Sixty Years of Hurt: 2. England v Mavericks

Summary

The History Podcast – "Sixty Years of Hurt: 2. England v Mavericks"

Host: David Baddiel (BBC Radio 4)
Air Date: May 23, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode of "Sixty Years of Hurt," David Baddiel explores a central tension at the heart of English football—and English identity—through the lens of so-called “maverick” players. What do the careers of these unorthodox, gifted footballers reveal about competing visions of Englishness? Are English teams stifled by institutional conservatism and suspicion of individual flair? Baddiel investigates this theme by discussing historical context, interviewing football historians, journalists, comedians, and former players, and tracing the maverick’s recurring, precarious position in the national side.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Two Englands: Order and Anarchy

• England is stereotypically described as polite, reserved, and adhering to order (“tea and queuing and stiff upper lips”), but Baddiel argues another tradition runs alongside this: "a demonic little countermelody of anarchy and wit" (03:14).
  • “The jester is not foreign to Englishness, he is central to it.” — David Baddiel (04:15)
• Football embodies this dichotomy, pitting conformity (rules, discipline) against the subversive joy of the maverick.

2. The Instinct to Control

• Historian Gene Williams explains that rule-making and bureaucratization in English sport tie back to empire and private schooling, training individuals to control others and enforce order (05:34).
  • “It’s that kind of bureaucratization of the rules that the British, again, are very good at.” — Gene Williams (05:57)
• Baddiel observes that the more popular football became (and the more the masses participated), the stronger the impulse to constrain and control it.

3. Suppression of the Maverick

• The 1970s saw a wave of talented, creative players (Rodney Marsh, Stan Bowles, Tony Curry, etc.)—yet most were denied regular England appearances.
  • “All of them apart from Curry... the recipients of under 10 England caps. Sports writer Jonathan Wilson.” — David Baddiel (06:38)
• Jonathan Wilson explains this was the era’s “anti-authoritarianism”, but football’s establishment didn’t value or accommodate such players (07:08).

4. Cultural and Class Underpinnings

• English football’s suspicion of individualism is identified with a “provincial, lower middle class sense of respectability and propriety.” — David Goldblatt (10:00)
• This also reflects a moral logic: “There’s a kind of puritanical attitude... not at work." — Chris England (09:21)
  • Maverick behavior (drinking, individual flair) seen not just as irresponsible, but as a threat to team order and national image.

5. Historic Examples: Management and Mavericks

• Former player Rodney Marsh recounts being asked by England manager Sir Alf Ramsey to act unlike himself, to “play like Geoff Hurst” (13:23).
  • “But Alf, I’m nothing like Geoff Hurst.” — Rodney Marsh (13:25)
  • “I realized everybody else was trying to knock it out of you.” — Marsh (13:31)
• Even when mavericks are selected, they are not allowed to express their full range of skills; enjoyment and creativity are distrusted.

6. Managerial Mavericks: Brian Clough

• Baddiel details Brian Clough’s snubbing for the England manager job in 1977, despite unprecedented club success.
  • “Why? Because the English establishment... feels threatened, it doesn’t give way. It digs its heels in.” — Baddiel (18:09)
• The FA chose conformity and respectability over popular genius.

7. The ‘Role Model’ Debate

• The concept of sportsmen as “role models” underscores an almost schoolboy/prefect relationship between players and the governing body, reinforcing an anti-maverick mentality (19:20).
  • “You’re expected... I mean, it’s so annoying and so English.” — Baddiel (19:20)

8. Contrasts with Other Footballing Cultures

• In nations like Argentina, mavericks embody the national spirit and are celebrated as such (20:39-22:00).
  • “Argentina, a country without an imperial history... has a self-image about liberation, about independence, about outwitting the forces of control.” — Baddiel (22:00)
• Maradona becomes an icon of Argentina’s trickster spirit, in contrast to England’s suspicion of the unpredictable genius.

