Can Euro 2020 ever live up to the magic of '96?
At the final whistle of England v Holland at Wembley in Euro 96, I just stood and stared at the scoreboard and read it again and again. England 4 Holland 1. England 4 Holland 1. All around me people were going absolutely crazy, leaping up and down, spilling drinks, grabbing strangers, laughing and grinning, It had been like this every time the strikers  Shearer and Sheringham, in their crisp white with blue trim Umbro shirts  had scored each of their respective pairs of goals. Total euphoria and disbelief. It was the first time England had scored four goals in a major tournament for 30 years, since 1966, at this same old Wembley stadium to win the World Cup Final. No-one had such stats to hand in the crowd  all we knew was England didnt do this, smash the truly great footballing nations. We hadnt even qualified for the World Cup in the US two years before, wed been atrocious at Euro 92, only Gazza, Platt and Pearce were left of the great Italia 90 team. Holland had made the consecutive finals of the first two World Cups I watched in 1974 and 1978, Johann Cruyff was the best European player of my childhood, and yet here we were riding high, a lovely sunny day in a lovely sunny summer of a lovely sunny year, halfway through a decade where many of us were having the times of our lives. Football, comedy, music, TV were all enjoying an exciting lease of life, as if there was a rush to have as much fun as feasibly possible before the century ended. I was the editor of Loaded, a magazine that encapsulated the decade, just weeks before the start of Euro 96. Wed been voted Magazine of the Year by the publishing industry for the second year running, were selling hundreds of thousands of what was the first ever mass market lifestyle magazine for men. Unlike the formulaic topless mags with womens hands over their chests on every cover that followed us, we mainly put people of the moment  our heroes and men who who made us laugh  front and centre: Gazza, Oasis, Will Carling, Prince Naseem, Jimmy White, Vic and Bob, Chris Tarrant... comedian Jenny Eclair guest edited a womens issue and put Sean Bean on the cover. Either side of Euro 96 we had Frank Skinner and David Baddiel, from Fantasy Football League, and Homer and Bart Simpson drawn by Matt Groening, the series creator, as cover stars. At the photoshoot for the Skinner and Baddiel cover, Frank walked into the studio, slipped a cassette into a ghetto blaster and said: Weve recorded a song with Ian Brodie of the Lightning Seeds. No-one knew about it; it wasnt the going to be the subject of the interview. He closed his eyes and moved round the room singing along to it and the rest of us realised it was really good.