Forest and Real have each won it back to back without winning their domestic league either season .
AC Milan too in 89/90.
Keith Gillespie was unplayable that night .
He must have bet on himself to be Man Of The Match. Sadly for him Asprilla got it.
yeah but it was still only champions that qualified.
Yes . That shows how awesomely strong Italian football was those years .
AC Milan circa 90-94 is the best team I have ever seen play football
2 Likes
When did the decline set in, would you say?
It probably peaked somewhere between 1988 to 1994 and went in to slow decline thereafter .
Juve '96 were a bloody good side
They were but the Italian league as a whole was probably in decline also I can never give them credit due to Moggi .
The absolute peak was the 87-91 years where Maradona at Napoli, the Dutch at AC Milan and the Germans at Inter Milan overlapped.
It was still the dominant league in Europe up to about 1998 or 1999 though, Iâd say, though there were signs from about 1995 on that it was soon to lose its grip.
A lot of that was due to off field stuff like how the league marketed itself and how Engand and Spain were beginning to move ahead in that regard, and how it wasnât dealing with hooliganism.
Iâd say by 2001 at the latest the decline had set in big time.
1 Like
Rud eile
In 1992 when the much heralded Cruyff managed Barcelona won the EC they were really let off the hook that night by Sampdoriaâs profligacy.
Wasnât there one chance where Lombardo dinked the ball just the wrong side of the post when he should have scored?
Barcelona were nervous as kittens that night.
Could have been ok . They were wasteful that night .
Koeman mugged them off. Barcelona played like Wimbledon that night
Soemthing that is much forgotten from that seasonâs European Cup campaign is that Barcelona were on the verge of going out in the second round against Kaiserslautern. They scored in injury time and got through to the newly created group phase, which wasnât branded as the Champions League - but it was exactly the same format as the 1992/93 competition, which is commonly thought to be the start of the âChampions Leagueâ era. They were put out in the second round in 92/93 by CSKA Moscow after throwing away a 2-0 lead at home in the second leg. Moscow went into that group with Rangers and Marseille.
1 Like
Barcelona were in a group with Prague, Benfica and Kyiv. Soccer was in general a lot more even then. Most of a countries best players (most) stayed in their own league. Barca were not exactly dominant in the group given the talent they had at their disposal
1 Like
Well in fairness to him he was saying Ogs wasnât the man for the job at old Trafford a few weeks back
This is that Kaiserslautern-Barcelona tie I was talking about. Barcelona won 2-0 at home in the first leg but then Kaiserslautern went 3-0 ahead in Germany and missed a gilt edge one on one chance to to go 4-0 up. Bakero scored with a looping header from an acute angle with 10 seconds left of normal time to put Barcelona through.
1 Like