‘At Italia 90, the best bit about the entire tournament was that I knew I was the best player in the world’ Paul Gascoigne on being the best on Earth in 1990

The 1990 World Cup has a special place in the heart of any football fan of that era.

The national sport was not in a good place at the end of the 1980s, with English fans carrying a reputation for hooliganism, fueled by events like the Heysel Stadium disaster, while the harrowing scenes of the Bradford City fire and Hillsborough were still fresh in the memory.

But Italia 90 would prove to be a turning point, as Sir Bobby Robson’s side’s run to the semi-finals helped to shift the public perception of the game, laying the groundwork for the new Premier League in the process.

Gazza on his Italia 90 performances

The figurehead of this revival was undoubtedly Paul Gascoigne, whose performances – and lashings of personality – made him a household name as ‘Gazzamania’ swept across the country.

The 58-year-old still captures the public’s imagination like few other players since, but even Gazza himself doubted that he would play such a part in Italy during that fateful summer.

“That’s why I got No.19 for that World Cup – I was the 19th player,” he recalls to FourFourTwo. “Before the tournament, we’d played Tunisia away, I tried to play a passback and they scored. I thought, ‘I’m not going to play now.’”

Bobby Robson put his arm around Gazza though and made it clear he still had faith. England’s opening game of Italia 90 was only his sixth start for his country, but he was in no danger of relinquishing his spot from there.

Why did tournament football always get the best out of him? “Because we didn’t invite the wives!” he laughs. “At some World Cups, the wives have had more publicity than the players, and that’s not right. The players should just solely concentrate for one month or five weeks on the World Cup, that’s it.

“Bobby Robson wouldn’t even let us watch the TV, no newspapers, nothing. We were lucky to make a phone call back home to find out what was going on. We were only concentrating on the football.”

Did that lack of distractions help? “Yeah, because the players bonded,” he says. “I remember all of us together around the pool, relaxing. It was my birthday during the World Cup and I got a cake whacked in my face! The squad was f**king unbelievable, from Peter Shilton all the way up to Gary Lineker.”

Gascoigne’s success under Robson came after he had an unsuccessful trial at Robson’s Ipswich Town as a youngster, something he didn’t let the gaffer forget “We had a dinner one night, it was packed full with Bobby Robson’s friends and people from the FA – I don’t know why but I decided to stand up and do a speech, just about myself,” he laughs. “It was funny. I said, ‘I first met Bobby Robson when I was 12, and he offered us 10 grand a week, but I wouldn’t take a job for no-one!’”

An anxious flyer, he was sometimes invited into the cockpit during flights to calm his nerves. In his book, he explains that on the journey to the quarter-final with Cameroon in Naples, he was briefly allowed to take over the controls, which inevitably led to him turning the England team’s plane off course. “I took over the aeroplane and told the pilot where to f**king go – it went about three miles to the right!” he laughs now.

By the time the semi-final clash with West Germany in Turin arrived, Gazza’s displays were being widely lauded. “The best bit about the entire tournament was that I knew I was the best player in the world,” he looks back. “In the tunnel before the semi-final, someone from Juventus said they wanted to sign me after the World Cup – so I had that going through my head as I was walking out onto the pitch.”

Paul Gascoigne: Eight (published by Reach Sport) is on sale now in print, ebook and audiobook

For more than a decade, Joe Mewis has worked in football journalism as a reporter and editor. Mewis has had stints at Mirror Football and LeedsLive among others and worked at FourFourTwo throughout Euro 2024, reporting on the tournament. In addition to his journalist work, Mewis is also the author of four football history books that include times on Leeds United and the England national team. Now working as a digital marketing coordinator at Harrogate Town, too, Mewis counts some of his best career moments as being in the iconic Spygate press conference under Marcelo Bielsa and seeing his beloved Leeds lift the Championship trophy during lockdown.