As Glenn Hoddle spoke to reporters by the Thames on a sunny September morning at Bisham Abbey yesterday a procession of little boats chugged past. What better moment to invoke the Dunkirk spirit. Bobby Robson would have needed no second bidding.
Except that the visit of Moldova, a forlorn little chip off the old Soviet bloc, to Wembley tonight for England's penultimate World cup qualifier in Group Two should hardly require a fight on the beaches. For Hoddle and his players it will be more a matter of clearing the decks for the encounter with Italy in Rome four weeks on Saturday.
England's principle task is to secure the victory which will preserve their chances of qualifying automatically for next summer's tournament in France as group winners. And to do that, assuming Moldova are beaten, they will have to win in Rome unless Italy fail to beat Georgia in Tblisi today.
The alternatives are about as straightforward as three-dimensional chess. England are already assured of second place. They are also in a strong position to go straight through as the best runners-up, should it come to that.
The situation, however, will remain unresolved until the qualifiers have been completed on October 11th. Because some European groups involve five nations, while others have six, only results against teams lying first, third and fourth in each group will count when it comes to assessing the records of the runners-up.
There is a growing feeling that Scotland will be England's strongest rivals for the best runners-up spot if Hoddle fails to win the group, a failure which has loomed ever since Italy won 1-0 at Wembley in February.
Either way the renewal of hostilities with Italy will cast a long shadow over tonight's game at Wembley once the pre-match proprieties following the death and funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales have been observed.
Neither Alan Shearer nor Teddy Sheringham, both injured, will be there tonight and Paul Ince is suspended. Instead Hoddle will look to his youthful core of Manchester United players to produce the performance and the result to lift the hearts of a capacity Wembley crowd of 75,000.
One snag Hoddle faces is the fact that David Beckham, Robert Lee, Graeme Le Saux and David Batty, who has a foot injury anyway, are each a booking away from missing the Rome game. Beckham in particular is a big risk although the case for leaving him out on this pretext is pretty thin.
England (possible): Seaman; G Neville, Southgate, Campbell; Ripley, Beckham, Lee, Gascoigne, Le Saux; Scholes, Wright.
Guardian Service
