Terry Venables: Innovative and brilliant – the man that I knew

Terry Venables sat down at our lunch table, and let out a sigh. Big, broad smile. “I’ve been looking forward to this for weeks,” he said. We were at the Compleat Angler hotel, in Marlow. June 25, 1996. The following evening, England would lose 6-5 to Germany in a penalty shoot-out at the European Championship semi-finals, his last engagement as the national manager. Yet that day, after training, it was just him, and me. Terry never believed in waiting for the result to celebrate. “Tomorrow, we could all be crying,” he would say, opening a bottle of champagne. The work, the preparation, was done. Now we can relax.

We were there for hours. Talking about football, talking about anything and everything, and laughing, a lot,