9. Paul Gascoigne: The Last Maverick?

• Gascoigne (“Gazza”) is highlighted as perhaps the last great English maverick—brilliant, instinctive, emotionally transparent, but ultimately unmanageable in the long term (25:08).
  • “Possibly the only English player who we can say was indisputably the best player in the world, at his best in his moment... So incredibly, he was at his best when he was playing—everything else was problematic for him.” — Baddiel (25:19)
  • “Football... has spent all its time trying not to have players like Gazza.” — Chris England (25:50)
• His iconic “dentist’s chair” celebration at Euro ’96 is seen as an emblematic rebellion against English convention (26:58).
  • “It’s such an English two fingers up to all those who think they know how an English player and an Englishman should comport themselves.” — Baddiel (27:12)

10. Reconciling Genius and Teamwork

• The episode concludes that English football, and perhaps English culture more broadly, longs for the genius but often destroys it through suspicion and systemic control.
  • “Maverick genius is not a luxury. You cannot win without it.” — Baddiel (28:49)
  • Social media and globalization (i.e., endless Messi clips) now serve as reminders that you need rather than merely tolerate mavericks to succeed at the highest level.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• “My general sense is... if you ask people from other countries to say what English people are like, they’ll mention tea and queuing and stiff upper lips... There’s another: Oh, bondage. Up yours.” — David Baddiel (02:40)
• “Football has always had running alongside the hymn to order a demonic little countermelody of anarchy and wit.” — Baddiel (04:00)
• “The purpose of private education in Britain was basically to train people to go out and run the empire.” — Gene Williams (05:35)
• “We love our mavericks. And not only do we love them, we love them more if they go out and get drunk the night before!” — Chris England (08:27)
• “I felt like I was only in there in the England squad because of public demand. I felt they resented that and I wasn’t enjoying it, David.” — Rodney Marsh (14:22)
• “English football is a gray game played on gray days by gray people.” — Rodney Marsh (14:57)
• “Why do you think you didn’t get it, Brian? ... I think they might have had the sneaking suspicion—I would have ran the England Football Association, and I certainly would have done.” — Baddiel, referencing Clough (18:47)
• “The England team went into [the Maradona game] scared and playing on the defensive. That’s been a recurring theme of England teams since 1966... the team has a caution around it.” — Baddiel (22:54)
• “All right? Paul Gascoigne is a kind of extreme example of the sort of antique jester English figure...” — Baddiel (25:08)
• “Despite the fact that he kind of turned football on its head in this country... football since then in this country has spent all its time trying not to have players like Gazza.” — Chris England (25:50)
• “Maverick genius is not a luxury. You cannot win without it.” — David Baddiel (28:49)

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Notable Segment Timestamps

• 01:43–05:34 — Establishing the theme: Two Englishnesses, the jester and the gent.
• 05:34–07:34 — Origins: Football’s rule-making tradition and historical suppression of flair.
• 08:05–10:27 — The roundheads vs cavaliers: Comedy, class, and mavericks.
• 12:08–14:57 — Rodney Marsh’s experience: Mavericks constrained and marginalized.
• 15:36–18:47 — Brian Clough and the problem of the popular managerial maverick.
• 20:39–22:00 — Argentina: Gaucho spirit and the celebration of the maverick.
• 25:08–26:58 — The rise and fall of Paul Gascoigne and the maverick in modern England.
• 28:49–29:30 — Final reflections: Why genius is necessary, not optional.

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Episode Tone & Style

Baddiel’s narrative is witty, self-aware, and melancholic, woven with warmth and frustration at England’s reluctance to embrace individual genius. Contributions from comedians and ex-players add humor and personal flavor, while historians and journalists provide depth and context. The tone is candid and irreverent, with a persistent undercurrent of national self-examination.

