Follow live coverage of England vs Netherlands in the Euro 2024 semi-final today
Wayne Rooney: “It was the worst, weirdest feeling I’ve had in football.”
David Beckham: “It was a stupid mistake, it changed my life.”
Paul Gascoigne: “I was devastated.”
Three iconic England players, all talismans for their country, who all let their emotions engulf them somewhere near the peak of their powers during a pivotal game for England at a major tournament.
Advertisement
Rooney and Beckham were sent off, Gascoigne was booked, cried and too distraught to take a penalty a few minutes later. England lost all three matches (all on penalties) and Beckham, in particular, was utterly vilified for his actions. Rooney was too, to a lesser extent.
Emotions and intensity are part and parcel of top-level football. What links all three is that they crept over the precipice and channelled their emotions into the wrong place, specifically at body parts of opposition players.
The talisman of this England team is Jude Bellingham and on Sunday, at least according to UEFA, he crossed a line.
Bellingham’s post-goal, crotch-grabbing gesture, aimed towards the Slovakian bench, has earned him a €30,000 (£25k, $32k) fine and a suspended one-match ban. Bellingham, 21, insisted it was a joke aimed at mates. UEFA didn’t laugh.
It was part of an outpouring of emotion condensed into a matter of seconds; stretching his arms out like the Second Coming, making a yapping sign with his hand to suggest people had been talking too much, then the crotch thing.
This is not to compare in the slightest what Bellingham did with those previous high-profile incidents. It had no impact on that match and shouldn’t have any bearing on England’s tournament.
But there is a case to forewarn in that it feels entirely fair to say Bellingham, more than anyone in this England team, is playing on the edge. He adopts a responsibility, just like Gascoigne, Beckham and Rooney did before him, to drag the team to victory. As he bellowed after his overhead kick: who else?
It was guilt that haunted Rooney in 2006, even if Cristiano Ronaldo’s wink took plenty of attention away from Rooney’s petulant stamp on Ricardo Carvalho’s crotch. Ronaldo, Rooney’s Manchester United team-mate at the time, absorbed the fury, with him and his team-mates lambasted for surrounding referee Horacio Elizondo after — it is worth repeating — Rooney stamped on Carvalho’s crotch.
“Just look at the Portugal players there, look, we never do that to referees by trying to put pressure on them,” Alan Shearer said in the BBC studio after the match. “I don’t know, are we too honest? There’s every chance Rooney could go back to the Man United training ground and stick one on Ronaldo.”
Advertisement
Rooney’s red mist arrived after 62 minutes of England and Portugal’s World Cup quarter-final. While there is no way of predicting what would have happened had he stayed on the field, it undoubtedly lessened the team’s chances of winning. They survived until penalties, then you know the rest.
“It was a reaction to the referee not giving me a free kick,” Rooney later said. “There was a clear foul, Carvalho was pulling and pushing me and Petit came in from the other side.
“Elizondo did nothing and I planted my foot down on Carvalho — it’s one of those moments when you’re not thinking. I knew it was a red card and back in the dressing room I watched the rest of the game on a little TV, thinking; ‘If we win this, I’m suspended for a World Cup semi-final and final and if we lose, it’s my fault’.”
The Rooney and Beckham incidents had perceived provocation in common.
Rooney felt he had been fouled and was aggrieved not to have been given a free kick. Beckham was fouled, punishment was meted out by the awarding of a free kick, but Diego Simeone leaned in for some afters.
“I just remember the ball being played to me and then being hit from behind,” Beckham said. “I remember Diego putting his hand on the back of my head, even rubbing it or pulling my hair a little bit, then I just reacted.”
Again, as with Rooney, the consequences in terms of that match are hard to judge, but there were 72 minutes still to be played including extra time. Beckham’s momentary loss of control came at a very high personal cost to him in the coming weeks, months and years (“10 Heroic Lions, One Stupid Boy” was the Daily Mirror headline the next day, to kick things off) but on the night England were hindered by the actions of one of their star players.
Hindered is what they were by Gascoigne’s booking in 1990. He may not have been sent off, but England effectively played with 10 men for what remained of extra time, with Gascoigne a blur of tears and regret, knowing that if England reached the final he would miss it through suspension.
Advertisement
“I had to stretch as Thomas Berthold came across,” he recalled in his book Glorious: My World, Football and Me. “I was giving it 110 per cent. It was the World Cup semi-final and I didn’t want to give them anything for free.
“To this day, I honestly don’t think I touched him, but down he went, rolling around as if in agony. I crouched down to make sure he was OK, and at that stage I wasn’t thinking I was in trouble. There was nothing in the challenge. Then everything turned to slow motion.
“He (the referee Jose Roberto Wright) has gone for his pocket. Suddenly, I can’t hear anything. The world just stops apart from the bloke in black. My eyes follow his hand, to the pocket, then out with the card. There it is, raised above my head. I looked at the crowd, I looked at Lineker, and I couldn’t hold it back.
“At that moment, I just wanted to be left alone. I didn’t want to talk to anyone or see anyone. My bottom lip was like a helicopter pad. I was devastated.”
Gascoigne’s tears endeared him to the nation, helping alter perceptions of masculinity and, as the classic English/British underdog, he was lauded and celebrated, a reaction other countries would probably struggle to comprehend given Gascoigne was so emotional he couldn’t take a penalty in the shootout that England duly lost. It was a markedly different reaction to Roy Keane’s yellow for Manchester United against Juventus in 1999 that meant he missed the Champions League final and after Michael Ballack was booked in the World Cup semi-final to rule him out of the final in 2002.
“The adrenaline gets you,” Bellingham said after his Slovakia heroics. “But it’s a combination of a lot of things. Playing for England is an enjoyable feeling, but it’s also a lot of pressure.
“You hear people talk a lot of rubbish. It’s nice that, when you deliver, you can give them a little back. For me, football, being on the pitch, scoring goals and celebrating is my release. It was maybe a message to a few people, but a very happy moment, full of adrenaline.”
Advertisement
Bellingham has it within his enormous capabilities to inspire England all the way to victory in Berlin on July 14. The adrenaline, the emotion, the fervent desire to win at almost any cost — he will need all of that. He will also need to stay the right side of the emotional precipice.
(Top photo: Stefan Matzke – sampics/Getty Images)
