For March 28th I'm going back 31 years to 1990 and England's international friendly against Brazil.
This programme is another candidate for "Least Exciting Programme Cover of the Century". I'm not sure what I should expect from the FA when it comes to programmes for prestige international friendlies but, at the prices charged, it's much more than this. Lately, and even more annoyingly, England home games have been played at Wembley behind closed doors and no programmes have been produced at all despite a clamour from collectors and plenty of evidence of interest. I trust that we won't hear anybody from the FA pleading poverty and revenue loss post-lockdown! Rant over!
This was a clash of the International titans. Both teams came into the game off the back of 14 games undefeated and some were billing this as an unofficial World Championship. Certainly public interest was huge, which isn't always the case for a Friendly. 80,000 people attended the game generating record receipts for a match at Wembley at the time of £1.2 Million. It was a chance to see the World's best and Brazil's side included Bebeto, Dunga and Careca. England included, somewhat unusually, three Rangers players in Gary Stevens, Terry Butcher and substitute Chris Woods who played for the majority of the game. Future Rangers player Paul Gascoigne also came on as a substitute for his seventh cap.
I've been lucky enough to see Brazil play 13 times in my life. I've seen them lose only once. It was this game. It was only England's third win over the Brazilians ever. To be honest, Brazil were cheated out of at least a share of the spoils. For all the rightful protest that England players, officials and supporters had made about Maradona's so-called "Hand of God" goal four years earlier at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, there was an equally blatant handball in this game that actually decided the result. Stuart Pearce clearly stopped the ball from entering England's net with his hand and the officials missed it (watch the video attached and you'll see). Brazil's players wanted at least a penalty and were rightly furious when the referee awarded a throw in instead. For all the English values of fair play and sportsmanship, I didn't see a single England player or official approach the referee to highlight his error. Given that, when all's said and done, this was only a friendly it could have been a fabulous sporting gesture and would have given England the moral high ground to take into the Italia'90 World Cup. Instead they secured a somewhat hollow victory courtesy of Gary Lineker's thirtieth goal for England in the first half.
CRB Match No. 654
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