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In Summary

This episode of "Sixty Years of Hurt" deftly interrogates why English football, and perhaps England itself, has struggled to accommodate the maverick—players whose rule-breaking creativity electrifies fans but seems to unsettle the establishment. Through stories, anecdotes, and cultural comparisons, Baddiel and his guests make a compelling case that England’s quest for order and suspicion of “genius” has cost more than a few caps—and maybe a trophy or two.

Transcript

[Narrator/Host]

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[David Baddiel]

to save fuel Couples should share their bath. You know we've had strikes before, but please don't run down your country by talking about mountain chaos. And now England has got all sorts of problems, but is not England notoriously too nations. Here's Gascoigne. Brilliant play. Sometime in the mid-90s I bumped into the then England manager Terry Venables and I said something I shouldn't have. I said please Terry, please pick Matthew Leticia. I know he plays for Southampton and looks a bit like a lumbering car horse, but that only makes his talent more extraordinary. More English perhaps, in the way it finds elegance through ungainliness. And Terry Venables said, that's the thing about football, we've all got our own opinions, haven't we? Which in one way the piss off. I'm the England manager and you are very much not way was the correct answer, but in another, the one that led to Matthew Leticia. Even without my lyrical descriptions, clearly an incredible player, only getting eight caps in his entire career. It wasn't. It was an example of a fault line in English football, perhaps in England itself. I'm David Baddiel and for the history podcast this is 60 years of hurt episode 2 England vs Mavericks here's where I'm going with this. My general sense is that if you ask people from other countries to say what English people are like, they go for. English people are not confrontational, so you'd never know what is bothering them. That's awkward. Their love for tea, it's almost an art form. They are a bit proud. Obviously. The English say sorry a lot to everyone and everything. They'll mention tea and queuing and stiff upper lips and no one quite saying what they mean. All of which is true. But it's only one version of Englishness. There's another. Oh, bondage. Up yours. Let me add a little bit of spice to that. What are the dogs? George does. He's not going to sell much ice cream going at that speed, is he? England has always had running alongside the hymn To Order, a demonic little countermelody of anarchy and wit. The jester is not foreign to Englishness, he is central to it. I think that's extremely well put. Thank you, Stephen. The Englishman, who perhaps best embodies both the gent and the jester in one fry. It owes more to a spirit that you see in a mixture of Falstaff and Toby Belch and the servants making hay while the boring ruling class are upstairs. Football historically has embodied this very English antithesis between order versus anarchy. And both these elements continue to dance like opposite atomic charges around football's nucleus. Football demonstrates this more than anything else in England because it's so popular. Thus it has to be more constrained. Popularity is always threatening. Football is infested with control, full of boards and bodies and referees and varsity, sterilizing it into something manageable, ordained. And yet, at the same time, nothing can quite stifle the game's passion, its urgency, its rage and its unpredictability. This Anglo Saxon urge to impose rules and regulations goes back a long way.

[Football Historian Gene Williams]

If you look at things like the Olympic Games, the British were very involved in making up rules, and I think that's much more to do with empire and colonialism. The purpose of private education in Britain was basically to train people to go out and run the empire.

[David Baddiel]

Let's hear if football historian Gene Williams agrees with my basic notion of the two opposing types of Englishness.

[Football Historian Gene Williams]

It's that kind of bureaucratization of the rules that the British, again, are very good at.

[David Baddiel]

I think you're right. The more popular it gets, the more the working classes or the masses get involved in it and women, the more it needs to be controlled by the people who Feel that they have to control it. Is that maybe right?

[Football Historian Gene Williams]

I would agree with that. But I'd add a third layer on top of that, which again, it's something very deep in the British psyche. So if we think back to Charles I issuing a book of sports, did he. I didn't know that there is a love of fun, there is a love of kind of excess and playfulness and just kind of, to put it frankly, asking about that is very, very British.

