Stan Hey: Pundits left speechless at English failure to self-destruct

Sunday 16 June 2002 00:00 BST
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"It's not supposed to be like this!" Gary Lineker exclaimed at the start of the half-time interval, with England leading Denmark 3-0. While his tone was registering nationwide delight at such a scoreline, he was also expressing the pundits' fear of anti-climax. But England, and the Danish goalkeeper, Thomas Sorensen, had delivered one, and nobody could get used to it. Where were the self-destruction, the missed chances, the injuries?

All morning the tension about the match had been building, with both BBC and ITV coming on air an hour before kick-off. Gary had kicked off with a pained expression to capture the mood of national anxiety. "It's agony," he mugged to the camera, while Des Lynam preferred to speak of "a momentous day".

Somewhat ominously, the line-ups sported rather a lot of black shirts and jackets. Terry Venables had his Mafia-style shirt, Des was in a black sports jacket, while the newly ennobled Sir Bobby Robson wore a dark suit and a shy smile. Sir Bobby and Gazza were ITV's early aces, as the build-up dissolved into a trip down memory lane for Robson.

This would usually be the cue for the Newcastle manager to trip over some stumbling stones, given that he can barely remember his players' names on occasions. But with a bit of prompting he was able to provide subtitles to sequences from his life in football.

These culminated with a shot of him and a clutch of fresh-faced trialists, one of them about to get the boot. Cut to a balding Gazza, grinning at his early rejection, and patting Robson, now the Grandfather of English Football, on the hand.

This set up the next "filler", The Gazza Story, as told to Gabby Logan, with the lachrymose Geordie quickly filling with tears as he recalled the events of 1990. "I alwers get churked when ur think ovit," he gasped, sending viewers to Teletext subtitles for a translation.

Over on the BBC, the trump card was the former Danish international goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel. But after a career bawling at various defences, it was a little disappointing to hear him speak in his quiet monotone. Still, the BBC persisted in getting him to perform a Hamlet-style soliloquy, dressed in black, in which he assessed the chances of both teams, his personality divided between Danish patriotism and English friendships. He came down on the side of home.

On the other side, Gazza was warning us that "Rio is going to be up against... er...", forcing Venables to get his vowels round Jon Dahl Tomasson as a prompt to the tongue-tied Geordie. And then we went to the action, cutting from a shot of the Swan Stadium to one of the Swan's Arse on top of Beckham's head.

Starting up the ITV commentary, Clive Tyldesley also had Hamlet in mind with a reference to "Kings of England or Princes of Denmark, that is the question". Within five minutes it was poor Sorensen pushing the skull of Yorick into his own net from Rio Ferdinand's header to give England the lead. On 22 minutes, Michael Owen stifled any Danish fightback with his quick control and a calm shot. "It was only a matter of time," yelled Clive, as the nation rubbed its eyes in disbelief.

It was noticeable in both goal celebrations that Beckham was clearly beginning to miss Posh, as he planted big smackers on both Ferdinand and Owen, leading to some speculation at what he might do if he scored himself.

As it was, he was content to set up Emile Heskey for the third, and Motty was quick to hit the soundbites that he knows he's become famous for. "Can you believe this?" he screamed to the watching millions.

With all the tension dissipated by half-time it was a tough task for the summarisers, the men in the brand-new shirts, to come up with words. Ian Wright was caught giggling at the back of the class by Headmaster Hansen, who wanted to state the bleedin' obvious: "The Danes have been poor."

Over on ITV, the air-conditioned studio had prevented the appearance of what might be called "coach's armpit", as displayed by Señores Camacho of Spain and Aguirre of Mexico, with even Gazza looking calm in a blue-and-white, two-tone number. The sense of relief made further comment seem spurious.

"Lux ike an urn gurl," Gazza mumbled as he expertly analysed the first score. Meanwhile, Gary Neville put millions of male viewers at risk of being hauled off early to the shops by their wives by announcing: "We've got this won."

Indeed we had. And as the second half ebbed away without any real drama or alarms, we were allowed to start mentioning the taboo word "Brazil" without thoughts of tempting fate – 11 famous Belgians permitting, of course.

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