WITH England trailing to West Germany in September 1987, a 24-year-old midfielder from Nottingham Forest was brought on with 25 minutes remaining of the match in Dusseldorf to replace Glenn Hoddle. Neil Webb would go on to win six major medals for club and country but in that moment he created his own moment of football history as he became the 1,000th player to represent the England senior men’s team.

After the match, Webb, who played for the final 25 minutes, could not understand why he had been called into the post-match press conference of a match England lost 3-1. It was then it was revealed to him that, 115 years after the first England international caps, he was the 1,000th. “I went home that weekend and got the shirt and my cap framed because I thought that’s a milestone!”

Now after being displayed in Webb’s hallway for over three decades, a recent house move has prompted him to put the number 14 red England away shirt up for sale through specialist sports auctioneers, Graham Budd. The lot, ending tomorrow, has a high estimate of between £10-15,000 but Webb’s decision is borne more out of curiosity than necessity. “It’s not that I’ve got to sell it. I thought someone might be interested in having that as a piece of memorabilia. I’ve got three sons so I will split it three ways. If not, I’ll quite happily have it back.”

That summer, Hoddle, a fixture in the England squad since his debut in 1979, had moved abroad to play for AS Monaco. By the time of the European Championships the following year, Webb had displaced Hoddle in the England team, starting alongside national team captain Bryan Robson, a move which perplexed many fans of the mercurial Hoddle. 

Yet in a team also playing with two wingers in Chris Waddle and John Barnes, Webb believes manager Bobby Robson preferred his greater athleticism. “I think initially he thought that with me and Bryan, we could both get up and down the park, score a lot of goals and defend. We were both similar in that way whereas Glenn was more creative. I admire Glenn, I played against him when I was 15 and in the Reading Reserves and he was playing for Tottenham Hotspur Reserves. We got beat 9-0 and I looked at this lad and thought ‘crikey, he’s got some ability!’”

Now playing together regularly for England as they qualified for the 1990 World Cup, the new Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson sought to replicate the partnership of Robson and Webb in his underachieving side. With Nottingham Forest manager Brian Clough unwilling to sell, a protracted transfer deal was eventually settled by a tribunal who decided on a fee of £1.5 million for Webb. 

His impact was immediate as he scored with a sumptuous chest trap and volley at the Stretford End of Old Trafford on the opening day of the season during a 4-1 win over the reigning league champions Arsenal. Yet just a month later, while playing for England in a World Cup qualifier against Sweden in Stockholm, Webb’s career was stalled when he snapped his Achilles tendon. In the same match, captain Terry Butcher infamously played on with a cut head, finishing the game covered in blood.

Webb recalls the scene on the flight home. “We both sat on the plane at the front. It was just a case of ‘this hurts’ because they didn’t operate in Sweden, I had to fly back the next day and go back to Manchester and have the operation.”

Although Webb returned to play for Manchester United before the end of that season, he believes that he was never the same player again. “I think that injury changed the way I played. If they had a holding midfielder role in my day, that would have been me after my Achilles injury because I stopped going from box to box. I started being a more creative player in getting the ball off the back four and hopefully creating for the forwards.”

Webb illustrated that ability perfectly in the FA Cup Final that season. After Manchester United’s game with Crystal Palace went to a replay, in a tight, physical rematch, Webb made a decisive contribution clipping an inch-perfect pass over the opposition defence for full back Lee Martin to score the only goal of the game to secure the first trophy for the club during the reign of Ferguson, the catalyst for an unprecedented period of dominance.

“All I saw was one of our shirts running into the box and I pinged a ball over to him. I’ve always said to Lee, as a joke, if I’d have known it was him, I wouldn’t have done it as he’s never scored a goal before in his life! I would have tried passing to somebody else. Yeah, it was a turning point in Manchester United’s history, that was the first competition Alex Ferguson won after nearly four years and they went on from strength to strength.”

Although Webb was selected for England’s World Cup squad that summer, his place in the England team had been taken by the burgeoning star of the domestic game, Paul Gascoigne, who excelled on the greatest stage at Italia ‘90. “I couldn’t stop him when he was playing for Tottenham” Webb admits. “He’s thanked me for getting injured so he could get his England place which we always laugh about. He deserved his place.”

“When Bobby picked me for the World Cup squad, I was pleased. I knew I wasn’t going to start because Gazza had come to the fore by then. It was a long seven weeks, we were there three weeks before the tournament started in Sardinia. We were all getting a bit bored, we were training every day, which was great, but in the afternoons and evenings it was pretty dull to be fair.”

After a slow start, England, inspired by Gascoigne, progressed through the rounds and secured a bronze medal as they eventually finished fourth in the tournament. Webb did not get onto the pitch until the final game but remembers that “it was a great atmosphere. I got on for the last 11 minutes in the third place play-off against Italy and I hit the post. Overall, it was a great experience, just a long one.”

Ironically, when Gascoigne was forced to miss the following European Championship in 1992, Webb was surprisingly recalled to start the final group stage match against Sweden in the same Rasunda Stadium in which he had suffered his career-defining injury. Webb initiated the move from which England took the lead but their ultimate defeat was the last occasion in which he played for this country having represented them in three major tournaments, one more than Gascoigne.

As well as his World Cup bronze medal, Webb won the FA Cup, two League Cups, the European Cup Winner’s Cup and European Super Cup between 1988 and 1992. Of those, he has previously auctioned off all of them except his 1990 FA Cup winner’s medal. “That meant something to me, more than the rest of them. The European Cup Winner’s Cup final medal, I didn’t actually play, I got dropped from the game which I was obviously upset with. The League Cup winner’s medals I’ve sold with Graham Budd as well.”

Since retiring, Webb took his coaching badges but found that management was not the path he wanted to follow. “I did the old preliminary badge back in the day, which I didn’t enjoy whatsoever. The coaching badges in my day were all stop, start, stand still. I just didn’t enjoy doing the coaching courses. I took the Weymouth manager’s job for about four months and I hated it. I was living in Reading and driving to Weymouth three times a week. In the end I thought this was not worth it. I had to join the real world and get a proper job.”

Webb has held various jobs, famously working as a postman at the start of the century and also holding positions at Reading FC, working at a transport company and now an electrical firm.

While many of his peers have made lucrative careers in the media, Webb bears no resentment and now approaching his 60th birthday is proud to say he is still working. “My dad was a footballer in the ’60s and obviously he had to work after he retired. He always put it into my head that no matter how much money you earn, you still have to work after you retire. No matter what work you do, you have to do it. That was something that was ingrained in me.”