'Back Home' - Mexico 70, Heath, Ramsey, Wilson & the final puncturing of the myth of 'English exceptionalism'

Was Italia 90 really the moment 'football changed forever'?

The 1990 World Cup Finals in Italy has long been heralded as something of a 'Year Zero' moment for football.  The tournament itself set to the strains of 'Nessun Dorma' in the BBC's coverage, Gazza's tears, the emergence of 'Toto' Schillachi and the collaboration between EnglandNewOrder have all achieved iconic status in the years since the tournament.   With respect to football in England, the performance of the national side at Italia 90 is seen as the catalyst for a step-change moment; one that changed the way in which the national team and its supporters were perceived and led to a shift in public perception paving the way for the emergence of 'A Whole New Ball Game' in the form of the Premier League. There have been numerous books, documentaries and podcasts produced to pay homage to the tournament.  Many of which herald Italia as the moment that 'football changed forever'.  In the fourth episode of our World Cup mini-series, we discuss whether this is truly the case? We begin by reassessing why Italia 90 is considered such an iconic tournament. Firstly, we explore how the competition emerged from the ashes of a decade in which English football fans were characterised by the Thatcher government as part of 'The Enemy Within' and football itself was decried by The Sunday Times as “A slum sport played in slum stadiums and increasingly watched by slum people” .   We then move on to explore how the performance of the England team, inspired by an emerging superstar in the form of Paul Gascoigne helped to shift the public mood throughout the tournament and resulted in a feelgood factor returning to 'The Beautiful Game'.  As a result, 'Gazzamania' exploded in the aftermath of Italia 90 and during the following season, Gascoigne almost singlehandedly inspired his club (Tottenham Hotspur) to the FA Cup Final before disaster struck.  A shockingly mistimed challenged resulted in ruptured cruciate ligaments and put his move to Italian club, Lazio in jeopardy.  Whilst Gascoigne did recover, it is arguable that his career never reached the dizzying heights that were perhaps anticipated during that heady summer. Gascoigne was not the only star who burned brightly during Italia 90 who struggled to maintain such levels afterwards.  At the heart of the host nation's attempt to claim the glittering prize were the goals of 'Toto' Schillachi, who started the tournament on the sidelines before firing six goals to inspire Italy on a run that (like England's) ended on a Semi Final penalty shoot out defeat.  Like Gascoigne, Schillachi struggled to maintain his form in the years that followed Italia 90.  A move from Juventus to Inter Milan was considered a failure and he played out the remainder of his career in the emerging J-League.  Does Schillachi's performance at Italia 90 mirror many of the infrastructural 'White Elephants' associated with the tournament across Italy. Lastly, we explore how the teutonic power of the West German side proved to be an unstoppable force during the competition, defeating old adversaries in the form of The Netherlands and England en route to a World Cup Final rematch against Argentina.  Speaking after his side had won to claim the world title for the third time, the West German coach Franz Beckenbauer, famously declared that "now that we will be able to incorporate all the great players from the East, the German team will be unbeatable for a long time to come.“   Whilst a unified Germany maintained a solid performance level throughout the decade that followed, the prediction of 'Der Kaiser' never truly came to fruition and former East German players remained firmly a minority in the squads throughout the tournaments of the nineties.  We discuss what this tells us about German reunification.

'Back Home' - Mexico 70, Heath, Ramsey, Wilson & the final puncturing of the myth of 'English exceptionalism'

