For April 26th I'm going back 32 years to 1989 and it's apparently another in my series of "Terrible Programme Covers of Our Time" for the World Cup Qualifier between England and Albania.
You really would have thought that the FA and Wembley would have been able to do better than this. I mean the fingers on the hand holding the World Cup appear to be wearing white nail varnish for goodness sake! Actually the content of the programme isn't too bad with plenty of colour throughout but even the FA were embarrassed about this issue and found it necessary to include a special single sheet insert explaining that the programme had been printed prior to the Hillsborough Tragedy and therefore contained no reference to it.
In these days of all seater stadia for big games, it's quite hard to imagine that football fans used to stand behind wire fences. Fences were a major contributory factor to the 96 deaths at the Hillsborough FA Cup Semi-Final on 15th April 1989. Fans who were being crushed from behind had no means of escape ahead of them. Instead the high fences, which had been designed to prevent access to the pitch from the terraces, did the job that they were designed to do and ordinary people were powerless to prevent themselves from being crushed to death. Fences had been put up in the 1970's as a response to hooligan pitch incursions but Hillsborough showed how dangerous they could be. In the days after Hillsborough, many clubs took the decision to remove their fences. Other venues, like Wembley prior to this game, made urgent modifications to ensure that the fences could be rapidly removed in the event of an unfolding crisis.
England had already beaten Albania 2-0 in Tirana and were top of the four team Qualifying Group 2 ahead of Sweden on goal difference after two games. Poland were in third place and the Albanians were bottom of the Group having played three games with no points to show for their efforts. The programme provided us with a gem of a statement of the bleeding obvious: "tonight we need to win - and win well" which served as a useful reminder to readers who might not have understood the need to win matches in order to qualify for the World Cup!
Thankfully, in front of a crowd numbering 60,602, England did win and they did win well. By five goals to nil. England's scorers were Gary Lineker, Peter Beardsley (2), Chris Waddle and Paul Gascoigne. Albania were ranked at something like 99th in the world compared to England's tenth and Albania's goalkeeper Nallbani was making his debut at 17 years old. He hadn't even been born when England's goalkeeper, Peter Shilton, had made the first of his international appearances in 1970. Albania's Demollari did have the ball in the net in the first half but it was disallowed for offside - the same goal today would not have been chalked off due to FIFA's beneficial changes to the offside rule - FIFA occasionally get some things right it seems! Substitute Paul Gascoigne still wasn't certain of his place in the plans of manager Bobby Robson for the 1990 World Cup but this was an appearance where he lit Wembley up with his skill and his goal was his first for England. By the time the World Cup came around, 21 year old Gascoigne wasn't just in the England squad, he was starting! Robson's post match comments about Gascoigne's performance (see the video attached to my blog) were certainly endearing and amusing.
Albania have since risen in the World rankings and today can be found at number 66. They even managed to qualify for the 2016 European Championships in France and I was lucky enough to see them record their first win at a major international tournament when beating Romania 1-0 in Lyon. The stadium seemed to be rammed with proud Albanians that night and I could only conclude that the Children of the Double-Headed Eagles are still on an upward trend.
CRB Match No. 612
Comments
Post a Comment