"TERRY VENABLES PUT HIS FAITH IN ME AT EURO 96 - I COULDN'T LET HIM DOWN"

Only Cristiano Ronaldo and Michel Platini have more goals at the Euros than Alan Shearer's seven - the forward hit five on home soil to secure the Golden Boot in 1996, and tells FFT why he found form at the perfect moment

- Matthew Ketchell

As Euro 96 approached, the pressure was building on Alan Shearer. For 21 long months, spanning 12 appearances, he'd failed to find the net for England.

The 25-year-old's league form had remained relentless - in 1995-96, he surpassed 30 league goals for Blackburn for the third successive season. Continental competition had proved a tad trickier: two goals in eight games, as the Lancastrians surprisingly lost to Trelleborg in the UEFA Cup in 1994, then crashed out in the Champions League group stage a year later.

Making only one appearance at Euro 92, mere months after his international debut, he'd been unable to help England reach the 1994 World Cup due to a cruciate ligament injury that ruled him out of several crucial qualifiers. Going into Euro 96, his Three Lions tally stood at five goals in 23 appearances.

That summer though, Shearer doubled his goal record in the space of just five games to win the tournament's Golden Boot. Weeks later, he joined hometown team Newcastle for a world record £15 million.

It all came after an infamous excursion to Asia for warm-up matches against China and a Hong Kong Golden Select XI - the latter played in pink and featured Englishmen in the twilight years of their careers, among them Ian Hesford, Carlton Fairweather, Dave Watson, Mark Grainger and Mike Duxbury.

Post-match, various members of the Three Lions found themselves inside a bar with a dentist's chair - stars sat prone, as alcohol was poured down their throats. The photos made the front page of the tabloids ("I only went in for a filling," Paul Gascoigne later quipped to FFT), before £5,000 of damage was reported to the plane transporting the hungover hedonists back home.