Today I'm going back 25 years to 1997 and the "Le Tournoi" match between Italy and England played at the Stade de la Beaujoire in Nantes, France with an attendance of around 25,000. Le Tournoi was a World Cup warm-up tournament comprising four of the top seven sides in the world at the time: France, England, Brazil and Italy. There were six matches in total and I went to the lot along with my mate John Kerfoot.
The programme is interesting in that it wasn't freely available for sale at any of the games and was only given away for free in the VIP areas at each game. Fortunately for a programme collector like myself, we found ourselves in the VIP area for the two matches in Lyon (just along from Arsene Wenger if you please) and I hoovered up as many of the programmes as I could find. They're worth at least £25 each today but possibly quite a lot more as you rarely see them for sale. As per yesterday's article, the photo shown is of my match ticket because I have displayed the programme previously (search on "Tournoi" in my blog if you'd like to see it).
England manager Glenn Hoddle was celebrating a year in charge of the national side. The featured game was only his ninth in charge and he had a record of seven wins and a single defeat from the previous eight. That defeat was a painful one however coming against Italy at Wembley in a World Cup Qualifier and, consequently, Italy were favourites this time around. However, England were a side in form and things around the England camp seemed surprisingly upbeat for a change.
Hoddle used the game to try out a system that hadn't been employed by England previously and his side was somewhat experimental. England's strike force that evening was the untried combination of Manchester United's Paul Scholes (playing in place of the rested Alan Shearer), David Beckham and Arsenal's Ian Wright. Making his first start for his country, it was only Scholes' second cap although he would go on to make 66 England appearances, scoring 14 goals. In club football, Scholes was a rarity, a one club player who made 718 appearances for Manchester United, scoring 155 goals across 20 seasons from 1993-2013. Although Scholes played upfront in today's featured game, it was as a midfielder that Scholes made his mark and he has been acknowledged as possibly England's finest-ever midfielder. Scholes won eleven (!) Premier League titles, two Champions Leagues, three FA Cups and two League Cups as well as several individual accolades.
The Italian side contained ten of the eleven that had won at Wembley earlier in the year and included Dino Baggio, Fabio Cannavaro, Alessandro Costacurta, Roberto di Matteo and Gianfranco Zola. The exception was Paolo Maldini who wasn't fully fit and was therefore omitted by his father Cesare, Italy's manager, in favour of Parma's Antonio Benarrivo. It was Cesare Maldini's sixth match in charge of Italy and they had yet to be beaten or even concede a goal under his management but that was all about to change.
In the 26th minute Scholes played an absolutely superb long ball from his own half to the marauding Ian Wright who took the ball first time and smashed it past the Italian keeper Angelo Peruzzi to put England one-up. Then, with halftime approaching and the rain beginning to fall, the Scholes-Wright combination clicked again except this time it was a pass from Wright to Scholes who lashed the ball into the net for his first goal for England. It was a wonderful strike in what must rank as one of the finest full debuts by an England player ever: Scholes seemed utterly nerveless and was the undisputed man of the match. There were no further goals in the second half and England ran out 2-0 winners for their first victory over Italy in over 20 years.
Later the same year, England played Italy again, this time in Rome in the return World Cup Qualifier and secured the goalless draw which was enough to take them to the World Cup Finals the following summer in France.
CRB Match No. 1116
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