We were all still guessing about Euro 96, too. In the back of my mind, I knew I wasn’t going to displace Alan Shearer or Teddy Sheringham, even though Shearer was on a prolonged barren spell that, by his standards, was starting to border on a crisis. He’d gone 12 games without scoring for England but El Tel held his nerve, carried on showing the faith and kept on picking Alan and Teddy as his first-choice strike partnership. It was more of a question of who would be joining them in the squad. In the end, it came down to a straight choice for Terry Venables – the experience and guile of Peter Beardsley or the raw talent and goal-scoring prowess of Yours Truly. I got the nod, and I was ecstatic.
Macca and Jamie Redknapp had already had the word that they’d be in the squad and now I would be joining my pals for the biggest competition in years. Having been in and around the England set-up for a while now, I was beginning to feel part of the family and, truth be told, I would have been gutted to have missed out. I liked the coaching staff – Bryan Robson and, in particular, Ted Buxton, were top-notch with me. And I really liked Venables’ approach to man management. Like all great managers, he had his steely side. The previous summer, there’d been a kind of rehearsal for Euro 96, a low-key mini tournament called The Umbro Cup featuring England, Brazil, Japan and Sweden, played out across a few venues, including Goodison Park and Elland Road. With the best will in the world, the tournament failed to capture the fans’ imagination, with most of the games played out in half-empty stadiums. Nevertheless, I don’t think Venables ever forgave Paul Ince for his refusal to make himself available for the tournament – he certainly never featured for England again under Terry’s watch.
Yet, for all his uncompromising, tough side, Venables was brilliant tactically, great at focusing on the small details that might make a difference and knew how to get the best out of each and every player. Terry would quickly suss out who perhaps needed an arm around their shoulder and a word of encouragement in their ear. He was also great with the motivational side of management – he could make you feel like you were the best in the world, even if you were only on the subs’ bench. But, above all, he put his trust in you. Most managers today – and I’d count myself among them – will want to know what you’re eating, whether you’re looking after yourself and so on. But Terry treated you like a grown-up and left it up to you – how much sleep you required or what you did between training sessions. That turned out to be particularly relevant in the case of one Paul Gascoigne, an absolute jack-in-the-box who looked like he needed almost 24-hour round-the-clock nannying! Honestly, Gazza was a one-off – a unique talent with the attention-span of a gnat. I loved him, but I was glad we didn’t have to deal with him all year round.
Meanwhile, Euro 96 hysteria was reaching fever pitch. Every newspaper, every petrol station, every supermarket was giving away Three Lions and ‘Goaliath The Lion’ merchandise. Every car had St George flags fluttering from its wing mirrors; houses were re-painted or decked out in England paraphernalia. The nation was going football barmy and Football was Coming Home. Venables and the FA decided to remove the squad from this pressure-cooker environment by taking us off to a pre-tournament training camp in China and Hong Kong. It worked a treat. Gazza was as hyperactive as ever, doing our heads in, but at the same time, endearing himself with his non-stop jokes and chatter. We played a couple of exhibition matches, I got another start and another cap against China and we all felt good, relaxed and raring to go. Terry told us we could all go out on our last night – assistant coach Bryan Robson would follow along later to make sure things didn’t get too out of hand. But the message was ‘kick back, enjoy yourselves – there’s a nation’s hopes and dreams waiting to be delivered when we get back home’.
We went to a Hong Kong bar that was well known – notorious, in fact – for its signature attraction, The Dentist’s Chair. Customers, usually high-ranking bankers or professionals celebrating their retirement or promotion, would be strapped in the chair and have shots poured down their gullets until they could take no more. Gazza was in his element, goading us all to take the Dentist’s Chair Challenge. The weird truth about that night, considering the way it has passed into notoriety, is how tame it was. Well, okay, that’s not strictly true – there’d been a group of students in earlier, graduates out celebrating the end of their academic careers by ripping their student gowns. We copied them, doing our own footballer’s version – ripping each other’s shirts to strips – for a laugh. It sounds a bit silly in retrospect but, in the moment, when you’re all starting to gel as a team and that great camaraderie you get among players is really coming to the fore, this is exactly the sort of thing that just happens. It’s a laugh, everyone joins in.
Next thing, Gazza was in The Dentist’s Chair, that huge, gummy grin lighting up his face as me and Macca poured drinks down his wide-open gob. I don’t even remember a photographer being there, we were all laughing so much. Then Gazza took things a step too far by ripping Bryan Robson’s shirt off and before we knew it, the night was called to a halt, the bill was being paid and we all trooped off back to bed, neither particularly drunk nor entirely sober.
