Italia 90 is the last World Cup I remember with great clarity and, contrary to what you might have read around its recent 25th anniversary, it wasn’t that great

A quarter of a century has passed since Nessun Dorma was acquired by the football fans of England in a generally well-spirited but occasionally hostile takeover. There have been a lot of misty, watercolour memories of Italia 90 floating around lately. I’m going to pin my colours to the mast early doors here: Italia 90 is not my favourite World Cup of all time, but it does hold a unique position in my affections.

Thanks to a head injury I sustained over 20 years ago, Italia 90 is the last World Cup I remember with an all-pervading clarity. Despite owning a very good memory of occurrences up to mid-1992, everything since then has been at the mercy of a memory that isn’t as watertight as it used to be. As a result I have a more powerful recall of Italia 90 than I do of Brazil 2014.

As a child of the 1980s, it’s thoughts of España 82 and Mexico 86 that make me drift off to that happy place we all visit in times of need or boredom. Maybe me and the kids I grew up with were a collection of prototype hipsters, but when we went out to our street or over the back fields to kick a ball around, we did so with designs of being Zico, Paolo Rossi, Diego Maradona, Zbigniew Boniek, Michel Platini, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, Igor Belanov, Preben Elkjaer Larsen or Emilio Butragueño. No one ever wanted to be Paul Mariner or Mark Hateley.

I don’t class myself as anti-England, but I’ve never really been part of the party when it comes to the national team. Anti-England sentiments are hard work and are the preserve of superior supporters of big Premier League football clubs. For me, England feels like a team that belongs to someone else. They just borrow players from my team here and there and I wish them well in their endeavours. I’ve never clicked through a turnstile to watch an England game and I have no intention to alter that. I’ll sit and watch a competitive England international on TV unless it’s against one of the minnows, but will watch The Great British Bake Off over a friendly.

Having said all of that, I do have a genuine love of competitive international football. Although it’s already a fast-fading memory, I embraced the Copa América once again this summer. I love the level playing field of the international game. Yes, the football association of one nation might be wealthier than another, but apart from being able to build a more impressive training complex and offer better travel and accommodation to its players, there is no transfer market in the international game. The biological composition of a player’s parents and the quality of coaching they receive has a greater influence on the outcome than a chequebook. International football is almost an antidote to the haves and have-nots of the club game.

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Back in June 1990, I was 16 and had recently left school. I’d obtained my first job through the revamped YTS scheme and was looking ahead to a long and fulfilling career in hydraulic retail. It was a dream that lasted for just one week. My first Friday of steady employment happened to coincide with the opening day of the World Cup finals. With a month of near non-stop football staring me square in the face, I did the right and proper thing. I quit my job and planted myself in front of the TV. Hydraulic retails loss was a lazy summer’s gain.

From the moment Omam Biyik’s header crept under Nery Pumpido to give 10-man Cameroon a 1-0 lead against the defending champions, Argentina, I felt suitably reassured that ending my fledgling hydraulics career in the name of the World Cup had already paid off. By the time Benjamin Massing hit Claudio Caniggia with enough velocity to remove his own right boot in protection of that slender lead, I was left in no doubt about the wisdom of my decision.

From there the tournament flirted with the senses without truly bludgeoning them. It broke the record for red cards, developing the still novel concept of individual games with multiple sending offs, something that occurred in both the opening and final games of the competition, and produced the lowest goals-per-game ratio of any World Cup.

The rose-tinted view of Italia 90 is undeniably hard to resist and you’d have to be completely soulless to decry the tournament completely. England came to within a penalty shoot-out of reaching the final. The Republic of Ireland lost to the hosts in the quarter-finals by a solitary, and fortuitous, goal. Had Jim Leighton pushed that speculative Brazilian effort away from his goal rather than across it, then Scotland probably would have made it to the knock-out stages. Conversely, of the 15 games played by England, Ireland and Scotland at Italia 90, only two were won within the 90 minutes of regulation time.

