With the 2024 Champions League final happening tonight, we thought we’d give you some excellent pre-match reading from issue 50 courtesy of the brilliant Tim Vickery, recollecting his experience of the 1992 European Cup final between Barcelona and Sampdoria.
How can you ask me to do this? Choose just one moment from something that has been there for as long as I can remember. From turning up early for school so we could play – during break times too and, at the risk of turning this into a Monty Python sketch, many times all we had was a tennis ball. In the park after school and at weekends. My mate’s older brother with some 1970 World Cup stickers, Ramón Mifflin of Peru and the realisation that there was a whole wide world out there. Starting my own sticker album in 1971 with my dad, and Pat Jennings the first one we stuck in. Outclassed by the Germans in ’72 (an uncle brought me back a programme) and the 1-1 draw with Poland in ’73 which stopped us going to my first World Cup – wrote about it for school. First matches, all a bit scary (this was the 70s). That volley I scored that reminded everyone of Dennis Tueart. Football losing out to music for a few years, and winning the battle back during Mexico 86, to which David Pleat’s Tottenham side was a beautiful, brief and predictably ill-fated continuation. And all those subsequent times in the press box or behind the microphone. And amid all of this, if I really must narrow down to one, then let me take you down, ’cause we’re going to… Wembley Stadium on 20 May 1992, when Barcelona and Sampdoria duelled for the right to be called the champions of Europe.
Why? In large part because I was just a few days away from turning 27, and from my current vantage point, hurtling towards 60, it’s hard to think of a more perfect age. Especially when the stars are aligning in a manner so special that if you follow the course they chart then along with a wonderful memory you might also be placed on the path of righteousness. It was the best of times, and it was the best of times.
It was the best of weathers, too. To welcome the two teams from southern Europe, London went into one of its glorious but vexingly sporadic spring heatwaves. It was the perfect setting for a meeting of two glamour sides, neither of which, astonishingly, had won the title before.
From today’s perspective, that might not sound too surprising in reference to Sampdoria. But they were the legitimate champions of the world’s outstanding league, and with Channel 4’s Serie A coverage at its peak, they were far better known to the average British fan than Barcelona. Bankrolled by the oil magnate Paolo Mantovani, Sampdoria were enjoying a golden era. The vastly experienced Serbian coach Vujadin Boškov had taken the team to two Cup Winners’ Cup finals, going down to Barcelona in 1989 before beating Anderlecht a year later. Then they won their first Serie A title by a comfortable margin of five points (in the days of two points for a win) ahead of Milan and Inter. And now their collection of world- class attacking talent stood ready to be crowned European champions; Vialli and Mancini were an exciting and imaginative front pair, magnificently supplied by the veteran Brazilian Toninho Cerezo, with the bald Lombardo looking like a postman but moving like a greyhound down the right wing. The international keeper Pagliuca, meanwhile, was the last line of a typically functional Italian defence.
Barcelona’s win against the same opponents three years earlier seemed of little relevance. That was the Cup Winners’ Cup – small change, a mere bagatelle. This was the real deal, the trophy they had been chasing in almost blind despair ever since Real Madrid’s domination of the early years. Nerves all a jitter, they had fluffed their previous two finals, in 1961 and 1986. Would the occasion prove too much for Johan Cruyff’s men?
We would soon find out, because, just like that, in blazing sunshine, the referee had blown and we were underway. When I look back at this game, one of the things which strikes me most is how the evening was a little bit then, a little bit now.
Some parts of the story could not possibly belong to the contemporary era. One, happily for me at the time, was the ease of buying tickets. This was one of the great showpiece events in the world’s biggest sport, and getting a seat in the house was both possible and affordable. Another was the absolute lack of razzmatazz. It shocked me even then. Hang on a minute, I thought. We’ve kicked off. WE’VE KICKED OFF! Come on, concentrate, it’s already started.
The warm night did not help, but Cruyff’s team did not press with anything like the intensity of the model established by Guardiola. And there is far less mass rushing to the ref in an attempt to get an opponent sent off. These details aside, the quality of both the players and the spectacle which unfolded as night gently fell on north-west London would not be out of place in a contemporary game between two of the best teams in the Premier League. Give me half a chance and I’ll go further. I will argue that this match was effectively the start of the Premier League.
It is worth recalling where English football was in 1992. The tyranny prevailed of two banks of four. Playmakers such as Cantona and Nigel Clough stood unmolested between the lines and worked their magic. Under Graham Taylor, England were about to stink the place out at Euro 92. Flailing desperately in populism, Taylor had declared his hatred for “sophisticated football.” And then along came Sampdoria and, especially, Barcelona to show that the sophisticated can be constructed from the beautifully simple. And what happened on an English field on 20 May 1992, in front of a huge, enthralled TV audience, set the bar. Back then it seemed like a different sport from that which was taking place on a weekly basis in the old First Division. Millions got the message. And with much better pitches, a global elite of players and, crucially, an open-minded approach to ideas of play, before long the Premier League could produce matches like this one.
The most striking aspect of this game – made so much stronger in my mind as a consequence of being there – was Barcelona’s creation of space, the way that the ball was moved diagonally to open up the field.
True, there was an important concession to pragmatism. Jose Marí Bakero, Barcelona’s most dynamic midfielder, was placed on Toninho Cerezo, and the two of them largely cancelled each other out. Other than that, the team was set up to construct – especially Ronald Koeman in the middle of the back line. The Dutchman would not do a lot of defending, but he was there for his raking passes, his upfield sorties and his shots from open play and free kicks. The young Guardiola had immense responsibility covering for Koeman. With my Barcelona scarf (a couple of years earlier it had been the first foreign city I visited), he was my biggest pre-game worry. But he carried out his role with class and maturity, often playing a fine first ball forward. And so Barcelona flowed. With Julio Salinas wide on the right, Hristo Stoichkov wide left and Michael Laudrup in the middle as a kind of false nine, they made the pitch huge and weaved pretty patterns all over it.
There is one exchange of diagonal passes I will never forget – a long one- two between Nando and Stoichkov and then the killer ball which Laudrup just failed to reach. The action ebbed and flowed. Stoichkov’s shot came back off the post. Both keepers made good saves. With the pace of Lombardo or the flick- ons of Srečko Katanec, sent upfield once it was clear how tightly Cerezo was being marked, Sampdoria were making the bullets for Gianluca Vialli to fire. And he fired them wide.
We were heading for 0-0 and penalties. It was the one thing I didn’t want. The game did not deserve it. My preference was with Barcelona, but I would take a Sampdoria win over the cruel, cheap drama of the shoot-out. And so I took Koeman’s late, unstoppable rocket of a free kick as a personal message from the gods of the game. And the final classy touch – to collect the trophy Barcelona changed from their rather hideous orange change strip into their proper colours.
Back on the tube with delirious Catalans, off into the Soho night in search of fresh adventure, a little seed was planted in my head. Maybe I could make some kind of a living writing about this. I was just a few days short of 27, and everything was going my way.
Tim Vickery has been voted Foreign Correspondent of The Year three times by Brazilian journalists and praised five times (and you bet he’s counting) in the column of the great Tostão. He covers South American football when he’s not otherwise engaged thinking about music and clothes. @Tim_Vickery
