It was the night of Tuesday, March 5, 1996. Actually, it was the morning of March 6 because we’d been at it some while. The England manager, Terry Venables, and the small group of writers that would follow his scouting missions across Europe, looking for clues.
Milan, if he watched Paul Ince at Inter. Glasgow, when he checked on group opponents Scotland. Dortmund, on this occasion. Yet there was one team that captivated Venables to the point of obsession: Holland. But not just Holland: Ajax. They, Venables reckoned, were key to it all. Holland’s DNA could be found at Ajax and, in particular, Louis van Gaal’s Ajax.
They were the European champions, the youngest team ever to achieve that accolade, and their players were the heart of the national side, too: Michael Reiziger, Winston Bogarde, Danny Blind, Frank de Boer, Ronald de Boer, Edgar Davids, Patrick Kluivert, Peter Hoekstra, Edwin van der Sar — even others who had recently left such as Clarence Seedorf, Dennis Bergkamp, Richard Witschge and Aron Winter. And this was the country that stood in England’s way at Euro ’96 — just as it does in Germany three decades later.
That game will be played out in Dortmund on Wednesday. And, back then, Venables had travelled to Germany’s industrial west to watch the locals play Ajax in a Champions League quarter-final, first leg. Ajax had won the game 2-0, later taking the tie 3-0 on aggregate, and further confirming that in that summer England would have their work cut out.
Switzerland would be tidy first opponents and had recently been ranked top three in the world, Scotland was a derby with all the unpredictability that brings, and Holland — well, Holland had a concentration of the best young players in Europe. That season Ajax had won Real Madrid’s Champions League group by six points and beat them home and away. The comprehensively vanquished Borussia Dortmund team would go on to be European champions the following season.
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Looking back, then, Ajax and Holland’s pedigree was obvious and Venables was convinced of the danger. They were going to take some beating. That’s why he was so fascinated by Van Gaal’s team, how they played, how the system worked.
So, a few bottles down at the Park Inn in Dortmund, and England’s manager was playing his favourite game. Wait for things to loosen up, then turn the tables and ask the assembled press pack a leading question. “Right, tournament starts tomorrow, what’s your 23?” And everyone would scramble for pens and paper and names, and obviously, due to late-night impairment, there might be the odd oversight. And he’d collect them in and the interrogation would begin.
“So, you don’t fancy Steve McManaman then?” And people would be hauled up for their oversights, or the fact they apparently didn’t think cover was required at centre half, or picked five strikers, but it was all in good fun, just a little reminder that managing England isn’t as easy as it looks. “I’m keeping these,” he’d say, tucking the scraps in his jacket pocket and laughing. “Just in case.”
At this point, that night in Dortmund, the doors opened and in walked a colleague from a broadsheet newspaper, a very talented journalist but known in the industry to have rather a vivid imagination, given to tales of fascinating encounters with international sporting celebrities that, for some reason, never found their way into print. Brazilian World Cup matches watched in the company of Pelé; personal tactical briefings from Arrigo Sacchi; a call from Ayrton Senna to unload his fears about the track at Imola. Anyway, he joined us — and was immediately ordered by Venables to name his 23 for the fictional Euros that started tomorrow. Much hilarity over some startling omissions, Paul Gascoigne being one. “You’ve got to forgive me,” our friend said. “I’m not thinking straight, I’ve been speaking Dutch all night.”
At which point, Venables grew deadly serious. He didn’t really know the person he had just met, so took his explanation at face value. “You speak Dutch? Listen, could you do me a favour? I’m having breakfast with Louis van Gaal tomorrow and he speaks good English, but I really want to go deep into what he does, really talk tactics with him, and I’m not sure we can do that. It would be fantastic if there was someone who could translate any of the difficult bits.” At that point there was a bit of stammering and an awkward reply. “Well, when I said speaking Dutch, I meant I was speaking with some Dutch people…”
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The England manager sighed and rolled his eyes. So we never had a man on the inside of the Venables-Van Gaal breakfast summit. But the story illustrates how meticulously planned England’s most resounding and memorable win over Holland was. It was no fluke, no one-off night when everything just flew in, a gift from the gods. It was a victory that had been in development from the day the draw was made in Birmingham and in many ways before, given that the strategy deployed was the Christmas tree formation which Venables began honing in 1994, his first summer in the job.
His 4-3-2-1 is very much like Gareth Southgate’s back three, in as much as Venables came to it early, got it working and knew he could return to it in two training sessions. Southgate is the same. He used a back three at the 2018 World Cup and has come back to it in two tournaments since with minimal preparation. Players like Kyle Walker, John Stones, Luke Shaw and Kieran Trippier need a refresher and no more. Even Bukayo Saka, though unfamiliar with his right-wingback role, will have been around England squads and seen it done. Venables alighted very early on his plan for Holland. He knew where he was going even before breakfast.
There are other similarities across 28 years, too. Then, as now, the Dutch only became a bad team once England had beaten them. Before the game, there was fear. England had been unconvincing against Switzerland and only came to life in the second half against Scotland.
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Having then played Holland off the park with a 4-1 win in match three it later transpired the Dutch were fraught with internal divisions and England got lucky. A bit like the messaging around England’s opposition here. Before Saturday, Switzerland were everything a good team should be and England were about to receive a humiliating comeuppance. Once defeated, albeit on penalties, it turns out England were again fortunate to be on the weak side of the draw and playing Switzerland, a nation that had never got beyond the quarter-finals and should have been swept aside easily. If cups were awarded for cynicism, England would have as many stars on their chest as Germany.
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So, to put Holland in 1996 into perspective, eight of their players that day were Champions League winners; others had medals from the 1988 European Championship. Yes, Edgar Davids had rowed with coach Guus Hiddink and was sent home. Yes, there were divisions. But that’s the nature of Holland. Germany are not dissimilar. If failing, fissures often emerge between the powerbases of Munich and the Ruhr clubs, such as Borussia Dortmund, but they do tend to get it together at tournaments.
For all their volatility Holland did not lose another game at the tournament, drawing with Scotland, beating Switzerland and going out to France on penalties. It is a peculiarly English trait that the national team never get to beat anybody good, whether Holland in 1996 or Germany in 2021. There’s always a reason it doesn’t count.
Yet before England played Holland, Venables set out everything he had learnt about the opposition and how to beat them. He would often leave the last team talk on the day to Tony Adams, his captain, because he felt as a coach his work was done. Yet certainly, before Holland, Venables gave a detailed tactical briefing lasting almost as long as the game. He not only went through just Holland’s weaknesses and where they could be exploited, but England’s strengths. “Every player left that meeting convinced he was better than his counterpart,” Adams later wrote. “And that the Dutch were simply there for the taking.”
So it proved. An English performance half as good in Dortmund could send Southgate’s men through. And if not, well, just as in 1996, there’s always penalties. But a better outcome in the semi-final, Southgate will hope.
