Bleep tests, alcohol bans and Gazza: Italia 90 set the bar for England and sports science | Sean Ingle

Bobby Robson employed a head of human performance for the World Cup and, despite wariness, the players got on boardThe eve of Italia 90. Gazza’s tears, England’s heartache, and the cascading emotions of a World Cup that sang and ultimately stung still lie ahead. For now, the sports scientist tasked with acclimatising Bobby Robson’s side to the Italian summer is using cutting-edge technology to assess each player’s fitness: a BBC microcomputer, a dot-matrix printer, and a few clunky Polar heart-rate monitors.Some in the England setup initially regard Prof John Brewer,…