Fading images, classic football shirts and tales of Italia 90 have swept the nation over the past five days.
It has served as a reminder of just how far football — and the world — has moved on since England last reached the semi-final of the World Cup.
At that time, now England manager Gareth Southgate was plotting his way up the ranks at Crystal Palace – he made his league debut the following season.
England manager Gareth Southgate (front row, third from left) pictured before one of Crystal Palace’s pre-season boot camps to Carrick army base in the early 1990s
An image of Southgate getting dunked in water during a boot camp he organised last year brought back memories for his former manager at Crystal Palace Alan Smith
Last weekend, a photograph of Southgate en route to a pre-season boot camp in Catterick in the early 1990s reemerged on Twitter which goes some way to describing his methods as a manager.
‘I tweeted that team picture on Sunday, although I didn’t mention that the trip was actually something of a sweetener for the lads,’ Southgate’s former manager Alan Smith wrote in his Telegraph column.
‘Before we went there, we were off to the Army base at Catterick for a boot camp – something Palace did before the start of every season.
‘Even by the standards of the early 1990s – when health and safety regulation were, shall we say, a little more lax – it was pretty brutal. Every day we would be up by 6am and out the door for a three-mile run. Then, after breakfast, we would all hit the obstacle course and be drilled by some very no-nonsense Army guys.
‘Ten days up there was no place for the fainthearted, and it made me smile when – a year ago – pictures emerged of Gareth taking England away to the Royal Marines Commando training camp in Devon.
‘Seeing Gareth being dunked under the water by a sergeant in a beret brought back some memories of Catterick, and I’m sure it did for him, too.’
Southgate took his squad to the Royal Marines Commando training camp in Devon last year
Raheem Sterling and Dele Alli work in tandem as they take part in several exercises
The photograph of which Smith speaks was taken last year, when Southgate confiscated his squad’s phones and whisked his players off for a gruelling military weekend at the Royal Marines Commando base in Devon.
In an attempt to take them out of their comfort zone, the players were put through a number of drills, including a four-mile hike with 21kg on their backs before camping on Woodbury Common.
The 48-hour camp was designed as a team-bonding exercise, the confiscation of players’ phones — Southgate’s Palace contemporaries would not have had the luxury of mobile phones in the early Nineties — viewed as a means to bring the squad closer together.
From what we have seen in Russia, it’s fair to say it appears to have worked.
England skipper Harry Kane was among the players to undergo the gruelling camp
England and Manchester City winger Raheem Sterling gets his breath back after being dunked