Next morning, all hell broke loose. There had been press in the bar and the infamous photo of me, Macca and Gazza in The Dentist’s Chair was all over the news back home. It did not look good, admittedly – England’s great footballing heroes in tattered shirts, taking their task to heart by getting outrageously blotto, or so it seemed, from the photos. The thing I felt particularly bad about was the way Terry Venables felt we’d betrayed the trust he’d put in us. I can blame my youth, I can protest that it wasn’t anything like as bad as it looked until the stars come out, but the truth is, going out on the lash in Hong Kong probably wasn’t the cleverest way to prepare for a major tournament, full stop.
We were left in no doubt that we’d have to deliver on the pitch – which, initially, we failed to do. The opening game against Switzerland on 8th June turned out to be much trickier than it looked on paper. Thankfully, Alan Shearer broke his scoring hoodoo with an absolute rasper in the first half, but Switzerland surprised us with their technical ability, playing the odd killer pass and getting past our full-backs a bit too easily. One player in particular, Kubi Turkyilmaz, posed a constant threat and it was he who popped up right at the end to draw a handball from Stuart Pearce when he was through on goal. Turkyilmaz himself drilled the penalty past David Seaman, leaving us feeling like we’d lost the game. Fortunately, the other two teams in our group, Scotland and Holland, played out a drab 0–0 draw at Villa Park so all four teams were all square after Match One.
Holland then beat Switzerland 2–0, meaning we had zero room for manoeuvre. We absolutely had to win our next game – against The Auld Enemy, Scotland. Once again, it was slim pickings, with Scotland rising to the occasion and giving as good as they got in a blood-and-thunder first half. Macca switched wings with Darren Anderton in the second half and started to give the Scotland back line a torrid time, but the game was turned on its head by a crazy period that seemed to flash by in the blink of an eye.
Firstly, Macca sent a ball out wide to Gary Neville, whose cross was met with a thumping header from Alan Shearer: 1–0 to England in the Wembley sunshine. Then, a cross from the left found Teddy Sheringham all alone in the box. He did everything right, headed the ball down hard, but somehow Andy Goram got to it and kept it out. At 2–0, it would have been game over. Instead, Scotland went down the other end and now it was David Seaman’s turn to produce the heroics, parrying a thunderous Gordon Durie header out when their whole team – and their supporters – had already started celebrating the equaliser. A moment later, Durie turned in the box and Tony Adams clipped his ankle as he went past him. Penalty. Up stepped Gary MacAllister (passable head of hair, suggestion of a combover in the middle section), who never missed. He struck the pen well enough – so hard, in fact, that David Seaman’s save sent the ball high over the bar and way out into touch.
Still 1–0 to England.
The stage was set for Gazza to redeem himself, which he did in typically outrageous style. In the very next attack, David Platt helped an awkward ball into Gascoigne’s path. In one balletic movement – honestly, it was Gazza, but it was pure Geordie ballet – he flicked the ball up and around the last man, side-stepped past him and volleyed it in. In less than a minute, we went from another likely draw to winning the game in style and Paul Gascoigne was loving it! He veered off behind the goal with arms out wide like an aeroplane then lay down flat on his back, his mouth wide open as his teammates re-enacted The Dentist’s Chair. How I would have loved to have been out there with them, taking part in our redemption. As it was, I was there on the bench.
As the celebrations started, Gazza’s fellow Geordie Bryan Robson nudged Terry Venables and said: ‘Daft sod!’ They were both laughing their heads off.
England’s Euro 96 campaign was up and running. I actually got on in the next game, a reunion with many of the Holland team we’d drubbed at schoolboy level, three summers ago. Obviously, the Fowler magic rubbed off again and we finished the Group Stage as comfortable winners, beating Holland 4–1. This left us with a quarter-final against Spain the following Saturday. Although Spain have always had a very handy team, they were nowhere near the level of recent years, where they have been consistently among the best in the world for at least the last decade. With the momentum building and the force of the nation behind us, driving us on, we went into that game as clear favourites. If anything, though, we were lucky to make it to extra time as Spain had a very good shout for a penalty waved away by the ref. At this point, my own personal moment of pride arrived as I was invited into the Euro 96 party as a substitute for Teddy Sheringham, who had given everything and was – not to put too fine a point on it – knackered.
