Azeglio Vicini died this week. Few will know him, certainly none from this generation. He was not famous. Nor even very interesting.
This isn’t a story about him, but about those years, for me, and for football.
Football was run differently in those days. Celebrity wasn’t so in vogue, money was good but not obscene, and obscure technocrat coaches abounded in the Federations around the world.
Vicini was one of these, in a kind of Howard Wilkinson, Dave Sexton, Andy Roxburgh geography teacher anti charisma. Jose Mourinho was still a translator, Antonio Conte was already going bald, and I shudder to think what Jurgen Klopp was getting up to at that age. A gentler time.
Even though Vicini had done a fairly high profile job with the Italy U21 team, he was an unknown. Certainly to me. Very strange then that this grey man’s passing this week caused a serious moment of reflection. Not faux social media nostalgia. Just a memory.
Mexico '86 was, when all was said and done, a very disappointing World Cup. Unless you were Argentinian, or English, it’s unlikely to be remembered.
Big tournaments, the big games, are marker poles for most guys, like the classic albums. The soundtrack of our lives.
So, inevitable that, in 1986 it was The Smiths.
Scotland had for the fourth time in a row taken an exceptionally strong squad to Mexico 86. Gough, Narey, Miller, McLeish, Nicol, Malpas (and Hansen) were once what this country had available for selection in the back line, to whomever was lucky enough to be manager. Can you imagine? A time when being coach of Scotland was a big thing, where being knocked back by the manager of Northern Ireland was truly unthinkable.
Classically, despite being drawn in the infamous Group of Death, the squad led by a young Alex Ferguson had all of us full of hope. Again.
Yet, even the to-be-knighted Aberdeen manager could make errors. If ever there was a carpe diem strike partnership, it should have been, in that sticky summer, a delicious overdose of Glasgow gallus represented by Charlie Nicholas and Frank McAvennie. Both hotter than July that season. Goodness knows why Sturrock was preferred to Frankie-boy, albeit the very fine player that he was. Sir Alex probably regrets that error in his pension years.
So we lose to Denmark, to West Germany (after leading), and can’t beat a Uruguay team with 10 men for 85 minutes. Once again, for a fourth time , a Scotland squad realistically capable of getting to a semi-final massively massively underachieves.
Painful, but realistically, we were by then getting used to it, with a few of us already withdrawing some of the emotional capital invested in the SFA. That process would turn into The Big Short in later years.
Italy, the World Champions, went through the motions of defending the trophy. The team was done. It had given, magnificently, what it had to give four years earlier when it thrilled so many. The 3-2 defeat of Brazil still represents for me the greatest game I’ve ever seen. Mexico was always going to be reheated porridge, but it was, nonetheless, a huge downer for my June 1986. Morrissey abides, in true Lebowski fashion.
And it was clearly also enough for the Italian FA, who rushed to appoint a new manager to replace the sainted Enzo Bearzot.
Here open the Vicini years. He was appointed in Autumn 1986, and his journey accompanied, on a parallel track, my own adventure which began that same year. A period that would shape my life in every way possible.
Mexico '86 was, when all was said and done, a very disappointing World Cup. Unless you were Argentinian, or English, it’s unlikely to be remembered.
Big tournaments, the big games, are marker poles for most guys, like the classic albums. The soundtrack of our lives.
So, inevitable that, in 1986 it was The Smiths.
Scotland had for the fourth time in a row taken an exceptionally strong squad to Mexico 86. Gough, Narey, Miller, McLeish, Nicol, Malpas (and Hansen) were once what this country had available for selection in the back line, to whomever was lucky enough to be manager. Can you imagine? A time when being coach of Scotland was a big thing, where being knocked back by the manager of Northern Ireland was truly unthinkable.
Classically, despite being drawn in the infamous Group of Death, the squad led by a young Alex Ferguson had all of us full of hope. Again.
Yet, even the to-be-knighted Aberdeen manager could make errors. If ever there was a carpe diem strike partnership, it should have been, in that sticky summer, a delicious overdose of Glasgow gallus represented by Charlie Nicholas and Frank McAvennie. Both hotter than July that season. Goodness knows why Sturrock was preferred to Frankie-boy, albeit the very fine player that he was. Sir Alex probably regrets that error in his pension years.
So we lose to Denmark, to West Germany (after leading), and can’t beat a Uruguay team with 10 men for 85 minutes. Once again, for a fourth time , a Scotland squad realistically capable of getting to a semi-final massively massively underachieves.
Painful, but realistically, we were by then getting used to it, with a few of us already withdrawing some of the emotional capital invested in the SFA. That process would turn into The Big Short in later years.
Italy, the World Champions, went through the motions of defending the trophy. The team was done. It had given, magnificently, what it had to give four years earlier when it thrilled so many. The 3-2 defeat of Brazil still represents for me the greatest game I’ve ever seen. Mexico was always going to be reheated porridge, but it was, nonetheless, a huge downer for my June 1986. Morrissey abides, in true Lebowski fashion.
And it was clearly also enough for the Italian FA, who rushed to appoint a new manager to replace the sainted Enzo Bearzot.
Here open the Vicini years. He was appointed in Autumn 1986, and his journey accompanied, on a parallel track, my own adventure which began that same year. A period that would shape my life in every way possible.