Football in the 90s dawn of the ‘golden’ age

If the 1980s had been cursed by the tragedies of Heysel, Hillsborough and Bradford and blighted by the escalation of hooliganism, the 90s were to see English football reborn.

The game had been suffering dwindling attendances. Clubs had been banned from European competition. The national team was struggling. Stadiums first constructed in the Victorian era and barely updated since the war were becoming outdated. Families stayed away because they feared being caught up in violence.

The future of football looked bleak until Paul Gascoigne cried at the 1990 World Cup finals.

It was a watershed moment literally and figuratively.

On July 4, England played West Germany in the semi-final in Turin. Gazza, having already received a yellow card during England’s 10 victory over Belgium, was booked for a foul on Thomas Berthold.

It meant that he would be suspended for the final, if England won the match. Television cameras showed the tears flowing from his eyes and the picture was on the front page of every newspaper the following morning.

England ended up losing on penalties, so the suspension wouldn’t have mattered anyway. But those tears led to a frenzy of public interest that became known as “Gazzamania”, making the transfer from football fame to national celebrity.

Suddenly, people started to think of footballers as more than just athletes. In particular, women started to take an interest.

Observing this shift in status, media tycoon Rupert Murdoch decided that football should be the vehicle on which to relaunch his struggling subscription TV service.

He was assisted by the fact that the biggest clubs in the country were becoming aware that they were not capitalising on the renewed interest in the game, post Gazza’s tears.

The Taylor Report, which demanded significant upgrades at grounds and eventually all-seater stadiums in the wake of the Hillsborough disaster in 1989, had by then begun to bite.

The public felt safer going to matches. Crowds began to rise. The country’s top clubs considered leaving the Football League in order to maximise the growing influx of money being pumped into the sport.

By the summer of 1991, the basic principles for setting up the Premier League were in place. The newly-formed top division would have commercial independence from the Football League, giving its members licence to negotiate its own broadcast and sponsorship deals.

The clubs realised they’d need the backing of the FA in order to compete in the ever-more lucrative European competitions, and the governing body, whose relationship with the Football League was always strained, backed them.

In 1992, the First Division clubs resigned from the Football League en masse and the FA Premier League was formed.

It meant a break-up of the 104-year-old Football League. The Premier League would operate with a single division and the Football League with three, with promotion and relegation between the two.

Murdoch, who’d noted that 30 million UK viewers had watched Gazza crying, was waiting with the financial incentive to make the breakaway work.

It was a classic business arrangement, mutually beneficial to both parties.

The new Premier League would get unprecedented levels of television income, and BskyB would get to sell thousands upon thousands of satellite dishes and subscriptions.

The subsequent success of Sky has been constructed on its association with football and, in turn, the Premier League’s success has been built on its income from Sky.

With the new broadcaster came a whole new way of watching the game. Everyone could see their club live from their armchair and every game got the razzmatazz usually reserved for cup finals.

More income for clubs meant more money could be spent on salaries. That suddenly made England a very attractive place to play, no matter what your nationality.

Instead of the best England players going to Spain or Italy, as they had in the 80s, the cream of Europe and South America were now being drawn to England.

Charismatic stars like Eric Cantona, Jurgen Klinsmann, Dennis Bergkamp and Gianfranco Zola arrived to further widen the game’s appeal to the public.

Competing for attention was a whole new batch of young British players who exuded glamour and sex appeal.

And leading the way was a Manchester United youngster who scored goals from the halfway line and got engaged to a Spice Girl.

David Beckham defined football in the 90s. It was as much about hairstyles, clothes, cars and WAGs as it was about offside traps, overlapping full-backs and zonal marking.

Back in the 50s, footballers went to work on the bus like everyone else.

Following the abolition of the maximum wage in the 60s, they could afford a modest semi.

In the 70s, married footballers drove Cortinas, while single players sat behind the wheel of Capris. In the 80s, the top players had graduated to detached houses and perhaps a BMW.

However, the 90s footballer was a different animal entirely.

The game was so awash with cash that even a run-of-the-mill player could become a millionaire over the relatively-short span of his career.

The stars retreated to gated mansions and drove the most sought-after sports cars. With such a chasm in earning power, the connection with the fans was largely broken.

Clubs moved to state-of-the-art, out-of-town training grounds that allowed little or no public access.

As the decade drew to a close, the sense of detachment from their roots that most big clubs suffer from today was already well under way.

The 1990s belonged to Manchester United. They won the first Premier League title in 1993 and secured four of the next six.

In 1999, they also completed the unprecedented treble of Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League.

Though there was certainly an international flavour to most clubs, only top foreign talent was imported and, as the new millennium approached, most were still predominantly British.

United had players like Cantona and Peter Schmeichel, but they also had a significant core of homegrown youngsters, including Beckham and Ryan Giggs the latter was part of the first team to win the Premier League and is still winning medals today.

Alan Shearer, Andy Cole, Robbie Fowler and Les Ferdinand all gave the foreign imports a run for their money as far as goalscoring was concerned.

England were the hosts of Euro ’96 and Terry Venables’ team reached the semi-finals, only again to be eliminated on penalties by the Germans.

Two years later, under Glenn Hoddle, they seemed set for a decent World Cup in France until Beckham was sent off against Argentina and another penalty shoot-out was lost.

But the player worked hard to redeem himself in the eyes of the public and, with the teenaged Michael Owen emerging from that tournament as the great hope for the future, what was to be termed “The Golden Generation” of English football was taking shape.

By the time we were all worrying that the “millennium bug” would wreak havoc in our computers, English football had repaired the damage done in the 1980s and successfully reinvented itself as a glossy, slickly-packaged product that was becoming the envy of the footballing world.