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When Football Came Home: England, the English and Euro 96
When Football Came Home is the story of the 1996 European Championship played out in England, the centrepiece of a momentous and unforgettable summer, Britain's second summer of love. In the space of a month the England team went from staggering out of a Hong Kong nightclub in disgrace to within a stud's width of reaching the final at Wembley. It was a summer that nobody really wanted to end - and certainly not as it did, losing against Germany on penalties. With a spirit of togetherness, Terry Venables and his players captured the hearts of the nation in a way not seen since Italia 90 - but Euro 96 had an extra edge. Played on home soil, it took place at an extraordinary time in British history. New Labour were poised to end a generation of Tory rule and Cool Britannia was on the rise, as a comatose culture had been revived and Britpop provided the soundtrack to it all. That communal spirit of June 1996 is recaptured in these pages. It wasn't all euphoria - during that month there were riots on the streets of the UK, accusations of spying, race rows and even a terrorist attack during the tournament. Every single aspect is brought back to life for the first time here - the fraught and often controversial build-up, the tournament in full and the lasting impact it had on English football and the nation.
- GenresFootballNonfiction
275 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 16, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
December 3, 2023
Wonderful to reminisce over a great summer, a great team, and a great tournament - as for Venables, always felt he was treated terribly and should have continued on, the politics between that rotten bunch at the FA hopefully regret the way the handled that. An excellent read
June 15, 2022
Fantastic. A book about Euro 96, written by an Englishman no less, that focuses on [i]all[/i] the teams and their backstories and talks about England and "Cool Britannia" without all the seemingly prerequisite navel-gazing. Just great stuff.
June 15, 2020
1996. A generation ago. I completed my A-Levels and over the summer drifted to the end of a part-time job at Safeways in Southport. A big fan of Oasis back then, I was looking forward to their gig at Knebworth rather more than I was the European Football Championships - it hadn't even occurred to me that I might watch two European nations slug it out at Anfield and I wasn't alone. Still - half-Scottish, half-English my imagination was caught by two of the home nations lining up in one of the fixtures and, having wangled the afternoon off to watch that season's utterly dreadful FA Cup Final I was also lucky enough to catch a fair amount of this tournament on the television.
Having sat through the lows of Graham Taylor's England performances on holidays in Scotland and Wales, the Terry Venables era seemed to start with countless frustrating fixtures in which not enough Liverpool players were selected. The television money had yet to radically change football - a little like a heavy drinker still in their twenties. In retrospect, Euro 96 sat perfectly in the pre dotcom boom and crash era, with British recession still fresh in the memory as Tony Blair's ability to get himself in the right place and the right time peaked.
Michael Gibbons' impressive book about Euro 96 weaves together various strands to tell an enchanting story about an otherwise fairly forgettable tournament. His contention that the summer of 1996 was one of almost unique optimism is almost convincing - perhaps because of the godawfulness of what went immediately before it. I was perhaps alone in imagining a Norwegian commentator excitably exclaiming "Black Wednesday, John Major, Michael Portillo, Noel Edmonds - Noel Edmonds! Your nineties took one hell of a beating!
Gibbons impressively balances the official story of the tournament with cultural and pragmatic context as we're reminded that England's inevitable exit in glorious failure (via a memorable victory in a dead rubber tie with the Netherlands) masked some laboured displays. Despite that, as England's Paul Gascoigne noted, there was plenty of capital to be earned around the tournament - not least for politicians. Notably around England's Semi Final fixture with Germany where the author grins that even the Home Secretary Michael Howard wanted to make "something of the night". The Germans "matter-of-factly" got on with winning, having won the real lion's share of fixtures between the two sides since they were at war. England as smalltime Everton to Germany's bigtime Liverpool.
Having sat through the lows of Graham Taylor's England performances on holidays in Scotland and Wales, the Terry Venables era seemed to start with countless frustrating fixtures in which not enough Liverpool players were selected. The television money had yet to radically change football - a little like a heavy drinker still in their twenties. In retrospect, Euro 96 sat perfectly in the pre dotcom boom and crash era, with British recession still fresh in the memory as Tony Blair's ability to get himself in the right place and the right time peaked.
