Although West Germany emerged triumphant, the 1990 World Cup will always be remembered for Gazza's tears.
Although West Germany emerged triumphant, the 1990 World Cup will always be remembered for Gazza's tears in the semi-final
I thought my mind was playing tricks on me.
Despite only being 14 at the time of the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, I can remember much more about it than the 1990 tournament in Italy.
And then it started to come back - Italia '90 was full of exciting moments like the efforts of wide-eyed Italy striker 'Toto' Schillaci, the enchanting play of Cameroon and the ageless Roger Milla in particular, and of course, Gazza's tears and England's game against West Germany.
So it was a cracking World Cup, wasn't it? No it wasn't actually.
Only when I looked through the records did it really come back to me why I remembered so little about the event.
It was because, in the main, it was a forgettable tournament with defensive, cynical football to the fore.
The opening game of the tournament saw Argentina take on Cameroon, in what was expected to be an easy game for the 1986 World Cup winners.
But the game was marred by some appalling tackles by Cameroon - especially on Claudio Caniggia - but it worked as Francois Omam Biyick netted a 67th-minute winner to provide the early shock of the tournament.
With 24 teams in the World Cup finals the organisers decided on having six groups of four teams, with the top two from each group qualifying.
However, to make the second stage up to 16 teams they then decided the four best-placed teams who came third would also qualify, meaning that we would have 36 games to only reduce the number of teams by eight.
And that produced some turgid games.
Group A saw the hosts grouped along with Czechoslovakia, Austria and the USA, and apart from Czechoslovakia's 5-1 win over a USA side that lost all three games there was little excitement.
Italy went through with three wins out of three and didn't concede a goal.
In Group B it was Cameroon who were the shock group winners, despite only scoring three goals and conceding five in their three games.
And Argentina were one of the 'lucky' third-placed teams to qualify.
Group C saw Brazil qualify, like Italy, with three wins out of three, while Scotland crashed out after somehow losing to Costa Rica, and then beating Sweden before running Brazil close.
West Germany were the most impressive team when they qualified from Group D, and they scored four goals against Yugoslavia before beating the UAE 5-1.
With the group games mainly meaningless, Group E saw Spain, Belgium and Uruguay all qualify, with the South Americans going through to the second phase despite only scoring twice in three games.
In a series of dull groups perhaps the dullest was Group F, which involved England, the Republic of Ireland and Holland.
Egypt were the whipping boys of the group, but there were still only seven goals in the six games, and Holland and the Republic of Ireland both qualified despite failing to win a game.
The second phase was only slightly better.
The first big shock came in Turin, where everyone's favourite 'other' team Brazil went down to a late goal by Caniggia for Argentina.
Shoot-out
And it was also time to party for the Republic of Ireland, with former Leeds United boss David O'Leary stepping up to side-foot home the winning penalty against Romania after, you've guessed it, another 0-0 draw.
England, meanwhile, were also involved in a 0-0 draw at the end of 90 minutes against