[David Baddiel]

I'm a bit obsessed with this because I began watching football in the 1970s. When I think of this issue as being at its height, there was in the 1970s a huge outpour in English football of flair. Rodney Marsh, Stan Bowles, Tony Curry, Frank Worthington, Alan Hudson, all of them brilliant. All of them apart from Curry, with his grand total of 17, the recipients of under 10 England caps. Sports writer Jonathan Wilson.

[Narrator/Host]

It was very much suppressed. That was not what was venerated. I think what happens by the 70s is it's a little bit of that sort of anti authoritarianism of the 60s. It's a little bit of a liberalization that suddenly there individuals here, they're all rebellious and individual in exactly the same way. Yeah, they all have long hair, they

[David Baddiel]

all have pop stars, they all roll

[Narrator/Host]

their socks down, they have a shirt hanging out, they don't work particularly hard. But there was no place for that.

[Sports Writer Jonathan Wilson]

I mean, it's really extraordinary. If you look at the 1970s, sports

[David Baddiel]

writer Barney Roenick, who's kind of the

[Sports Writer Jonathan Wilson]

nadir of the England team, didn't qualify for two World Cups in a row. Like despair, like we play this game that just doesn't work on the world stage. And yet at the same time, English clubs are winning the European cup almost every year. At one point, none of the people in those clubs winning the European cup, best club teams in the world were ever invited to be involved with the England team, which if you think about it now is completely insane.

[David Baddiel]

I also put this roundheads vs Cavaliers or superego vs ID managers vs Mavericks idea to two men who kind of represent each faction. That being podcaster comedians, Chris England, he's the controlled, ordered one. He is after all, called England. And Nick Hancock, who isn't in cricket,

[Podcaster/Comedian Chris England]

we love our mavericks. And not only do we love them, we love them more. If they go out and get drunk

[David Baddiel]

the night before, is that because it's a posher sport?

[Podcaster/Comedian Chris England]

I think there's a touch of the forelock in it.

[Former Footballer Rodney Marsh]

There is.

[Podcaster/Comedian Chris England]

If he's out all night drinking champagne, all the better.

[Narrator/Host]

If you Play football or cricket for England, you're somehow representing the country.

[David Baddiel]

It's true, because the dentist Chair, right. In 1996, right. I sort of thought, what's the problem really with that? For anyone who doesn't know, the dentist's chair was a photograph much reproduced in the sanctimonious tabloids of the Times, in which various members of the England squad of 1996 were seen strapped to a chair in a Hong Kong nightclub whilst other teammates squirted alcohol into their mouths. In general, it felt more to me to be a moral thing, which may be to do with the fact that these are young working class men.

[Podcaster/Comedian Chris England]

I think it's that it's to do with letting the team down. And actually that goes to industrialized society. And you know, what if you're in a furnace or you're on a shop floor with big bits of metal shooting around, if somebody's a piss head, somebody's gonna die. So there's a kind of puritanical attitude of it's not at work, you know, Other times, fine.

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I suppose the other social class that one needs to think about in this, and maybe this is the root of the sort of uptightness and the hatred of mavericks, is not really from the aristocrats.

[David Baddiel]

Football historian David Goldblatt, in what we

[Aramco Advertiser]

understand as kind of, you know, English football culture sense, is the product of the people who ran the football leagues and ran the clubs and ran much of the fa, which is, you know, the solicitors, Methodists and Clarks. I would say it is a much more provincial, lower middle class sense of respectability and propriety. And that is definitely part of the story of Englishness.

[David Baddiel]

Cards on the table, I'm on the side of the maverick. It's not a binary really, but English football has often imagined itself as a reflection of the other kind of Englishness. The sleeves rolled up, backs to the wall, honest endeavour, controlled emotion version, the Dunkirk spirit, the Battle of Britain. I mean, it all gets very, very military.

[Narrator/Host]

There's definitely an English love of the game where you're totally at play, but you cling on and somehow win. What's the most lionised moment of English football? It's Terry Butcher, covered in blood.

