England want to recreate Euro 1996 at Russia 2018 - but 20 years on from their greatest recent success is it possible?

With the 1966 World Cup win now 51 years away, Euro ’96 has taken over as our idealised example of what English tournament success means

Euro 1996 was England's greatest recent success - can they recreate it next summer? (Bongarts)

Joe Hart was nine years old during Euro ’96. Gary Cahill was 10 and a half. For that generation of English players and fans, born in the second half of the 1980s, too young for Italia ’90, it was the formative summer of football experience.

So it was no surprise when, speaking after England’s 1-0 win over Slovenia at Wembley on Thursday night, both Hart and Cahill brought it up unprompted as their model for what they want to do in Russia next summer.

Hart said that he “really enjoyed the good memories” of that summer, more than 21 years ago. “That was an amazing feeling,” he said, “and I would love to give that to the fans.”

Cahill is slightly older than Hart but he has his own similar memories of when England reached the semi-finals, losing to Germany on penalties. “I think to go into the latter stages [in Russia] would be looked on a success,” he said. “We saw when reached the semis in 1996. I remember that as a boy and that felt massive,” he said. “And yet we didn’t win. It shows that the latter stages would be important, but very hard.”

With the 1966 World Cup win now 51 years away, Euro ’96, rather than Italia ’90, has taken over as our idealised example of what English tournament success means: playing attacking football; going toe-to-toe with a team as talented as the Dutch and routing them; integrating a unique individual like Paul Gascoigne into a functioning team; and achieving a rare moment of national public unity in doing so.

Even the way it ended, on penalties to Germany, has a glorious tinge. England were brave, they were unlucky, and lost on a detail that could have gone the other way. That detail, of course, was Southgate’s weak spot kick and he still jokes about it now. “The England fans might find it difficult to find much love for me with my history with England,” he joked on Thursday night. “I’ve managed to shoulder that for 20 years.”

Kane got England out of jail and on the plane to Russia (Getty)

But the reality of the last 20 years of the England team is that as Euro ’96 has receded further away, England’s performances, results, and the atmosphere around the national team has diverged further from those symbolic standards too. The decade from 1996 to 2006 at least looked something like that famous European championship. There were heroic penalty exits in 1998, 2004 and 2006. Epic tense matches against top opponents: Argentina in 1998, Portugal and Germany in 2000, Argentina and Brazil in 2002, France and Portugal 2004 and then Portugal in 2006. And there was a national mania around the England team and their matches that lasted a decade after 1996.

The second post-Euro 96 decade has looked very different. Brave failure against the best has given way to insipid displays and embarrassing exits. After being absent from Euro 2008, England were awful in 2010 and then routed by Germany, barely made an impression on Euro 2012 or the 2014 World Cup. Last year at Euro 2016 they were dismal and then humiliated. The games that most stand out are the exits: 4-1 to Germany in 2010, 2-1 to Iceland last year, and a pair of unimaginably bad 0-0s, against Algeria and Slovakia.

No wonder then that the last 10 years have also seen a dampening of the manic expectations and fervour that defined Euro ’96 and what followed. Soon after the new Wembley opened there was rancour from the stands towards some of the players, but all that is gone now. England home games are sedate family affairs, and the 62,000 crowd on Thursday night was no different.

If England were to get into the latter stages of a tournament then some of the old fervour would be rekindled. But even then it would not be the same. England became the national story in the 1990s in a very different country, where traditional newspapers and terrestrial television held far more sway. The explosive partisanship of social media, and what that has meant for football fans’ senses of identity, was a long way off. Before the semi-final against Germany on 26 June 1996, the England fans at Wembley sang ‘You’ll never walk alone’. Today, when most club fans identify as such with every click and like, that would never be possible.

But if there is no chance of any great moment of national unity next month, what about what happens on the pitch? What would it take for England to produce a moment like the 4-1, or to reach as far as a semi-finals? After a generation of footballing evolution, it would be wrong to read too many lessons back into that summer. Cahill and Hart might remember watching it, but Dele Alli was only two months old when it kicked off. Marcus Rashford, born in October 1997, said that his first strong memory of watching England at a tournament and really understanding was the 2010 World Cup.

But Southgate would know better than most how 1996 happened. And he put it down to spontaneity and a lack of planning, rather than looking too far ahead. “We didn’t come into 1996 saying we could get to the semi-finals,” he remembered. “We didn’t really know how far we could go. What we focused on was how do we beat Switzerland. Then how do we beat Scotland. If you start to look beyond that you are wasting energy really because there is no quarter-final or semi-final if you don’t get out of the group.”