June 9th and I'm going back 25 years ago to 1996 and the Euro96 European Championship Group stage game between Germany and the Czech Republic at Old Trafford, Manchester.
As you can see, the programme for this particular match was in fact a single issue which covered all games in Group C. We were generally spoiled with programmes during the tournament and the organisers sensibly chose to produce single match programmes only for certain games. For some reason, the programme for the England v Switzerland tournament opener is now worth around £50 and this one is apparently worth £12.50 and is the most sought after of the Group stage programmes after that England game. There's no way of predicting these things otherwise I'd be a rich man!
Group C games were split between Old Trafford and Anfield in the North-West. Little did we know it at the time but this Group contained the two Finalists and the Germany v Czech Republic Group opening game proved to be the dress rehearsal for the Final
itself three weeks later. Germany won the opener 2-0 with virtually identical goals coming in the space of six first half minutes from Christian Ziege and Andreas Moller in what was a very robust game. The suspended Jurgen Klinsmann sat it out and was replaced by the amusingly named Kuntz. The bloke behind me muttered that they were all Kuntz but there was definitely only one of him!
By the way, don't ever let anyone tell you that England is the home of football and that there should be more tournaments held in this country because the public get behind every match. Quite simply, they don't. Old Trafford's capacity at the time was 55,000 and, with an attendance of 37,300 for this game, the stadium was only 2/3rds full. Disappointing but at least it meant that me and my pal Welsh Les could get tickets without problems.
Group C was "the Group of Death" in Euro96. In fact, in 2007 the Guardian calculated that this was the strongest Group of Death of all time with the FIFA World Rankings at the time for the participants being 2nd (Germany), 3rd (Russia), 7th (Italy) and 10th (Czech Republic). The Germans had no problems beating the Russians 3-0 in their second game and their 0-0 draw with Italy in the last Group game saw them advance as Group winners. The surprise came in second place. Having lost their opener, the Czechs managed to beat Italy in their next game which put the pressure on the two sides in their respective final games. Italy had to better the Czech's result and their draw with Germany wasn't enough because Vladimir Smicer scored a very late equaliser against the Russians (just two minutes remaining) to take the Czechs through and send the Italians home to face a fruity tradition: a barrage of rotten tomatoes for failure.
CRB Match No. 1038
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