Terry Venables backed Gascoigne when fans didn’t – he was loyal

Terry Venables was a talented player, innovative coach, exceptional man-manager and, mixed in with all this and on top of it all, he was great fun. Bursting with charisma and curiosity, Venables lived life to the full. He brought light and laughter to so many lives, and the world feels that little bit darker now that Terence Frederick Venables, El Tel, has left us.

Venables’s mischievous streak was never far from the surface. In the evening after his masterminding of England’s defeat of Scotland at Euro ’96, Venables knocked on the door of the FA’s director of communications at the time, David Davies, at their Burnham Beeches hotel to inform him: “The police are downstairs, David, and they need to talk to you.”

Just when