[David Baddiel]

An image of the Central Defender in 1989 who, after a clash of heads against a Swedish attacker, stayed on heroically with a head bandage getting progressively redder so that England could doggedly hold on to our nil nil draw to clinch our place in Italian 90. And so it can seem that we have a long history of Picking the grafter, the tracker back, the work rater, the honest, decent leader of men hoping to win by being more disciplined, more stoic than the opposition. In this model skill, too much of it starts to seem un English. It's showy, it's flashy, it's French. Drawing attention to your talent like that, it doesn't quite do.

[Sports Writer Jonathan Wilson]

There's a sense that the national team is seen as an arm of something else that you can't quite trust the lads with. Because it would be wrong to say the anti intellectualism. What I'm trying to get at wrong to say that is because it's a working class sport, because that's. That assumes that working class people are not interested in art. The inter. It's actually the other way around. It's more a way of keep them in order.

[Former Footballer Rodney Marsh]

Then suddenly Alf Ramsey walks in. Navy blue tracksuit, immaculate, absolutely immaculate.

[David Baddiel]

That's Rodney Marsh, who you may have noticed earlier. I put first on the list of mavericks who missed out on England glory. That's because he should be first on that team sheet for the way he played and also for the way he talked back to authority, specifically to Sir Alf Ramsey.

[Former Footballer Rodney Marsh]

Rodney, you in particular, if you don't work hard, I'm going to pull you off at half time. And I said, christ, at Manchester City we only get a cup of tea and orange. And that was the last time I played for England. Still a great joke, Rodney. Why are you taking on three men? Pass it sideways, go. Well, no, I'm enjoying myself, having a bit of fun and I'm creating and scoring goals. No, no. Supposing you lose the ball. Well, wanted to be different and I was trying to be different and that was in my DNA. And it was only really when I became a professional that I realized everybody else was trying to knock it out of you.

[David Baddiel]

So it's not just that England didn't pick Mavericks, it's that when they did occasionally pick them, they wouldn't let them play like mavericks, like themselves.

[Former Footballer Rodney Marsh]

David, we were training. I'll never ever forget this. Alf Ramsey suddenly called me over and he said, he said, rodney, he said, I'm going to start you tomorrow night what I want you to do. He said, I want you to play like Jeff Hurst plays. I said, but Alf, I'm nothing like Jeff Hurst. And I walked away from that and I thought, Christ. I had several coaches in my early career. One of them was a guy called Vic Buckingham who despise me, despise my originality. And he called me a clown.

[David Baddiel]

Being Called a clown from on high is obviously an insult. But as we know, the jester, the entertainer, the madcap is as English as the stiff upper lipped official. And the reason one needs to be controlled by the other is popularity. Because it's the clown, especially the genius clown, who's most going to be loved by the crowd.

[Former Footballer Rodney Marsh]

I'm sitting on the bench and suddenly the whole crowd started going run. I felt like I was only in there in the England squad because of public demand. I felt they resented that and I wasn't enjoying it, David. I just wasn't enjoying it.

[David Baddiel]

No, I think that's at the heart of it. The notion that enjoyment is central to how you should play football is, I think, something which weirdly the attitude I'm talking about would completely balk against. It's not about enjoyment. You're here to do a job of work.

[Former Footballer Rodney Marsh]

English football is a gray game played on gray days by gray people.

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[David Baddiel]

The same suspicion of individualism operated at the managerial level in 1977. The England manager job clearly should have gone to the most obvious candidate, who at the time was not easy to overlook, Brian Clough. Do you have anything to ask Mohammed?

[Podcaster/Comedian Chris England]

Mohammed, nice to see you again.

[Sports Writer Jonathan Wilson]

Thank you.

[David Baddiel]

Are you having a nice time in England?

[Sports Writer Jonathan Wilson]

Yeah, all.

