His big chest seemed to hang in the air as his toes probed for the

His big chest seemed to hang in the air as his toes probed for the ball, which is odd enough without the extraordinary, the un-English openness of his face. He flung himself legs first into the most unpromising situations, scissored the ball out from under, and pivoted and swivelled his big body around impossible angles, to play the ball as neatly as a dart.When he got stepped on or copped an elbow in the throat, or clanged his temple against a German head, he would open his mouth in a soundless bawl before making sure by a shrug or a smile to turn away any wrath caused by his own recklessness. The tabloids bitched him for ignoring his responsibilities as a father and decided without evidence he was the one who smashed up the jet bringing the team home from Hong Kong.What I saw was a barrel-chested man with unusually long legs and a high- stepping run, and I saw him everywhere, following the ball with the unflagging enthusiasm of a puppy. Sports writers made him out to be a kind of elderly brat, emotionally unstable, a prima donna with dodgy tendons and brittle bones. On a pitch as hard and hot as flint, they ran and ran, slid and crashed and fell, and got up and ran and crashed and slid some more.Chief among them and everywhere was Paul Gascoigne, a player I had heard much of, but never seen. The instinct for self-preservation was in abeyance, overridden by something more basic and utterly mysterious.

The continuous sonic boom from the fans' throats seemed to reflate tired muscles like a gas. The players ran for hours on end, driving rubbery legs as if they had been steel pistons. The England team was a team as few national sides have ever been; they threw themselves at the implacable Germans as if no man had ever broken a leg on a football field. I begin to think that football is the necessary antidote to civilisation.I watched Euro 96 the way some people view Victoria Falls, stricken with awe. Even more than being fascinated by the massive display of animal power in the stands, I was astonished by the strange nobility of the spectacle. In the morning, po-faced television presenters deplored the scenes of shame, the smashed windows, the burnt police cars.A tidy policeman said: "This has nothing to do with football." Even he did not want people to get the idea that football is bad for civilisation. The men's feelings were the opposite of compassion, dwelling in a region of the psyche beyond conscience or consciousness.

The Germans could say kindly that the luckiest rather than the best team won, but it didn't ease the abomination of the desolation that fell upon every man who saw his team lose. The collective energy that they generated burst upon the female viewer like a high-pressure storm system. Anyone who stood there shouting "It's only a game" would have been inviting a thunderbolt.There were women at Wembley, sniffing the testosterone-laden air with relish, but, though they were at the event, they were not of it. The male force field lapped briefly round them and surged on towards whatever shared agony or ecstasy lay in store.When England lost the women wept for the men, not for themselves.