Former England manager Graham Taylor still haunted by record-breaking San Marino goal
Thursday 9 October 2014 13:54, UK
Graham Taylor says he will always be haunted by the moment his England side conceded a goal to San Marino.
England's latest vintage host FIFA's joint-lowest-ranked team in a European Qualifier at Wembley on Thursday evening almost 21 years since David Gualtieri stunned Taylor and his players with an eighth-second strike.
That remains the fastest goal in World Cup history and, although England went on to win 7-1, Holland's victory in Poland meant Taylor's side failed to qualify for the finals the following summer.
He told The Morning View: "Stuart Pearce made a short back pass. I give him all credit because at half-time he was so full of apologies even though by then we were well in front.
"That particular game will always stay with me - I don't think '7-1', I think '1-0 down', and I get reminded of it quite a lot!
"When that moment happened - and this is true - I remember looking up to the sky and saying 'God, what have I done wrong?' It was one of those moments."
Failure to qualify for the United States tournament cost Taylor his job, but he later returned to club management with Wolves before leading Watford into the Premier League and returning to Aston Villa for a second spell.
It was success with Watford and Villa which earned him the England job in the first place, though he now concedes the opportunity came too early.
"If I could change one thing I wish I'd been 61 when I was offered the job and not 41, when I was in that height of my career," he said.
"It's so different. As a club manager you have your staff and players around you every day, you have your tracksuit on every day, you play 50-odd games.
"As an international manager you play about 10 games a season, you don't have any staff around you - it took me the best part of three months to get the FA to sign Lawrie McMenemy so there'd be two of us.
"And, of course, you're selecting other managers' players, and sometimes a player finds himself caught between an international selection and a manager that doesn't want him to go.
"It's a massive adjustment to make. I was not aware of those things until I became the England manager, but I soon discovered them."