[David Baddiel]

But now Brian Clough, who has won the top flight with two different clubs and would go on to win two European Cups, goes for the interview for England manager, but doesn't get it. Why?

[Football Historian Gene Williams]

I think it's the confluence of Sir Harold Thompson joining the FA in 76 as its chair, this professor of chemistry at Oxford who as an amateur thought he was upholding this kind of purist,

[David Baddiel]

amateur ideals despite these high principles. He was also described by an FA official who worked with him as a bullying autocrat, a bastard who treated the staff like shit.

[Football Historian Gene Williams]

Sir Harold Thompson knew better than those who were perhaps part of the kind of venal and commercial aspects of football in the Football League, which Clough sort of epitomised he was a bit uppity. He loved a sound bite. He knew how to court the press.

[David Baddiel]

This thing in football that the executive has, that you can't bring the game into disrepute. Yeah. Now you've never accepted this. I've Never accepted it at all. Because the very thing that they've given me a lot of stick about over the years about talking too much and going on television too much, these are the very people who can't put two words together. Clough, along with other colorful characters who'd gone into management, notably Malcolm Allison, represented another type of maverick, but one that the English football establishment were particularly resistant to because, as with the players, what they are frightened of is not just the maverick, but the crowd. The popularity of the maverick and mass communication is now giving the maverick much more ability to court popularity.

[Football Historian Gene Williams]

Sir Harold Thompson thought that he was defending a nostalgic idea of football, right? Whereas Clough didn't have any of the kind of social anxieties about his class that, for instance, Sir Alfred Ramsay did, famously having elocution lessons.

[David Baddiel]

And let's not forget, it's 1977, the year punk broke into the mainstream, while unemployment reached record heights. Sir Harold Thompson, head of the fa, only has to turn on his wireless to hear that the country is collapsing, both economically and certainly to his fuzzy gray ears, culturally. And when the English establishment, establishment feels threatened, it doesn't give way. It digs its heels in. Which means this newfound power, what we today would call having a platform worked against Clough. He has too much popular support. Why do you think you didn't get it, Brian?

[Podcaster/Comedian Chris England]

And I think they might have had the sneaking suspicion.

[David Baddiel]

Now, I would have ran the England Football association, and I certainly would have done. What all this means is that who gets to play for and manage England isn't really about talent. It's about who we, or to be more exact, a combination of we and them. Them being the FA feel presents the correct version of Englishness, that anything you do, you're a role model for kids, whatever you do, there's more responsibility on

[Narrator/Host]

your shoulders than just being good for 90 minutes.

[David Baddiel]

The whole modern notion of role models is key here, but the question should be asked what role and what model is being aspired to? Throughout English sport, there has been a tradition of the athletes themselves being treated like school children and the governing body of the sport being like prefects or teachers. And it's unbelievable how patronizing they have been about them. I mean, you're expected. I mean, it's so annoying and so English. I think now, I might be wrong about this, but other countries, I think, don't have this issue with maverick genius, although, as ever, a caveat. But that Cantona didn't, with the exception of Cantona proving the rule also at the time The French had Zidane. So, you know, difficult behavior, genius box, kind of ticked. It doesn't matter how arrogant and not listening to the manager and showboating Zlatan Ibrahimovic is, he's always going to be first on the team sheet for Sweden. Same with Cristiano Ronaldo for Portugal. Or, well, here's the most obvious one. But as Jonathan Wilson explains, this may be something to do with a different country's very different self image.

[Narrator/Host]

And this is such a live topic in Argentina that in 1912 you have the leading Polar VH Leopardo Lugones gives a series of lectures which are attended by all the great and the good of Argentinian society. And he asks, what is Argentinian? What is it to be Argentinian? He says, the unique Argentinian thing is the pampas. It's the gaucho, the cowboy. He's out there alone. He's got this great virtuosity, but he's also got to be smart. He's got to be able to look after himself. I'll get back to football, don't worry.

