We need the Gazza Factor
Simon Barnes
THE coming year's overwhelming question of sport is whether or not David Beckham and Michael Owen possess the Gazza Factor. Now I know that Paul Gascoigne has become a sad old bugger these days, an icon of wasted talent; but think back to 1990, the palmy days when Gascoigne came within touching distance of winning the World Cup for England.
England were not much fancied at that tournament. scraping in thanks to the goalkeeping of Peter Shilton. Paul Gascoigne was a fringe player, who established his place at the last gasp — and he transformed the England team from the ordinary into the explosive. Brian Glanville, in his unimprovable The Sot}, of the World Cup, said, 'He showed a flair, a superlative technique, a tactical sophistication seldom matched by an England player since the war.'
To go with all that he had the belief, not that he could be in the England side, but that he could win the World Cup. This is a very unusual commodity. He believed that the topmost fruit was within his grasp. All athletes will say they possess this belief; very few of them actually do. Most are satisfied to have reached one of the camps on the way to the summit. But Gascoigne genuinely believed that he could beat the world, and he very nearly did. England reached the semi-finals of the competition that year, and it was Gascoigne who made the difference. That he failed at the last showed another part of his troubled nature, but England's best World Cup for 24 years was all down to Gascoigne.
Now England go to the World Cup 2002 in Korea and Japan. Again they qualified by the skin of their teeth. They have been drawn in a desperately difficult group, and against their old enemy, Argentina. It will take an exceptional performance to qualify from that group to the knock-out stages.
England will do it if Owen and Beckham are both fit, and if both are able to show that they possess the Gazza Factor. Beckham used to be an exquisite decorator of matches. Against Germany and against Greece in the qualifying tournament he showed that he is capable of moulding a match to his own intentions. And Owen showed against Germany that he can pass the simplest and most difficult test of nerve in world sport: to score when the opportunity presents itself, and to do so again and again.
World Cups traditionally start slowly and warm up; England must start like the Hogwarts Express. And Beckham and Owen must be ready for the transfiguration class, for only they can turn England from aspirants into championship contenders.
Owen and Beckham are players of the highest skill, but that's not the point. There are players of the highest skill in every team. Skill is a commonplace in the World Cup finals. What is needed is something far more unusual: a Faustian audacity, a belief that the greatest things the world offers are theirs by right.
This belief, where it exists, is a contagious thing, spreading through a side and making world-beaters of journeymen. And it can have the opposite effect on the opposition. A player with the Gazza Factor in superplus Beckenbauer, Pele, Maradoria — bends the other 21 players to his will. Can Owen and Beckham together do such a thing?
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