Michael Gibbons' impressive book about Euro 96 weaves together various strands to tell an enchanting story about an otherwise fairly forgettable tournament. His contention that the summer of 1996 was one of almost unique optimism is almost convincing - perhaps because of the godawfulness of what went immediately before it. I was perhaps alone in imagining a Norwegian commentator excitably exclaiming "Black Wednesday, John Major, Michael Portillo, Noel Edmonds - Noel Edmonds! Your nineties took one hell of a beating!
Gibbons impressively balances the official story of the tournament with cultural and pragmatic context as we're reminded that England's inevitable exit in glorious failure (via a memorable victory in a dead rubber tie with the Netherlands) masked some laboured displays. Despite that, as England's Paul Gascoigne noted, there was plenty of capital to be earned around the tournament - not least for politicians. Notably around England's Semi Final fixture with Germany where the author grins that even the Home Secretary Michael Howard wanted to make "something of the night". The Germans "matter-of-factly" got on with winning, having won the real lion's share of fixtures between the two sides since they were at war. England as smalltime Everton to Germany's bigtime Liverpool.
June 5, 2016
Can't remember the last time I read a book this quickly, which sort of tells its own story. Do remember 1996 and the tournament which crowned it pretty well though and found the whole to be superbly recaptured here. Two or three things stand out. I remember the tournament as weak, this is pretty much the accepted wisdom. But although coming off the boil, and from some very high points through the 80's, Germany were still strong; Italy would kill to have the 96 crop of forwards still available (let alone Maldani at the back); this was the tournament that established Croatia as a force; and this was to all intents and purposes the squad of players which won France the next two major titles available. We don't know what the next month will bring, but there is no guarantee that Euro 16 will be any stronger. Secondly, it is a reminder that to win elections Labour has to position itself as the party of the future, it has to appear modern and forward looking. This is singularly difficult but it does happen every two or three decades, at least that is what the historical record suggests. Finally it was clear to the blindest of bats, and deafest of deaf things, by the middle of 1996 that Oasis were descending into something between stadium rock amd pub sing -a-long. but Blur had an ounce of substance.
March 31, 2016
Terrific book recounting the summer of '96, when a wave of English pride swept the nation on the back of the hosting of the European Football Championships. Though it would ultimately end in the usual disappointment and extend the '30 years of hurt', the tournament captured the imagination of the public like none other since as politicians and pop stars alike hitched themselves to the football bandwagon. As someone whose recollection of the games is somewhat hazy as most of them were viewed from the packed out pubs, it was nice to have the key moments recounted in entertaining detail. Not just the games but the build up to the tournament are covered, as well as the national fervor that grew as England bumblingly advanced towards the final. It may only be 20 years ago but the absence of social media and ubiquitous mobile phones makes it seem a much more innocent time. People still relied on the press for their fix of 'news' and many newspapers, particularly the tabloids, took the jingoistic stance a bit too far. But it was the summer of 'Cool Britannia'......Britpop, football and New Labour and it was great. So is this book.
June 23, 2016
My review is here
https://footballpink.net/2016/06/12/b...
https://footballpink.net/2016/06/12/b...
March 30, 2016
[I]n June this year, Henry Winter will publish Fifty Years of Hurt , a volume that will use England’s 1966 World Cup victory as a springboard to examine the fortunes of the national XI over the subsequent half century.
We’ll have to wait and see as to whether Winter can manage to get through the exercise without spinning a specific narrative – be it about Charles Hughes, too many league fixtures, penalties and the practising thereof, foreign players in English football or the antiquated nature of the FA – but suffice to say, it’s often easy to use vague patterns and trends to shoehorn an argument.
As Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski displayed in Why England Lose, later rechristened Soccernomics , England actually punch at about the weight they should do given the raw materials they have to work with and Hartlepool United fans might argue with the use of the word ‘hurt’ to describe a period that has actually come with more than a few high points.
