled out small strips of paper bearing each of the countries’ names. England had missed Brazil, Italy, France, Spain and Holland. That left groups headed by Germany, Argentina and Romania. It was Romania we wanted and it was Romania we got, along with Tunisia and Colombia. No one was complaining.
Immediately