[David Baddiel]

No, I see where that's going.

[Narrator/Host]

And so the question begins to be asked in the early 1920s, where do you find the gaucho spirit in the city? And Argentina is industrializing rapidly, it's urbanizing rapidly. They say, well, this, this combination of virtuosity plus self reliance you find in the figure of the pb, the urchin kid of the street, who is learning to play football on the Potreros. And then the reason that this is so significant is that football is one of the things that pulls the nation together. And therefore the way that Argentina plays is a very self conscious representation of that identity. And you get this extraordinary passage written in 928 in auto graphical which says if we were to erect a statue to the P bay, he's describing somebody with he's short, he's squat, he's malnourished, coming from a poor background, he's got this shocker dark hair. Essentially 49 years before he makes his international debut, he is describing Diego Maradona.

[David Baddiel]

So Argentina, a country without an imperial history, one that was colonized by Spain, has a self image about liberation, about independence, about outwitting the forces of control. And they happen to have a football icon that really suits that. At the England, Uruguay friendly recently at Wembley, I bumped into, my name is Asif and you've written a book about the hand of God Maradona, the captain of Argentina, putting his left hand to the ball, pulling it over the head of England's captain. It's a book looking at the match itself and the context of the match with the Falklands War. The match was in 1986, four years after the conflict. Although did Maradona ever straightforwardly cop to it? Yeah, he did.

[Narrator/Host]

And, you know, he said it was revenge for the boys. Shot down like birds, I think was the phrase he used.

[David Baddiel]

The England team went into it with the wrong attitude. They went into it scared of Maradona and playing on the defensive. That's been a recurring theme of England teams since 1966. That comes from being an island that we've always tried to defend ourselves first rather than attacking other nations. I think you're right. Part of my frustration as an England fan is a sense that the team has a caution around it. I've never heard it so far described as being something to do possibly with us being an island who defends ourselves, because most people have talked about England being a colonial power, and maybe that's also empowered other nations to play better against us. So that's particularly a case with Argentina to his left and Valdarno to his left. He doesn't. He won't need any of them. You have to say, that's magnificent. There is no debate about that goal. Maradona scores the greatest goal possibly in the history of football. While we're here, can we just hear again the last line of Barry Davis commentary on that goal? You have to say, that's magnificent. You have to say, that's magnificent. That is so English. I think that if it was the other way round, the Argentinian commentator would not have acknowledged its magnificence. He'd have been spitting blood. I can hear at the tournaments, the Brazilian commentators or the Spanish commentators, whatever it is. Go, go, go, Go, Go, go, go, go. Or as 5 Live commentator John Murray said when I interviewed him in the box at WEMB Uruguay earlier this year, I'd never do that. I'd never be comfortable commentating in that way. Probably because of. There is that reserve. This may be historically arbitrary, but maybe after the hand of God, maybe after we see this gaucho, this rebel, this trickster in full flow and the damage he can cause. England's attitude to such players does, I think, change a little bit. We allow at the next World cup one absolute maverick, and with him, we go right to the far end of the Englishness as crazy clown, genius spectrum.

[Narrator/Host]

All right?

[David Baddiel]

Paul Gascoigne is a kind of extreme example of the sort of antique jester English figure, incredibly brilliant at Football. Possibly the only English player, I think, who we can say was indisputably the best player in the world, at his best in his moment, and yet so incredibly, he was at his best when he was playing.

[Narrator/Host]

You know, everything else was problematic for him.

[David Baddiel]

When I score a hat trick on a Saturday, I love the tension then,

[Narrator/Host]

but I mean, this other bit, the

[David Baddiel]

scan and all that, I heard it on the field.

[Narrator/Host]

He was kind of liberated from it, all that other. All that other stuff.

[David Baddiel]

But, I mean, I love Gazza. I sort of love him as a player, but I also love the idea of him because I think he represents this sort of. Sort of damaged, brilliant, vulnerable form of Englishness.

