30 years ago | Unknown Bar, Morecambe, UK | 17th November 1993

Thirty years ago,  I experienced my worst moment as an England fan – believe me, there have been many contenders – but the unique combination of abject farce, dashed expectations, raised hopes and ultimately qualification failure means that this one tops the lot.

The game was against tiny San Marino and the stakes were high. Qualification for the 1994 World Cup was in the balance. England were coming into this must-win fixture off the back of a disappointing defeat to the Netherlands in Rotterdam, clinched with the help of a very controversial decision which led to a trademark Ronald Koeman goal, from a long-range free kick. That was the game that England Manager Graham Taylor had inadvisably allowed himself to be mic-ed up for a documentary, leading to his “Do I not like that!” exasperation to enter the national consciousness.

It also meant that England had to win in San Marino by seven clear goals and hope the Dutch didn’t beat Poland in their final game. San Marino were – and still are – one of the lowest-ranked international teams in the world so the seven-goal mission was eminently possible. England had already beaten them 6-0 in the reverse fixture at Wembley.

I was in my second year at University In Lancaster and our Wednesday nights were spent in neighbouring Morecambe, with weekly nights in the ‘Empire’, a faded old ballroom which had been re-purposed into a bit of a grotty nightclub. We took the earlier bus into Morecambe, to catch the game in a bar before going on to the Empire.

We found a bar and got some drinks in, as the national anthems were playing. Before any of us had even taken a sip, England were already 1-0 down. To possibly the worst team in the world. Like “legend”, the word “unbelievable” is far too easily thrown around in sport but for possibly the only time I can recall, I’d just witnessed something on a football pitch that genuinely was beyond belief.

At 19 and 20 years old, we were hardly starry-eyed, naive fair-weather fans. We were old all enough to know that England don’t always qualify for tournaments (1984), are liable to wilt horribly under the increased pressure (1988), contrive to lose to some epic piece of bad luck/poor officiating (1986) or – worst of all – inspire true belief before finally exploding in a fireball of torched dreams (1990). We felt sufficiently well-qualified for whatever this England team of pretenders – who’d lost meekly to the USA in Boston that summer – could throw at us for daring to think it might, just might, end well, for once.

Obviously, we hadn’t considered that San Marino would take the lead and absolutely no-one could have predicted that they would do so after just six seconds. But Davide Gualtieri managed to do just that and now we were faced with the even more ridiculous prospect of needing to come from a goal down and score eight to even have a hope of qualifying for USA ’94.

In true England style, they had a go. Goals from Paul Ince and Les Ferdinand, plus a hat-trick from Ian Wright meant that when Wright scored his 4th and England’s 7th in the last minute, there was still time to get that crucial eighth goal. It turned out that there wasn’t in fact enough time because the referee blew the whistle with an agonising six clear goal deficit, thanks to that ludicrous opening few seconds. 

It was almost a sweet release to learn that the Netherlands, who had been level with Poland, had gone on to win 3-1. England could have scored seventeen and it wouldn’t have made any difference. We had to accept that we’d be watching the biggest World Cup to date with our noses pressed to the shop window, like street urchins at a department store. It wasn’t for us; we were surplus to requirements.

If you can bear to watch, the BBC highlights of the game can be found here.

The hapless Taylor limped on in the role for a few more months before being replaced by Terry Venables, who memorably furnished us with another fireball of torched dreams, in 1996. We watched the 1994 World Cup from afar, many of us pretending to be Irish. Although, in truth, we were every bit as Irish as much of the Irish team and its manager, Jack Charlton.

England have devastated us several times since that day in 1993 (and will again) but surely nothing – nothing – will be as implausibly, unutterably, irredeemably awful as going 1-0 down to the Worst Team In The World with less than ten seconds on the clock. 

Surely….