The summer of 1966.  England had made good on the promise that Alf Ramsey made upon his appointment as the national team manager and become World Champions.  The Beatles and The Rolling Stones led a 'British Invasion' that topped the charts on both sides of the Atlantic and Harold Wilson's Labour Party secured a historic landslide victory.  It seemed that Wilson's Britain was set to be at the forefront of the 'White Heat' technological revolution he had proclaimed three years earlier and that Ramsey's England side had claimed the position many had long felt was rightfully theirs - in spite of a great deal of evidence of the contrary! - as Champions of The World. Four years on, both Ramsey and Wilson were faced with a fresh test of their credentials.  The England national side (for the first and to date only time) entered Mexico 70 as World Champions and as ever, England expected.  Both the gentlemen of the press and Ramsey hypothesised that the squad assembled in 1970 was even stronger than that which had won the World Cup in 1966.  As the tie-in record released in the build-up to the tournament 'Back Home' stated "they ('the folks back home') think we're the greatest, that's what we've got to prove once more". If the period between the two tournaments had represented the national side's 'Arcadia' period, the Wilson government had found the intervening years much more tumultuous - In 37 by-election contests that took place between 1966 and 1970 Wilson’s government was defeated in almost half - and the furore surrounding the devaluation of the pound in 1967 threatened to undermine the Wilson government terminally. On the eve of the World Cup, the canny populist Wilson was fearful of the impact that a poor showing from England could have on his electoral prospects 'Back Home'.  However, he was buoyed by the fact that his opponent Ted Heath (who like Ramsey and Wilson had risen from humble beginnings to lead the Conservatives) appeared to lack the common touch and ability to connect with the electorate. In this, the third episode of our World Cup mini-series, Chris and Nathan explore the linkage between England's fortunes in Mexico and the political situation in the UK during this period.

Austria in the 1930s; From Wunderteam to Anschluss

In 1932, the Austrian football team had the world at their feet. A glorious victory in the Central European International Cup had seen them conquer the best teams that mainland Europe had to offer. With many South American heavyweights refusing to travel to the 1934 World Cup, it seemed highly possible that the so-called Wunderteam might soon be crowned the best football team on the planet. Yet just six years later, that same Wunderteam was no more. Despite successfully qualifying for the third edition of the World Cup in France, by 1938 Austria no longer had an international football team and were unable to take up their place in the tournament. Not only that, but they were not even considered to be an independent nation. In this episode of The Way We See Sport, The Way We See Life, Nathan and Chris explore the first decade of the Football World Cup through the lens of the Austrian national team. Against the rising tide of European fascism, the story considers how both Mussolini and Hitler impacted the fortunes of the Wunderteam and, ultimately, how a side with so much verve and promise were never able to fulfil their true potential.

USA 94 – Inspiring or Insubstantial?

In 1994, America stood triumphant as the world’s sole superpower. The Berlin Wall had fallen, the Soviet Union had collapsed, and 9/11 was still seven years away. Fukuyama declared the end of history, and scriptwriters began crafting a speech to be released two years down the line, through which the fictional President Whitmore would rally the human race to defend the earth against alien invasion. In short, liberal democracy had triumphed. It was against this backdrop that the USA prepared to hold the World Cup final at the Rose Bowl in California – the pinnacle of a tournament that had broken every attendance record in the history of the competition. Yet the match between Brazil and Italy was something of a disappointment – a 0-0 draw which failed to provide the climax that football fans had hoped for. As the tournament prepares to return to North America for the first time in over 30 years, Nathan and Chris explore the positives and negatives of USA 94. As Nathan embraces his nostalgia for the tournament, and Chris casts a more detached and critical eye, this episode of The Way We See Sport, The Way We See Life considers whether the tournament, and 90s America in general, was inspiring or merely somewhat insubstantial.

Special - pt. 2 of 2 - 'When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going'? - An exploration into Mental Health through the prism of Sport

In the second part of our two-parter released to coincide with Mental Health Awareness Week | Mental Health Foundation [https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/our-work/public-engagement/mental-health-awareness-week], we take a deeper dive into the relationship Mental Health has with three specific sports: * Boxing - Analysing how and why many fighters struggle with life beyond the ring 'once the lights go out' on their in-ring careers * Cricket - An exploration into the long-standing relationship between Cricket and depression * Football - How Mental Health Awareness has become part of being 'match fit' and exploring whether the game has learnt lessons from the tragic cases of Gary Speed and Robert Enke The episode builds on some of the themes explored in our first episode of this special, in which we studied how attitudes towards Mental Health in Sport could be viewed to have evolved over time.  Within this second episode, we assess how these three sports are currently approaching supporting participants in terms of managing their Mental Health.  We explore whether there are any key takeaways and commonalities to be found in each of these three sports and whether the riches prevalent within the sporting domain can help us to learn any lessons applicable to wider society?