Which brings me to Michael Gibbons’ outstanding new book, When Football Came Home , a chronicle of one of those peaks – the European Football Championships of 1996, commonly referred to as Euro 96.
That England’s best performances (1966, 1990 and 1996) have been in tournaments that have generally been regarded as subpar by the wider footballing fraternity has been commented on in the past and Euro 96 is probably no exception. As Gibbons himself admits, Germany’s team was the least impressive that country has offered up as a tournament winner, the general standard of play as the competition transitioned from 8 to 16 teams was patchy and the continent’s major powers, Italy, Holland, France and Spain among them, all fielded far from vintage sides.
Historical revisionism has also led us to be unkind about the mid-nineties in general - last year’s Britpop anniversaries were generally delivered in an embarrassed tone - while Tony Blair has been right royally skewered in Tom Bower’s new book, Broken Vows.
But such churlishness would be out of place. Optimism was everywhere in 1996 – Blair and Labour may not have been in power but the conservative administration of Jon Major were dead men walking while decent music was hitting the charts on a weekly basis – and some of it, most notably from Pulp and Elastica, was a lot more than decent.
North of the border, Trainspotting the movie was released – a significant cultural moment if ever there was one - while even England’s unofficial tournament song, the immortal Three Lions possessed real credibility. On the pitch and despite not winning the thing, this really was England’s moment.
Gibbons’ enthusiasm for the period really shines through and is utterly bereft of the cynicism that one fears will permeate Winter’s effort. England’s achievements in putting the poor performances of Graham Taylor’s spell in charge behind them under the canny, man-management and clever coaching of Terry Venables, is wonderfully recounted. For this book, despite some detailed and adept analysis of the other competing teams, is very much about the men in white.
The dynamics within the squad including the genuinely uproarious behaviour of Paul Gascoigne, the notorious Cathay Pacific flight and dentist’s chair incident and the reaction that followed the humiliation of letting in a goal after 8 seconds against San Marino in the dying embers of Taylor’s reign are brilliantly and compellingly described – that match in Bologna is the perfect starting point for a narrative that is by no means confined to the span of the finals proper.
This reviewer was present at a number of the friendlies that prefigured the actual tournament – a long 18 months that saw the US anthem booed roundly at Wembley and approximately 17 goalless draws with Norway. That Venables managed to shape this rag bag into a team that quite possibly should have emerged top dogs is eternal credit to him as well as his ability to let go – indeed, the book describes how he would often bow to the coaches around him such as the late Don Howe. That a light touch was taken with the irrepressible and yet surely superhumanly annoying Gazza was again a key strength of the manager’s policy.
But the book’s real strength is in its meticulous research – every match has been re-watched, be it on DVD, video or youtube, complete with BBC and ITV studio punditry; newspapers have been scoured with a fine tooth comb (one wonders how Piers Morgan has avoided jail for hate crimes given the phalanx of xenophobic assaults he launched in The Daily Mirror while interviews have also been carried out – only not to the extent that ‘access’ is held up as the sole imprimatur of seriousness, as they may have been in the hands of a more mainstream journalist.
Hence, we learn/are reminded of 10 nasties that Morgan asserted Spain brought to us (including Franco, syphilis and carpet bombing); ads with lines such as ‘Italy’s Goalkeeper: Easiest Job in the World’; Emlyn Hughes being booed at the opening ceremony, Gazza and others clashing with photographers while fishing at a remote spot near Maidenhead and Stuart Pearce choosing Zimbabwe as his post-tournament holiday destination.
In all, it’s an evocative and enthusiastic re-creation of a time and a place, delivered in witty and lively prose – Alan Shearer’s time at Blackburn is described as ‘less a purple patch, more an industrial spillage in a Ribena factory’. That the author takes time to paint the whole picture of a country and the way Euro 96 enveloped it would perhaps make him the ideal choice to pen a social history of Britain in the 1990s – a still elusive decade that even TV’s talking heads are finding hard to summarise and pin down. This is an unmissable book that anyone interested in the period should cherish.
