LITMIR.BIZ

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reversed. I knew my chance had come: 17 minutes to contribute, to prove my worth. When the team is trailing, a back-up striker is offered a chance to fundamentally alter the game he’s been studying from his position on the bench. Against Tunisia, when I came on we were two goals up and simply keeping possession. I was unlikely to score in those circumstances. It was simply my welcome to the World Cup. But sometimes, coming on as substitute in a game in which your team is behind is a no-lose bet, because you’re sent on more in hope than expectation. Similarly, if you are winning it can be a no-win scenario, because the manager doesn’t require anything from you beyond ball retention and basic discipline. Not so against Romania. That night we were in trouble. A goal under those circumstances, I knew, would carry extra weight.

      We’d gone one down shortly after the break to a goal by Viorel Moldovan, and I can remember warming up behind the goal, gazing up at the clock and thinking, ‘There’s half an hour to go, maybe he’s going to bring me on.’ I was concentrating on the game in front of me and thinking about what I might do to change its course. I couldn’t stop looking at the bench. I was waiting for the wave. But the clock kept ticking, and the thought took hold of me, ‘He’s not going to bring me on here!’ Then, ‘He’s not going to give me enough time!’ As a striker, you want at least 15 minutes to make your mark. Time crawled on until there were 20 minutes left and I started to think I’d missed the boat. Then I saw a hand go up from the bench and I was rushing back to the dug-out to take my chance.

      My first goal in a World Cup has a special place in my heart. When Alan Shearer crossed the ball, it took a little bounce off a Romanian defender and sat up as if on a golf tee. Lovely. As soon as I struck it there was no possibility of the goalkeeper forcing it out. Take it from me, it’s an astounding sensation to score in a World Cup. A while later, I hit the post from 25 yards. Shooting from that far out isn’t something I normally do; it frustrates me when team-mates shoot from an impossible range. But by then I felt I could beat the world. I thought I could go on and win the game on my own. I was wrong. I assumed we had secured a draw, so the winning goal from Dan Petrescu in the final minute gave us a mighty shock.

      Four members of my family were there to see my first World Cup goal: Mum, Dad, Andy and Lesley. It sounds incredible, but I didn’t get to see them, even after the game. They made the effort to come and support me but there was no face-to-face contact for us all to remember. Security is always the main issue. A World Cup really is a long stint without seeing those you’re closest to. It was only when we were no longer in the tournament that families were reunited, so you can imagine how closely the players are bound together. They only have one another. And, as I said, the 1998 World Cup came too soon for me to feel part of the hierarchy, so the sense of isolation was especially sharp. Still, better, maybe, to have confronted those feelings of homesickness early in my career.

      In his book, the controversial World Cup diaries, Hoddle wrote that he’d always planned to start me against Colombia in the last group game, on the basis that their defence was vulnerable to pace. This was not something he confided to me at the time. Even after my goal against Romania I considered myself only fifty-fifty to make the starting line-up for our final group game. He certainly never gave me the nod in advance.

      Still, true to his word, the Colombia game in Lens on Friday, 26 June was my first full 90 minutes in an international tournament. I played adequately but didn’t get many chances to score. Having opened the door against Romania, my intention was to stay on the right side of it for the rest of the competition. When we came off the pitch I was flying because we’d qualified, but I still hadn’t made sure of my place for the much tougher games ahead. The first time I felt ‘Right, I’m part of this starting eleven’ was when I scored against Argentina in the second round. From that moment on I felt as though I was an integral part of the England team. I wonder how many other people can trace such a huge breakthrough in their lives to a single act.

      The other big story before the showdown with Argentina was, of course, David Beckham being left out for the games against Tunisia and Romania. The difference between David and me was that I didn’t go into the tournament expecting to be in the first eleven, whereas it was a shock for him not to be picked. His club career was more developed than mine, though England were blessed with a strong, settled midfield. Darren Anderton was coming off a big tournament in 1996, and it was a tough part of the team to break into. Nevertheless, when Beckham didn’t make it you could tell he was angry and resentful. I could see from his face that he wasn’t happy. In contrast, I didn’t have that same sense of deflation.

      I never developed the impression that Beckham disliked Hoddle, I just thought he was annoyed at being left out of the side. In fact, as it turned out he was fuming, but there seemed no reason to suspect that there was any deeper personality clash. I’m no longer sure my limited interpretation was accurate, but this is how it seemed to me at the time. Hoddle used the word ‘focus’ a lot in relation to the way David applied himself to training and to games. Plainly that phrase had negative connotations. The manager didn’t like us reading newspapers, so I had to rely on Mum and Dad to tell me what was being said in the press. The bulletins about me were good and my parents were always cheerful. ‘You should see what people are saying and writing,’ they would say. ‘They’re all saying you should be in the team.’ I couldn’t make myself believe it.

      Where David was concerned, I just thought it was the old chestnut of a player being upset at being ignored. At that point in his career he was a much quieter and more private lad. He was already going out with Victoria, or Posh Spice, and a lot of the time he was on the phone to her, or retreating to his room so he could talk to her in private. He was never one to be seen in the pool room, in a card school or watching every game on TV. He was especially close to Gary Neville. But my earliest image was of him being in his room, talking to Victoria, who was jetting all over the world pursuing her Spice Girls career.

      Our lives were taking shape. For both David and me, that World Cup was the start of a whole new story. We now have very different lives, but with England we’ve travelled a single road and been through plenty of dramas together. And at the end of June 1998 we were about to be pushed into the roles of hero and villain, however misleading those labels were.

       6 Wonder Goal

      My story should probably have a line down the middle, drawn on 30 June 1998, the night England played Argentina in St Etienne in my first World Cup. Before that day I was an 18-year-old striker trying to establish himself for club and country; after that date I couldn’t play a round of golf or get into my own home without it being a public event.

      I can trace much of my good fortune in football to the evening when I lined up in one of the best England teams I’ve represented. And I will always be grateful for the praise and the warmth of the English public when I returned home to a new life. It’s a fallacy to think you can build a career around one goal, and I like to think I’ve achieved a few things before and since. But that Argentina game taught me something about myself and started a process that has given me and my family financial security for life.

      In the camp, we knew throughout the group stage that we had a good chance of running into Argentina in the next round – which was frustrating, because no World Cup contender wants to be playing the really big opponents as early as the last 16. Not that we’d been in a position to be choosy: after losing to Romania, we had to beat Colombia just to be sure of going through. Equally, we knew we could beat them. We weren’t remotely scared of them or their reputation. I don’t think there was any team in France that caused us to be afraid, because we had a really good team that summer. We had a stronger sense of identity than in any year I’ve known, though we really fancied our chances in Japan and South Korea four years on. At Euro 2000, in contrast, there was no buzz and no confidence in the team – nor in my own heart.

      In 1998 I felt we had a real beast of a team – mature, talented and robust – so we didn’t shrink in the face of Argentina, even though they were able to call on such talents as Ariel Ortega, Juan Sebastian Veron, Gabriel Batistuta and Claudio Lopez. We just wanted to bring them on. For the second game in a row I was named in the starting eleven, which Glenn Hoddle

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