Luck wasn’t just ridden at times, it was held upside down and shaken until the loose change fell out of its pockets. England should have lost to Belgium, while Romania were the better side against Ireland at the very same last 16 stage. Ireland even avoided a clash with West Germany by virtue of drawing a longer straw than Holland. England came to within seven minutes of being eliminated by Cameroon in the quarter-finals.

Yet Ireland went toe-to-toe with England, Holland and Italy, and frightened each and every one of them, while in an England squad that could boast the creative talents of John Barnes, Peter Beardsley and Chris Waddle it was the childlike enthusiasm of Paul Gascoigne, combined with his audacious natural skill that stole the show. Like Ireland, England saved their best for their biggest opponents. Their best two performances came against Holland in the group stages and West Germany in the semi-finals. That they walked away from both games without a win still doesn’t seem quite right.

Elsewhere, the host nation didn’t do themselves enough justice. They played in what was an almost overwhelming sense of fear and trepidation. They belatedly, even borderline reluctantly, fielded Roberto Baggio and uncomfortably benched Gianluca Vialli, due to the goalscoring of the inspired Salvatore Schillaci. Yugoslavia were never quite as good as everyone seems to think they were at Italia 90. Along with Yugoslavia as was, it was also the end of the line for Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, who splintered off into their numerous fragments and broke the heart of hipsters the world over. Spain were much fancied, yet fell flat on their face; they used to do a lot of that sort of thing.

Cameroon became the first African quarter-finalists and Roger Milla taught the world how to dance with a corner flag. There were highs at Italia 90, just not enough of them, and even the South American nations were lacking in traditional verve. Brazil crashed out to Argentina, and Colombia displayed the most authentic South American style, only to shoot themselves in the foot against Cameroon in the last 16, when René Higuita was caught in possession well outside his penalty area by Milla.

There is a popular myth about Argentina’s success at Mexico 86 which propagates the theory that Diego Maradona won that World Cup single-handedly. In reality, he was the undisputed best player on the face of the planet and happened to be surrounded by a very good set of team-mates. By Italia 90, however, he was surrounded by a combination of the same team-mates, who had declined, plus new additions who were inferior to the players they had succeeded.

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Maradona carried Argentina to the final in 1990. Taking them past the hosts in the semi-final in his adopted home city of Naples was the achievement of the tournament. On a night when Maradona expected the support of what he saw as his public, his people, only for them to instead back the Azzurri.

That they managed this with Sergio Goycochea in goal was a major miracle. Having stepped in to replace Pumpido after he had suffered a horrific broken leg against the Soviet Union, Goycochea offered what was a heady mix of haphazard goalkeeping in normal time, offset by brilliance during penalty shoot-outs. At one stage against Yugoslavia he contrived to tip an effort that was drifting harmlessly wide on to the inside of his own goalpost. Argentina reached the final because of and simultaneously in spite of their back-up keeper.

One way or another it always came down to West Germany in big international tournaments. Be it the insufferable Lothar Matthäus, or the impossibly permed Rudi Völler – a coiffure to which Frank Rijkaard took such an exception – or the amateur dramatics of Jürgen Klinsmann. As ever, West Germany could rely upon a strong defence, a wonderfully balanced midfield, a clinical forward line and no shortage of quality waiting to step in from the fringes. They could also manage penalty shoot-outs. They took part in a truly terrible World Cup final in Rome, but essentially the right team won. West Germany were the best team at Italia 90, just as, from what little I can remember of Brazil 2014, Germany were the best team and deserved to win.

In the main, Italia 90 was an iconic month of myth and sleight of hand. It was never as good as it’s made out to be by some. It denied as much as it gave. Had it been a game show, it would have been an episode of Bullseye where the final contestants blow the star prize, having hit a high number with the first three darts, only to score a single figure score with the last three. Come and take a look at what you could have won.

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