We’ll have to wait and see as to whether Winter can manage to get through the exercise without spinning a specific narrative – be it about Charles Hughes, too many league fixtures, penalties and the practising thereof, foreign players in English football or the antiquated nature of the FA – but suffice to say, it’s often easy to use vague patterns and trends to shoehorn an argument.
As Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski displayed in Why England Lose, later rechristened Soccernomics , England actually punch at about the weight they should do given the raw materials they have to work with and Hartlepool United fans might argue with the use of the word ‘hurt’ to describe a period that has actually come with more than a few high points.
Which brings me to Michael Gibbons’ outstanding new book, When Football Came Home , a chronicle of one of those peaks – the European Football Championships of 1996, commonly referred to as Euro 96.
That England’s best performances (1966, 1990 and 1996) have been in tournaments that have generally been regarded as subpar by the wider footballing fraternity has been commented on in the past and Euro 96 is probably no exception. As Gibbons himself admits, Germany’s team was the least impressive that country has offered up as a tournament winner, the general standard of play as the competition transitioned from 8 to 16 teams was patchy and the continent’s major powers, Italy, Holland, France and Spain among them, all fielded far from vintage sides.
Historical revisionism has also led us to be unkind about the mid-nineties in general - last year’s Britpop anniversaries were generally delivered in an embarrassed tone - while Tony Blair has been right royally skewered in Tom Bower’s new book, Broken Vows.
But such churlishness would be out of place. Optimism was everywhere in 1996 – Blair and Labour may not have been in power but the conservative administration of Jon Major were dead men walking while decent music was hitting the charts on a weekly basis – and some of it, most notably from Pulp and Elastica, was a lot more than decent.
North of the border, Trainspotting the movie was released – a significant cultural moment if ever there was one - while even England’s unofficial tournament song, the immortal Three Lions possessed real credibility. On the pitch and despite not winning the thing, this really was England’s moment.
Gibbons’ enthusiasm for the period really shines through and is utterly bereft of the cynicism that one fears will permeate Winter’s effort. England’s achievements in putting the poor performances of Graham Taylor’s spell in charge behind them under the canny, man-management and clever coaching of Terry Venables, is wonderfully recounted. For this book, despite some detailed and adept analysis of the other competing teams, is very much about the men in white.
The dynamics within the squad including the genuinely uproarious behaviour of Paul Gascoigne, the notorious Cathay Pacific flight and dentist’s chair incident and the reaction that followed the humiliation of letting in a goal after 8 seconds against San Marino in the dying embers of Taylor’s reign are brilliantly and compellingly described – that match in Bologna is the perfect starting point for a narrative that is by no means confined to the span of the finals proper.
This reviewer was present at a number of the friendlies that prefigured the actual tournament – a long 18 months that saw the US anthem booed roundly at Wembley and approximately 17 goalless draws with Norway. That Venables managed to shape this rag bag into a team that quite possibly should have emerged top dogs is eternal credit to him as well as his ability to let go – indeed, the book describes how he would often bow to the coaches around him such as the late Don Howe. That a light touch was taken with the irrepressible and yet surely superhumanly annoying Gazza was again a key strength of the manager’s policy.
But the book’s real strength is in its meticulous research – every match has been re-watched, be it on DVD, video or youtube, complete with BBC and ITV studio punditry; newspapers have been scoured with a fine tooth comb (one wonders how Piers Morgan has avoided jail for hate crimes given the phalanx of xenophobic assaults he launched in The Daily Mirror while interviews have also been carried out – only not to the extent that ‘access’ is held up as the sole imprimatur of seriousness, as they may have been in the hands of a more mainstream journalist.
Hence, we learn/are reminded of 10 nasties that Morgan asserted Spain brought to us (including Franco, syphilis and carpet bombing); ads with lines such as ‘Italy’s Goalkeeper: Easiest Job in the World’; Emlyn Hughes being booed at the opening ceremony, Gazza and others clashing with photographers while fishing at a remote spot near Maidenhead and Stuart Pearce choosing Zimbabwe as his post-tournament holiday destination.
