What If…Something…Anything had gone right at Euro ‘80

I was flicking through an old FourFourTwo earlier, when moving some stuff out of the attic. I found a story that I don’t recall reading at the time, but it was a flashback piece, about England turmoil-filled Euro 1980 campaign, and I thought I’d share the story with you.

19 European Cup (now the Champions League) medals. Nineteen! That’s how many the 22 man squad England took to the 1980 European Championships had won between them. Liverpool’s golden age in Europe was well underway, and Brian Clough had led Nottingham Forrest to two successive titles in Europe.

The front line was led by Hamburg’s double European footballer of the year winning striker Kevin Keegan. There were still remaining players left over from Leeds United’s famous title winning team. And Trevor Francis was the first £1m footballer.

So even though this was the first major Championships England had attended since Gordon Banks tummy upset, we had every reason to go into that tournament feeling fairly confident.

Unlike in the modern age though, England playing in the European Championships, was not front, or back page news. Thatcher had become British Prime Minister, and rather like the modern age, the economy was a shambles. Two Million unemployed, the worst recession since before the Second World War, and so on was filling up the front pages.

And the papers didn’t look to the football to try and get people’s minds off of the madness going on outside their door – a controversial Olympic games was already doing that. Britian had entered a team, despite Thatcher calling for a boycott on the games because of the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan – America had decided not to take a team to Leningrad.

The format for the European Championships that year was odd. Eight qualifiers were divided into two groups, the winners from each contested the final. England were drawn in with Spain, Belguim and the hosts, Italy.

Italy were two years away from winning a world cup, but were going through a typically controversial period, talismanic striker Paulo Rossi was suspended for two years, and 33 players (including squad members) were on trial in Rome for matchfixing.

Meanwhile for England, Don Revie had been replaced by the very nice Ron Greenwood. Further proof that we were robbed not having Brian Clough, Greenwood was possibly the nicest England manager we’ve ever had, he was lovely. He was so nice, he described the 22 man squad as equals, and declared they’d all get a game in the tournament. He even couldn’t decide between his two world-class keepers Ray Clemence and Peter Shilton, so he rotated the two. Both could have done a job for England, but they couldn’t both do a job for England.

Anyway England could look at the group and think that maybe that had a good chance of making the final. Unfortunatly the European Championships started pushing the Olympics off the back pages. For all the wrong reasons.

200 English and Italian hooligans clashed in the streets, making front page news all across Europe. The next day England played Belguim, in a game they should have been winning rather easily. England opened the scoring, but after Belguim equalised, the large Italian contingent started cheering, and the England fans charged them. The Italian police released tear-gas into the crowd, Ray Clemence whose turn it was to keep goal that day suddenly couldn’t see what he was doing.

The game stopped for five minutes while he recovered, and when the game kicked back off, England had a goal disallowed for offside. The game finished 1-1.

Obviously the result didn’t make the news, the teargassed yob’s did. And next England played Italy. The hosts had drawn 0-0 with Spain in the opener, so it was still anyone’s group.

This time the “Supporters” didn’t even wait for the game to start, a full hour before kick off there was fighting in the stadium. When the team finally made it out onto the pitch, they had other worries.

“We came out in our Admiral tracksuits” recalls Kenny Samson “Then the Italians, fantastically suntanned appeared in these ice-blue tracksuits…we felt we were 1-0 down already”.

Marco Tardelli, who would become rather famous for another late goal, headed in a goal to send England’s chances of making the final in tatters. Kevin Keegan repeatedly tried to score at the other end, but Dino Zoff was having a wildly successful game in the Italian goal, and kept everything at bay.

Keegan then took a post-match interview in which he mentioned the Italian match-fixing scandal. The quote was taken by the Italian press to insinuate that the ref had been bought, and Keegan spent his entire preperations for the Spain game besiged by press, untill eventually it was revealed that his quote was taken completely out of context.

Greenwood changed most of his XI for the Spain game, and 19 of the 22 ended up getting to play some part in the tournament. England won 2-1, but it wasn’t anywhere near enough to progress.

What if, the hooliginism hadn’t overshadowed the tournament? This is when the term “The English disease” was coined in relation to the problem, and the 1984 Euro’s, which England wanted, went to France instead. We had to wait untill 1996 for our turn.

What if, Keegan had found a way past Dino Zoff? What if that offside goal against Belguim had been given?

Well we had the team, and with their European Cup record, the experience, if not the international experience. But we would have played a decent German team in the final, and it would have been interesting, as all England/Germany games are.

We’d probably have lost on penalties wouldn’t we?