When England Couldn't Beat Norway

Back to 1992

When England Couldn't Beat Norway

As you probably already know, I’m fascinated with the history of sports in general. Football history is particularly interesting for me to research, especially because there are so many things that I’m not familiar with.

I’ve spent some time over the past few weeks rewatching England’s failed 1994 World Cup qualification run. As I do this research, I’ll share some of my findings here.

We start off with England’s match at Wembly against Norway on October 14, 1992. We’ll look at The Guardian for the time being. Here was their preview of the match:

From The Guardian, October 14, 1992, page 16

England, of course, had played poorly in the Euros that summer:

The injury to Gascoigne at Wembly Stadium that the article refers to came in the 1991 FA Cup Final, when he was injured while playing for Spurs against Nottingham Forest. The injury to his cruciate ligaments — a long term injury familiar to Football Manager fans — kept him out of international play until this game. You could argue that England’s poor performance in Euro 1992 was partially due to Gascoigne being injured.

So how did England do at home against Norway?

They drew 1-1, as you probably already know. And the performance was a little bit less than satisfying.

From The Guardian, October 15, 1992, page 18

England had the upper hand all game long, but missed a number of chances to score. The equalizer by Kjetil Rekdal was certainly against the run of play — but England wasn’t able to do much at the end to force through a victory.

It’s hard to say whether one team is better than the other based on a single match like this. The ball bounces in funny ways sometimes. However, as we’ll see in the coming days, this was not a sign of good things to come for England.