Both teams were tiring and with penalties looming, I probably tried a little bit too hard to make an immediate impact. Neither side was giving much away, so the game went to pens. From all our preparation and training, we knew who the first five penalty-takers would be and what order they’d go in – with one notable exception. Teddy Sheringham was always down to take the fifth spot kick and he’d gone off. Terry Venables ambled over to me, put his arm around me and said: ‘Say no if you don’t fancy it, no one will think any the less of you, this is all about…’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘You’re only a kid still, so if you have even a shred of doubt in your mind…’
‘YES!’
‘Oh. You sure, Robbie?’
‘I WANT it! Try and stop me…’
And off I went, into that little cluster of Chosen Ones who were slightly removed from the rest of the squad – the ones on whose shoulders the hopes of the nation now rested. Although I wasn’t to know it at the time, I was about to embark upon a lengthy quirk of fate in which I was destined to become the Nearly The Hero. In the shootout with Spain, I was down to take the final penalty.
Fernando Hierro missed Spain’s first spot kick, Alan Shearer nearly blew the net off with his, Spain scored their second… If things went down to the wire, I would be taking the crucial, potentially match-winning kick. We scored, they scored, we scored, they scored. At 3–3, Gazza stepped up to take our fourth – and scored. This left Miguel Nadal to take Spain’s fifth penalty. If he scored, it would all be on me to deliver the victory.
I couldn’t decide if I was excited or terrified. I never, ever suffered from nerves; my technique was, and always had been, to visualise the outcome. Picture the goalkeeper diving one way and the ball flying into the net on the other side. Yet, somehow, out there, in the Wembley centre circle, my mind was conjuring up another image – me with my head in my hands, the Spaniards all rushing to hug their goalkeeper. Even there, though, in that scenario, it wouldn’t be the absolute end – just, simply, that I would have blown my chance to be the country’s hero, and I really, really wanted to be the hero. Who doesn’t? As Nadal placed the ball, I came out of my trough of negativity and was back to imagining where I was going to place the ball, how it was going to fly past their keeper like a comet, how I would just stand there with my arms aloft, waiting for my teammates to pile over and dive on top of me, how I’d lead a charge across to Dave Seaman… Who, as I looked up, dropped down like a hawk on a mouse and saved Nadal’s well-struck penalty. So that was that, then. Seaman was our hero, I would have to wait.
And wait, as it turned out. Nearly The Hero syndrome kept on striking. In the 2001 League Cup final against Birmingham, my all-time classic of an opener looked like being the decisive and winning goal, right up to the last minute when Andy Johnson popped up with an equaliser and stole my moment of folklore. It happened again in the UEFA Cup final against Deportivo Alavés – right up to the final moments of the game, my little beauty was the difference between the teams. The headlines were being written – Robbie’s Rhineland Rocket Kops The Cup for Rampant Reds – when Jordi Cruyff managed to get up above our defence and nod home yet another equaliser, sending the game into extra time. We all know what happened next. Don’t get me wrong, it’s the result and the cups that matter and I’m half-joking about wanting to be written into the history books as the main man – except most footballers under hypnosis would have to admit that we all dream about being the hero of the hour. I was a few seconds away from Dortmund being The Robbie Fowler Final, which is now of course The Gary Mac Final. Time and again, it happened to me, with the shootout against Spain being only the first.
England went out against Germany in the semi-final – on penalties, naturally. Terry Venables stood down almost immediately after the tournament, to be replaced by Glenn Hoddle. I went on a belated holiday and reflected on another good season with another 35 goals – a more than decent haul. I’d won Young Player of the Year again and established myself in the England squad, but I just wasn’t satisfied. Deep inside, I was burning for more silverware to go with the League Cup medal I won in my first full season.
That promising young squad we had at Liverpool was starting to come of age, now. Rushy had reached the stage we have all been at, where he felt he had more to offer than being a bit-part player warming the bench. He was leaving the club for a new challenge at Leeds. Ronnie Whelan had gone, too, and it was now down to our youthful core to step up to the challenge. We’d shown that we had the beating of Man United – in fact, we had the beating of anybody, on our day.
Now we had to make it Our Day much, much more often and find the consistency to perform on a regular basis. Everybody from the chairman, David Moores, down to the apprentices and kit men knew that winning the League again was our big priority. It had been six years now since we’d won it and to make matters worse, Manchester United had won three out of the last four titles. Even though we were way, way ahead of them, on 18 League titles, United were now into double figures – it was time to pull away from them again.