Unforeseen circumstances have seen Euro 2020 postponed for one year - changing the course of football history in the process. But how would England's previous tournaments have panned out had the dates been changed in the same way?
Monday 4 May 2020 13:45, UK
We will never know how Euro 2020 might have gone but perhaps England will be celebrating the switch come next year. Would England's football history look very different if previous tournaments had been moved to the following year too? We take a look...
England's humiliation at the hands of Iceland at Euro 2016 now feels like the last knockings of a soon to be bygone era. It was not just that Roy Hodgson's lacklustre four-year reign as manager came to an end but the Premier League was about to be reinvigorated by the arrival of Pep Guardiola not to mention Antonio Conte and the returning Jose Mourinho.
The ageing Wayne Rooney was still the centre-piece of England's attack, while Joe Hart remained the undisputed number one. But would that have changed had the tournament been put back one summer? By then, Rooney's Manchester United career would have come to an end and Hart had found himself discarded by Guardiola at Manchester City.
Raheem Sterling's upward trajectory had begun under the Catalan coach and Harry Kane had fired another 29 Premier League goals - enough to get him off corner duties, perhaps? The tournament would probably have come too soon for Jordan Pickford - his England debut did not come until later in 2017 - but Hart's Iceland nightmare might still have been avoided.
John Terry and Sol Campbell makes for rather more than a makeshift partnership but the loss of Rio Ferdinand was still a huge blow for Sven-Goran Eriksson's England in 2004. The central defender was suspended for that summer's European Championships after missing a drugs test. He did not return from his eight-month ban until October 2004.
The result is that what many would consider the greatest team of outfield players from England's so-called golden generation - Terry, Ferdinand, Gary Neville, Ashley Cole, David Beckham, Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard, Paul Scholes, Michael Owen and Rooney - never actually started a single game together. Could Euro 2005 have been the moment?
It would have needed Scholes to delay his international retirement but others would have been stronger one year on. Lampard had gone up a level at Chelsea under Jose Mourinho. Terry captained that team to glory. Gerrard did the same for Liverpool in the Champions League. Rooney had moved to United. Owen to Real Madrid. A missed opportunity.
England supporters have fond memories of Euro '96 but could Euro '97 have been even better on home soil? It is true the delay would not have favoured stalwarts such as David Platt and Stuart Pearce but another generation was emerging. By the following summer there had been debuts for Beckham and Scholes among others.
Victory at the Tournoi in 1997 offered a clue as to England's growing potential. That mini-tournament included Italy, reigning world champions Brazil and hosts France, who would go on to win the following year's World Cup. But it was England who won the Tournoi by beating both European sides.
This was a boom time in terms of attacking options. In the 1996/97 Premier League season, the scoring charts were topped by Alan Shearer followed by Ian Wright and Robbie Fowler with Les Ferdinand, Dion Dublin, Matt Le Tissier and Stan Collymore also featuring among the top 10
But perhaps the biggest boon was that Paul Gascoigne, controversially omitted from the 1998 World Cup squad, was still going strong. Euro '97 would have offered the tantalising prospect of having him in the same midfield as Beckham. The pair started eight England games together, winning seven and drawing away to Italy in Rome. Such a pity it was not more.
Graham Taylor's reign is not remembered fondly beyond the dark humour of the infamous documentary that accompanied it but there is no denying his Euro '92 was ruined by injuries. Not only was Taylor without star man Gascoigne but a plethora of withdrawals at right-back forced him into playing Keith Curle and David Batty out of position there instead.
That problem was a short-term one and had been resolved within months, while Gascoigne's return from long-term injury with his new club Lazio would no doubt have been a huge boost too. Nevertheless, England fared little better under Taylor one year on - losing a crucial World Cup qualifier against Norway in June of 1993.
Lineker's toe problem was unavoidable so his international career could not have been prolonged, while his obvious replacement Shearer would have been forced to miss a 1993 tournament too having suffered an anterior cruciate ligament injury at the turn of the year. Sometimes the problems just cannot be solved by a tweaking of the calendar.
The 1988 European Championships would surely not have been hard to improve upon. In fact, it remains the only major tournament in which England lost every single match. Sir Bobby Robson was fortunate to retain his job after being beaten 1-0 by Republic of Ireland before suffering 3-1 defeats to the Netherlands and the Soviet Union.
The timing was unfortunate in that star striker Lineker was suffering from hepatitis during the tournament, significantly curtailing his influence. One year on and he was fit and scoring once again - netting in a convincing 3-0 win over Poland in the summer of 1989.
That team also featured Stuart Pearce and Des Walker - left out of Euro '88 - as the team that captured the nation's hearts at Italia '90 began to take shape. Gascoigne's first England goal came in April 1989. Bryan Robson was fit too - playing every minute of his country's four internationals as his namesake's side went unbeaten throughout that summer.
Perhaps most intriguingly of all, could Glenn Hoddle's frustrating England career have been extended had the woeful Euro '88 campaign been avoided? He was the tournament's scapegoat and never played for his country again but went on to enjoy a stellar season with Monaco - scoring 18 league goals for Arsene Wenger's side. What might have been…
