Keeping a cool head as the contest heats up

IT IS vital that the destroyers in the England team, players like Paul Ince and David Batty, retain their discipline against Romania tonight. Staying calm and disciplined is vital at this level of the game. I speak from bitter experience, having suffered my blackest day in football at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico when I was sent off in England's second game against Morocco.

It was a baking hot day in Monterrey, something like 105 degrees, and I was getting a trifle warm. We had lost Bryan Robson 10 minutes before with a dislocated shoulder, and the team as a whole were feeling the pressure of both our opening game defeat against Portugal and a lacklustre start against the African side. I had been booked earlier for a mistimed tackle and, when we launched a break upfield, I was pulled up for offside, which I felt was rather harsh.

Frustration boiling over, I threw the ball into the ground and it bounced up and hit the referee, who then showed me a second yellow card and ordered me off the field. It is often recalled that I threw the ball direct at the ref, but I assure you that, if that had been my intent, I'd have made sure I hit a different part of his anatomy.

I had a wonderful playing career and I wouldn't change any of it, but that was a bad moment for me. It was a dreadful feeling to have to trudge off the field knowing I had become one of the few players to be dismissed playing for England, the only time in fact that I had been shown the red card in all my career.

It made it so much worse that England had lost two captains in the space of 10 minutes. I received a two-match ban from Fifa and, although I was named as substitute against Argentina in the quarter-final, it was to be the end of my World Cup. It was not a nice memory to take away, but these things happen.

In this competition I have been thrilled by what we have seen in the early games, but it worries me now, with more and more crackdowns by officials, that teams are not going to be so willing to adopt a positive approach. An inevitable result of all these red cards, for challenges that are nothing more than mistimed, is that defenders will hold back from tackling and teams will make sure they have plenty of bodies back behind the ball. The games will become tight affairs and the spectacle will be reduced.

What is Fifa looking for? After all, football is supposed to be a contact sport. They were right to put the emphasis on the dangerous tackle in advance of the tournament, because it put defenders on their guard and warned them to be careful when making a challenge for the ball. That was noticeable from the early games as defenders stood up and went about their jobs correctly.

Now we have a situation where the Saudi Arabian player was sent off against France when he didn't deserve to be, the tackle just didn't warrant it at all, although I have to say that Zinedine Zidane deserved his red card in the same game. There is no place for stamping or raking studs down an opponent's back and he deserved to go. Now the referees have been placed under even more pressure - and we have seen what happens.

I am surprised that Michel Platini, a player of such world renown, should be behind this latest offensive. To my mind it cannot help this tournament, or the game at large. Football, played as the game should be played, is a glorious entertainment and does not need these rule changes.

My other concern about tonight's match in Toulouse is that the Romanians are a very skilful side and will need a lot of watching. They won their qualifying section at a stroll and boast players of good technical ability. They can pick you apart if you allow them the room.

We can beat anybody on our day but we can take nothing for granted because Romania will be full of confidence after defeating Colombia in their first game.

We will have to be focused and I have no doubt Glenn Hoddle will have the team in the right frame of mind. It is a full week since England's first fixture and they have had time to get their thoughts set on the next job in hand after the satisfaction of the Tunisia performance.

This should be a useful benchmark to indicate just how far England are likely to go at these championships.