Today I'm going back 27 years to 1996 and England's Euro96 Group Stage match against the Netherlands (or Holland as we usually wrongly refer to them in this country) played at the old Wembley Stadium in front of a crowd of 76,798. The game was England's 724th-ever International. The programme's almost sepia-toned cover shows an action shot from days of yore as superstars Kevin Keegan and Johan Cruyff did battle in the 1970's.
I tend to rank this game as the greatest performance by England that I ever saw. In recent years, the Three Lions had had a number of difficult games against the Dutch and it felt like I had attended most of them. Sticking in my mind particularly was the 3-1 hammering in Dusseldorf at Euro88 by three-goal Marco van Basten and his mates and then there was the "Do I not like that" World Cup Qualifier in Rotterdam in 1993 which we unjustly lost 2-0. The Dutch seemed always to have the upper hand against England and it was about time for a change of fortune! Boy did our luck turn that night!
The match was the final one in Group A and England had got off to an uncertain start with a surprise 1-1 draw against Switzerland followed by a somewhat fortuitous 2-0 win over Scotland in their second fixture. England were top of the Group after two games but hadn't really performed that well. However, they would only fail to advance if they lost this match to the Dutch and the Swiss beat Scotland and turned their adverse goal difference around. Terry Venables' England went into this final Group Stage game with an unchanged starting line-up for the third game in succession, something that hadn't happened since the 1970's!
The Dutch had opened their Group campaign with a goalless draw against Scotland at Villa Park (a game I also attended) followed by a 2-0 victory over the Swiss to put them level with England at the top of the table on four points. Their goals against the Swiss were scored by Barcelona's Jordi (son of Johan) Cruyff and Arsenal's Denis Bergkamp. Both would start against England in manager Guus Hiddink's selection which also contained five Ajax players.
What we got was a near perfect performance from England. They could have already been ahead before scoring their first goal of the evening in the 21st minute courtesy of an Alan Shearer penalty following the upending of Paul Ince by Danny Blind. Five minutes into the second half and it was 2-0 to England when Paul Gascoigne's corner was headed home by Teddy Sheringham. Six minutes later and England were in dreamland as Sheringham unselfishly squared the ball to Shearer and he lashed the ball into the net for 3-0. By the 62nd minute, incredibly England had a fourth as Dutch goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar could only parry Darren Anderton's shot from 20 yards and Sheringham was on hand to score from the rebound. England were now certain of first place in the Group and the Dutch were heading out of the competition on goal difference with Scotland about to take advantage of England's proficiency in front of the Dutch goal. However, with just 12 minutes remaining, substitute Patrick Kluivert notched a vitally important consolation goal for the Dutch that was enough to level-up their goal difference with Scotland and would end up taking the Dutch through to the Quarter-Finals on goals scored. I think that the sentiment of the England fans in the stadium that night was that being responsible for eliminating Scotland as well as winning the Group was the cherry on top of the cake!
England's prize for winning Group A was a tough route to the Final. Facing them at the Quarter-Final stage was Spain at Wembley whilst Holland met France at Anfield. Both games went to penalties following goalless draws with England overcoming Spain 4-2 whilst the Dutch were eliminated 5-4. Sadly England's run came to an end in the Semi-Final (also at Wembley) as they couldn't beat Germany and another penalty shootout ended 6-5 in favour of the Germans. It was, at the time, England's best ever showing in the European Championships but we were left with the feeling that it could have been so much more. The Germans would go on to win Euro96 when beating surprise finalists the Czech Republic 2-1 with a "golden goal" in extra time in the Final.
CRB Match No. 1045
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