Most English people of a certain age and disposition can remember where they were on the evening of June 26, 1996: perched on the edge of their seat in front of a television set, watching England play Germany in the semi-finals of the UEFA European Soccer Championship.
It was the height of the Britpop era. Later that summer, Oasis would play a pair of concerts to 250,000 people in Knebworth House, Hertfordshire (I was one of them, aged 16). That July, the Spice Girls released their single ‘Wannabe’ in the UK and unleashed Girl Power on the world. The musty Conservative Party of Margaret Thatcher was in decline, to be replaced the following year by the sterile charm of Tony Blair and his New Labour project.
But on this day football was coming home. England, hosting the tournament and playing on its home turf of Wembley Stadium, had been given the chance to break a thirty-year streak without an international trophy against its fiercest rival: Germany. Since beating West Germany in the World Cup final in 1966, England had been knocked out of the tournament by its rival twice — once in 1970, and again in 1990. Here was a chance for revenge.
The ta…