Today I'm going back 29 years to 1993 and England's FIFA World Cup Qualifier against Poland at the old Wembley Stadium played in front of 71,220. The game was England's 700th international match.
A World Cup Qualifier against Poland is something that strikes nervousness into the heart of every red-blooded Englishman (and woman). The fixture resonates with us because of what happened at Wembley in 1973. That night, England required a win from their final qualification game at home to Poland. England, who had won the World Cup just seven years earlier, were expected to win and win well. In truth, they absolutely dominated Poland and made 35 goal attempts to Poland's 2 in the match but failed to turn their dominance into goals and were made to pay for it. Disaster struck when Poland took the lead in the 55th minute through Jan Domarski following mistakes by both Norman Hunter and goalkeeper Peter Shilton. England's sole reply came from the penalty spot, scored by Allan Clarke with a little less than half an hour to go. Famously, Poland's goalkeeper, Jan Tomaszewski, labeled a clown by ITV's panelist Brian Clough, saved the Poles time and time again and the referee disallowed a couple of goals for reasons that weren't clear. Shilton described it as the lowest point of his career and one of the next morning's newspapers called it "the death of football". 20 years later, we hadn't forgotten how the Poles had ruined our party and we all understood the danger.
Poland actually weren't a bad side back in 1973 and went on to finish third at the World Cup tournament the following year. In truth however, over the years, England have had little to fear from matches against Poland. In 21 matches between the two between 1966-2021 England have lost just once and that was in the away match in Chorzow in that World Cup qualification campaign back in 1973. It was surely that result, rather than the draw at Wembley that put paid to England's hopes sending Poland to the 1974 World Cup Finals in West Germany instead.
In the featured match, Graham Taylor's England side dominated a Polish side that contained no household names and seemed to be well short of belief and confidence. England took the lead as early as the 5th minute with a goal scored by (Sir) Les Ferdinand and, similarly, started the second half with another goal, this time lashed home by a talismanic Paul Gascoigne. In the 53rd minute the game was effectively over as a contest as Stuart Pearce smashed home a free kick from fully 22 yards. 3-0 was a more than acceptable result but one small fly in the ointment from the game was Paul Gascoigne's yellow card which ruled him out of the next World Cup Qualifier against Holland in Rotterdam. I wonder if things might have been different in that game had Gazza played?
Sadly for England, as was the case in 1973, they eventually failed to qualify for the USA 1994 World Cup finals. Without their talisman Gascoigne, they lost that crucial qualifier in Rotterdam (I went so it's covered in my blog: search on "Holland") and finished third in their qualification group behind winners Norway and runners-up Holland. "Do I not like that" commented manager Graham Taylor and nor did we. Taylor was soon gone.
CRB Match No. 851
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