Terry Venables was the lost great England manager and, until Gareth Southgate, the last great England manager. The link between Alf Ramsey, for whom he briefly played, and Southgate, who he plucked from Aston Villa and turned into an assured international with seeming ease, Venables may have fashioned the best England team since 1966. And if that verdict comes from the slender evidence of perhaps two-and-a-half games of playing well on home soil – the second 45 minutes against Scotland, the rout of the Netherlands, the semi-final against Germany – Euro 96 will forever leave a generation with a sense of what might have been.
From the wreckage of the doomed campaign to qualify for the 1994 World Cup, Venables seemed to inspire an English enlightenment. From the plodding dullness of long-ball football purveyed by limited players, he allied technical and tactical excellence with attacking intent and a willingness to embrace all the talents at his disposal. It may have been the only time in the last half-century when England were the finest team in a tournament; it is not jingoism to think that, had Germany been worse at penalties, Venables’ team would have beaten Czech Republic in the final.
