2023-11-29 18:01:35
Terry Venables was so popular among the UEFA Euro 1996 generation that senior England players were constantly calling for him to return to the team’s technical leadership. After Glen Hoddle’s dismissal, they demanded Terry’s return, and following Kevin Keegan’s resignation, they demanded Terry’s return once more. There is nothing left of that now, but for decades following 1966, English football was plagued by an ideological struggle over how the national team should play, with some calling for reliance on local managers, while others were calling for an open system. The door is wide and interaction with global football. In the middle of this battle, Terence Frederick Venables stood with all his strength in front of his enemies and critics, and became a true legend in the world of training, even though the saying “There is no dignity for a prophet in his country” applies to him completely, given that he did not receive the appreciation he deserved.
This remarkable manager, who rescued English football from its isolation, has never stayed in one place long enough to produce a body of achievement convincing enough to defeat his critics. Moreover, his chaotic, and sometimes questionable, attempts to establish himself as a visionary businessman ultimately ruined his efforts to be the manager of his country’s dreams.
But the passion was real, especially following a repeat of the Graham Taylor years, when the progress made by Bobby Robson’s England team at the World Cup in Italy in 1990 was torpedoed by Football Association officials who were not interested in continuity of methods and ways of playing. If the eye-catching brilliance of Paul Gascoigne exposed the fallacy that English fans are content to see boring football played through long, high balls, Venables’ entertaining football at Euro 1996 was the answer to another deep desire.
For a manager to be popular with English fans in the 1980s and 1990s, he had to be friendly, intelligent and positive, as well as having the same level of tactical knowledge as the best managers in Europe – qualities. All of which are available at Venables. The standing ovation for Venables in Premier League stadiums on the day of his death reflects the deep-rooted admiration for the creative, anti-establishment manager who took over a collapsing England team following Taylor’s tenure and transformed it into a powerful team that thrashed the Netherlands 4-1 in the 1996 European Championship finals.
Venables has been wrongly portrayed as a dreamer. Before the 1996 European Championship, he said: “With all the controversy surrounding the state of English football, there is one factor that is constantly forgotten, and that is the character of the English player.” Venables placed equal value on skill and physicality, relying on the skill and flexibility of Darren Anderton or Steve McManaman, the strength and ferocity of Tony Adams and Paul Ince, and the effectiveness of Alan Shearer and Teddy Sheringham.
Venables was not just looking to provide art and fun, but he always worked to ensure that this was accompanied by hard work in order to achieve good results. Don Howe, known for his defensiveness, was his first assistant. The intellectual challenge of coaching and his talent for managing people – to make the job of a footballer so enjoyable – were the addiction that kept tempting him back into coaching while his ‘investment plans’ took up most of his time.
England coach Steve McClaren, to his left, is his assistant Terry Venables (AFP)
In his time, Venables captured the anxiety of a nation that was still stuck in 1966, but was still in the early years of the Premier League revolution, before the influx of foreign players and coaches brought regarding a massive change in English football in terms of style, style and spirit. . In Venables’ time, all discussions and conversations were still internal, meaning the English were talking to themselves. The choice was between two things: either with Venables or once morest him. There has become a major division in the media, between those who comment on every word Venables says with admiration, and those who stalk him and catch his mistakes. In fact, bold visionaries and reformers in other countries don’t seem to live such complicated lives!
Venables had a charming personality, and the more time I spent with him, the more I noticed his keen desire to learn everything new. He would urge everyone around his table – both through comedic anecdotes and tactical trivia – to get some information regarding this player, this president, this or that club. Behind that charming smile, his love of singing Frank Sinatra songs and his self-respect as a wise man, Venables had a football mind that might not stop thinking. He was always thinking regarding how to seize the next opportunity and working to stay ahead.
It was Venables, that “educated” coach, as Adams described it, who opened the eyes of the England national team players in the 1996 European Nations Cup to the possibility of playing like the major teams on the continent. They all said that this was what they really wanted, to escape their murderous history and offer something completely different this time. During his two short experiences with the England national team and FC Barcelona, Venables demonstrated a great talent for understanding human nature in the difficult and stressful context of elite-level football, along with his keen insight into the way football must work in order to achieve good results.
After Euro 1996, no one noticed that he had not written the names of the penalty kick takers in the semi-final match once morest Germany, other than the first five penalty kicks: an error that allowed Gareth Southgate to volunteer to take the next penalty kick, out of national duty and not because he was good at it. Southgate failed to score, and Venables’ brief reign of 24 matches with the England national team, from March 1994 to June 1996, came to an end. Euro 1996 cemented itself in English history as a brief spell of magic, a rebirth. For the national team, in response to FA officials who did not trust Venables, while trying to build a commercial revolution on the basis of the huge popularity achieved by his team in 1996.
Venables was too distracted and volatile to be considered a statesman, but he swam in a world of imagination and inspiration, in a way that cannot be said of many England coaches. There was a time when the 4-3-2-1 system looked so exotic that people called it a “Christmas tree”, but it has now become a very effective and widespread system. Even if this method did not appeal to some, Venables certainly had many other methods and ideas, because he was creative and never lacked solutions.
*The Guardian service
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