[Podcaster/Comedian Chris England]

One of the things I love about Gaza or admire about Gaza, is that despite the fact that he kind of turned football on its head in this country, people always use him as a reference point. And yet football, since then in this country certainly has spent all its time trying not to have players like Gazza. They have coaches that control the teams to the nth degree. I'm sure whatever you told him, none of it went in. And when he was out there, everything was instinctive and that kind of wouldn't be allowed.

[David Baddiel]

Now, without any doubt, most of what went wrong for Paul Gascoigne was to do with his own demons, but I wonder if there isn't also something structural at play here as well.

[Aramco Advertiser]

We love our mavericks and then we tend to destroy them. And I think that goes, you know, across the board. I don't think that's just football sickness. I think there's a lot of that in English cultural life generally, and football is a mirror of that.

[David Baddiel]

This moment from €96 is perhaps a perfect example of the triumph of the English maverick. Gazza receives the ball and instinctively flicks it over the head of Colin Hendry and volleys it straight into the Scottish net. And then, mimicking the dentist chair picture that had been in all the tabloids, lies down for his teammates to squirt water into his mouth. It's such an English two fingers up to all of those who think they know how an English player and an English man should comport themselves, and it wouldn't have been in Gazza's mind, but at some level, watching that goal and that celebration, I'm going to say he scored it and celebrated it that way. For Tony Curry and Frank Worthington and Stan Bowles and Peter Osgood and Alan Hudson and Rodney Marsh, I was incredibly

[Former Footballer Rodney Marsh]

proud to play for England.

[David Baddiel]

I think that's so important because I think sometimes it gets forgotten that people like yourself, they're as proud to play for England that as English as players who might be thought of as solid, stoic, put in the hours, but they're no less proud. You're no less proud to be playing for England.

[Former Footballer Rodney Marsh]

I had one fantastic game and I had a chat with Malcolm Allison and he just said, rod, he said, just go and play your own game. He said, don't worry about trying to play other players. Just go and play your own game. And I went out there and I didn't give a toss. And I was great. I was absolutely great. And I just loved, absolutely loved it.

[David Baddiel]

Did Alf Ramsey say anything to you afterwards?

[Former Footballer Rodney Marsh]

No, I didn't say a word. Bobby Moore did. He says, son, he said, sonny said, that was just absolutely brilliant.

[David Baddiel]

It isn't always the gray instinct, the men in suits mentality that crushes that spirit. Sometimes the maverick does it by himself. But still there is, I think, an English thing whereby, okay, maybe we can have one luxury player, but even that phrase is, in my mind, wrong. The idea of genius as luxury at the highest level of football. Maverick genius is not a luxury. You cannot win without it. There may be many issues with social media, but one thing the hundreds of reels of Lionel Messi coming up every 15 scrolls on my Instagram prove if you want to win a World cup, genius is not an accessory. Next time on 60 Years of Hurt, we'll be looking at the people who actually suffer it, the fans. You can listen to all episodes of 60 Years of Hurt first on BBC Sounds. If you want to be notified as soon as a new episode drops, make sure you're subscribed to the History podcast on BBC Sounds and have push notifications turned on. Five Live sports BBC Women's Football Weekly the latest news, insights and analysis from across the women's game. Dame Serene of England, welcome to the Are we including Dame in your title now? You know how much an honor that is under this remarkable team, under this remarkable we want to play in a way that they can show their skills. So that's what we're trying to do, win the World Cup. It's a dream. Listen with the BBC Sounds app. What if a marginal gain unlocked greater performance? What if an insight in data could change everything?

[Football Historian Gene Williams]

At Aramco, our focus on detail helps

[David Baddiel]

us deliver reliable energy to millions across the world. Because margins aren't marginal. They're where we can truly push the limits of what's possible. Aramco, an integrated energy and chemicals company. Learn [e-mail] ever invest in something that

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