In all, it’s an evocative and enthusiastic re-creation of a time and a place, delivered in witty and lively prose – Alan Shearer’s time at Blackburn is described as ‘less a purple patch, more an industrial spillage in a Ribena factory’. That the author takes time to paint the whole picture of a country and the way Euro 96 enveloped it would perhaps make him the ideal choice to pen a social history of Britain in the 1990s – a still elusive decade that even TV’s talking heads are finding hard to summarise and pin down. This is an unmissable book that anyone interested in the period should cherish.
June 20, 2021
When Football Came Home. Michael Gibbons.
Just finished this excellent book about Euro 96. I really enjoyed it. It is a book about England in the mid 1990’s. Oasis and Blur battle to be the best band. The U.K. is at loggerheads with the EU. Piers Morgan is making a nuisance of himself.
The English players go from being a disgrace to being national heroes. The Three Lions becomes an anthem for the tournament. Portugal’s golden generation capitulate in the quarter finals against the Czech Republic.
I went to see Portugal play Croatia in Nottingham but was not aware at the time the Croatians had fielded a weakened team.
England played very well against the Dutch. Should have lost against Spain and deserved to beat Germany in the Semi final. But as Tony Adams told Gareth Southgate on the night after the match, “it was a s**t penalty!!”.
Highly recommended.
Just finished this excellent book about Euro 96. I really enjoyed it. It is a book about England in the mid 1990’s. Oasis and Blur battle to be the best band. The U.K. is at loggerheads with the EU. Piers Morgan is making a nuisance of himself.
The English players go from being a disgrace to being national heroes. The Three Lions becomes an anthem for the tournament. Portugal’s golden generation capitulate in the quarter finals against the Czech Republic.
I went to see Portugal play Croatia in Nottingham but was not aware at the time the Croatians had fielded a weakened team.
England played very well against the Dutch. Should have lost against Spain and deserved to beat Germany in the Semi final. But as Tony Adams told Gareth Southgate on the night after the match, “it was a s**t penalty!!”.
Highly recommended.
July 4, 2021
As a teenager, all I used to read were football books. This year I've found reading hard going, especially as I've foolishly chosen two tomes to read, so with the Euros coming up I went a bit on a tangent and went back to my roots of reading football books.
It's all you could ask for in this type of football book: it's condensed with detail and captures the time perfectly, from music to politics. And you know what, this year might actually be the year the football came home, so here's hoping!
It's all you could ask for in this type of football book: it's condensed with detail and captures the time perfectly, from music to politics. And you know what, this year might actually be the year the football came home, so here's hoping!
July 4, 2018
Great book
Really enjoyable book, took me back to the summer I fell in love with football and filled on a lot of details I was too young to take in.
Lions
Really enjoyable book, took me back to the summer I fell in love with football and filled on a lot of details I was too young to take in.
Lions
December 27, 2016
Like a spiritual sequel to Pete Davies' All Played Out, this book covers the two and half years from the humiliating end of Graham Taylor's reign as manager of the England football team in 1993 up until the end of the Euro96 tournament in England. It occasionally pushes a tentative finger into wider cultural and political issues, specifically the rise of Britpop and "Lad" culture, but if you're looking for background as detailed as All Played Out you'll probably be left wanting. Where it comes into it's own is by lifting the rose-tinted shroud of what the football was like that summer of 96', so it probably serves the football fan old enough to remember the time a bit more than the casual observer or a younger audience.
July 31, 2016
Great football writing with plenty of social context about the optimism, hedonism and jingoism of mid-1990s Britain. This book goes further than just talking about England, with some lovely stories about the other teams in the tournament, and brings back to life the reality (rather than the rose-tinted mythology) of a major tournament that England have yet to rival.
September 4, 2016
A great piece of cultural analysis into what happened in Britain in the 90s: the rise of lad culture, the politics, the music and the football. This will save you reading 100 memoirs by Darren Anderton or Lothar Matthaus to get the best anecdotes, while reminding me for one that terror threats, violence on the streets and anti-EU sentiment didn't arrive in the UK after 9/11.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews