8. Shevchenko and Rebrov at Dynamo
Dynamo Kiev began the ’90s by edging out CSKA Moscow to become league champions of the USSR, but it's the Andriy Shevchenko-inspired side of ’99 who are remembered most fondly.
They successfully adapted to life in the newly-formed Ukrainian Premier League after the break-up of the Soviet Union, winning nine successive league titles. Valeri Lobanovsky’s return as boss, coinciding with the emergence of Shevchenko and strike partner Sergei Rebrov, helped them flourish in Europe.
In 1998/99, Rebrov’s goal thwarted Arsenal at Wembley, before the north Londoners were soundly beaten in Ukraine. Dynamo went on to reach the Champions League semi-finals.
9. Football Italia
While television production company Chrysalis were filming Paul Gascoigne’s recuperation from a knee injury, the Geordie scamp noted it was a shame that nobody in Britain would see him play for Lazio. A lightbulb popped, Chrysalis bought the rights to Serie A, then sold them to Channel 4. The original plan was for the coverage to be hosted by Gazza, but that was quietly shelved when they realised quite what a loose cannon he was.
Chrysalis instead promoted researcher James Richardson, and he was soon to be seen sipping cappuccinos outside an Italian cafe, gesticulating at a mysterious pink newspaper. Regular Sunday afternoon servings of Baggio, Batistuta & Co. meant Football Italia quickly had more than three million viewers – many of whom were yet to bite the bullet and sign up to Sky Sports.
10. Croatia
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s Davor Suker wearing a natty tablecloth. Whether lobbing Peter Schmeichel at Euro 96 or scoring six goals at France 98, the striker’s goals put Croatia firmly on the map.
Built on playmaker Robert Prosinecki’s laconic promptings, captain Zvonimir Boban’s bustling invention and the resilience of centre-backs Igor Stimac and Slaven Bilic, Croatia loved playing football together. Independent after the break-up of Yugoslavia, the nation got their own team in 1993 with a collective spirit seldom witnessed before or since. They could play, too: Prosinecki’s free-kick against Jamaica at France 98 was ingenious. In beating Germany 3-0 in the quarter-finals, they secured “the most perfect moment in Croatian football history,” said Suker.
11. Parma
Any parent will tell you it's tricky to choose between their children. So how do Parma fans manage to decide which ’90s vintage they prefer? Do you go for the early-90s UEFA and Cup Winners’ Cup-winning team of Asprilla, Zola and Brolin, or the late-90s Serie A runners-up and UEFA Cup winners, which featured Buffon, Cannavaro and Crespo?
The former eschewed Serie A’s stereotypical catenaccio pragmatism for thrilling attacking verve and brio under manager Nevio Scala. Tino Asprilla and Gianfranco Zola provided the stardust, Tomas Brolin the creativity and Lorenzo Minotti the defensive ballast.
19. Bulgaria
As Bulgaria’s players caught a flight from Dallas to Chicago after defeat to Nigeria at the 1994 World Cup, the Lions’ finals record read: P16, W0, D6, L10. Halfway through it, star striker Hristo Stoichkov stood up. “We are going to give the Greeks a real hiding,” barked the Barcelona striker.
Trailing to a Lothar Matthaus penalty as the clock struck 74 minutes, the unfancied Bulgarians – a team full of never-say-die journeymen plus the quality of Stoichkov and Emil Kostadinov – fought back. The former, on his daughter’s birthday, curled home a glorious free-kick, before a bullet header by follicly-challenged Hamburg midfielder Yordan Letchkov.
Throw in ‘Bulgarian Wolf’ Trifon Ivanov’s magnificent mullet and this was a team to love, as much as Stoichkov’s arrogance. “No Bulgarian player will ever match my achievements,” the ’94 Ballon d’Or winner later said. He’s probably right.
20. Deportivo La Coruna
There was always something of the underdog about Deportivo. On May 14, 1994, they were a 90th-minute penalty away from winning La Liga. Defender Miroslav Djukic would take it; regular spot-kick-taker Donato had been hauled off, and striker Bebeto had a heart the size of a pea. Barely able to stand under the pressure, Djukic’s tame effort was saved and the title was Barcelona’s.
“It was the worst moment of my life,” Djukic later admitted. “I had to stop thinking about it because I nearly drove myself mad.”
Underpinned by defensive-midfield machines Mauro Silva and Donato, plus one-club left-midfielder Fran, Depor recovered to lift the Copa del Rey in 1995. Hitherto solid, the signing of squat Brazil playmaker Djalminha added the creative spark in 1997, and he scored 26 league goals in 87 appearances in his first three La Liga seasons. Watching Spanish football on Sky Sports, Djalminha’s was an otherworldly talent.
In a bonkers 1999/2000 season – in which Real Madrid lost eight times to finish outside the top four for the first time in 22 years – Javier Irureta’s squad of castaways, young tyros and experienced heads won the title that had eluded them six years before.
35. Fernando Redondo
Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way. Yes, the thing you most associate with Fernando Redondo took place in April 2000. No, that doesn’t matter. The Real Madrid defensive midfielder’s backheel nutmeg of helpless Manchester United defender Henning Berg was the tip of an iceberg so enormous it would have scuppered the Titanic in five seconds flat, instead of leaving Leonardo DiCaprio’s curtains freezing in the water for more than half an hour.
36. Roberto Baggio
No player better defines ’90s football than Roberto Baggio. A playmaker of rare technique for Fiorentina, Juventus and both Milan clubs (among others), Baggio could also be a pure goalscorer. When Carlo Ancelotti passed up the chance to sign him for Parma in 1997 because he couldn’t play in a front two, he went on to score a career-best 22 league goals for Bologna.
“The angels sing in his legs,” former Fiorentina manager Aldo Agroppi once commented. He only secured four major honours as a player and many choose to remember the horrid penalty miss that cost Italy the 1994 World Cup, but to question the contents of Baggio’s trophy cabinet is to dismiss Vincent van Gogh as he sold only one painting in his lifetime.
“I have never told anyone this before, but I still feel bad about that penalty,” the 1993 Ballon d’Or winner told FFT earlier this year. “It was the day football broke my heart.” And millions more all around the world, Roberto.
37. A glut of player-managers
Kenny Dalglish’s success as Liverpool’s player-manager in the late-80s inspired a splurge in pitch-dwelling gaffers over the next decade. In 1990, Peter Reid was named player-boss of Manchester City. He started well, playing regularly as the Sky Blues twice finished fifth, but a sharp decline saw him sacked in 1993.
But the undisputed home of 1990s player-managers was Stamford Bridge. First, Glenn Hoddle arrived, pissed off Tony Cascarino by being a show-off in training, signed Ruud Gullit, then left. Gullit took up the baton, brought in Gianluca Vialli, won the 1997 FA Cup, then left. Next it was Vialli’s turn. He won the FA Cup, but was sadly unable to sign a player capable of managing.
38. Tony Yeboah
“NO NET IS SAFE FROM THE MAN WHO SHOOTS TO KILL!” bellowed the words on the back of the video released in Tony Yeboah’s honour in the mid-90s. The Ghanaian had only been at Leeds United for a year, but he had already sent a wrecking ball crashing through the Premier League.
Yeboah had impressed at Eintracht Frankfurt, twice becoming Bundesliga top scorer, but a fallout with manager Jupp Heynckes saw him join Leeds for £3.4 million in January 1995. Yeboah netted 12 Premier League goals in that campaign, and then added eight more in the opening two months of 1995/96.
Two of those goals earned the striker back-to-back goal-of-the-month awards – his ferocious volley against Liverpool, the club he’d supported as a youngster, and then a thunderbolt finish against Wimbledon. Both were walloped in off the underside of the bar: Yeboah knew how to make his goals look spectacular. George Graham’s arrival resulted in Yeboah’s exit to Hamburg in 1997, but he remains a cult hero at Elland Road.
40. Jack Charlton’s Ireland
Big Jack’s stint in charge was the golden era for the Boys in Green. They beat England 1-0 at Euro 88, reached the quarter-finals of their first World Cup in 1990 and famously beat Italy at USA 94. The highlight? Jack and John Aldridge losing their s**t with a dithering fourth official.
41. Chilavert’s free-kicks
Long, long before the days of YouTube, stories were told of a heroic (and bonkers) goalkeeper from a previously unheralded land smashing in some belting free-kicks. The mystery that surrounded the Paraguayan icon Jose Luis Chilavert was a significant part of his appeal.
42. ClubCall
There was little to rival the excitement of flicking over to Teletext and seeing the headline “Brazilian superstar linked”. A long premium-rate phone call later, and you’d know your club were actually going to appoint a chef from Rio de Janeiro to the catering staff. Great...
47. Struggling commentators
These days, modern mic men are more or less unanimous with their pronunciations, but it wasn’t always that way. There were arguments over Gus Poyet (Poy-et or Poy-ay), Espen Baardsen (Bard-son or Bord-son), and of course, Peter Ndlovu (Und-love and Und-lo-vu).
52. George Weah
It was from a Verona corner back in ’96 that Weah produced the moment which defined his career. Defending at the far post, George collected the stray corner eight yards from his own goal-line, and just started running. He beat two men on halfway, then a third, and kept going until he reached the penalty area and fired in one of the most incredible solo goals of the decade.
53. Players with trademark celebrations
Quiz question: how many games did Roger Milla start at the 1990 World Cup? The striker became the face of Cameroon’s run to the quarter-finals, but the answer is none. He was a super sub throughout. Thankfully, that didn't stop the 38-year-old scoring four times and dancing by the corner flag on each occasion – one of the most iconic goal celebrations ever.
60. Modern superclubs being crap
Many enjoyed the novelty of David Moyes transforming Manchester United into a mid-table side, but in the ’90s, today’s elite clubs regularly stunk out the place. Chelsea were outside the top 10 in six straight seasons from 1991 to 1996, while Tottenham had a particularly forgettable decade, finishing in the bottom half four times (and enduring Alan Sugar in the boardroom), while Man City were famously relegated from the Premier League in 1996 and from the second tier in 1998.
The decade also witnessed Bayern Munich’s worst season in recent memory, as FC Hollywood came a disastrous 10th in the Bundesliga in 1991/92, also crashing out of the UEFA Cup and German Cup early on. A pre-cash PSG finished eighth in 1998, and ninth the following campaign. Atletico Madrid were relegated in 1999/00, having steadily regressed since they won La Liga in 1995/96, when city neighbours Real Madrid finished a now-unthinkable sixth.
61. Alessandro Del Piero
If Del Piero had listened to his mother, the history of Juventus would be vastly different. Worried that her youngest son would get injured playing outfield, she insisted little Alex would play in goal, believing that sweating less would be good for his health.
Elder brother Stefano intervened and Del Piero went on to score 290 goals in 705 matches for the Turin giants – including a hat-trick on his full debut – in a 19-season, 17-trophy career with the Old Lady. The definition of the Italian trequartista, so successful was Del Piero at cutting inside from the left edge of the penalty area to curl perfect shots into the top corner throughout Juve’s 1995/96 Champions League-winning season, that such strikes are now regarded in Italy as a ‘Gol alla Del Piero’.
62. Becks scoring from the halfway line
Brian Kidd grabbed Alex Ferguson by the arm. “Trust him,” commented assistant to gaffer as Fergie prepared to unleash the hairdryer at David Beckham for shooting from the halfway line against Wimbledon on August 17, 1996.
“You’ve seen the goal of the season already,” claimed Ferguson at full-time. “I have never seen it done before. Pele is the only one who came close to doing the same. Nayim? That was a miskick.” Yet three words from Beckham’s captain, and idol, meant more than anything his manager said. “Good goal, David,” said Eric Cantona. He was still smiling a week later.
At the time this was a promising 21-year-old who was nowhere near England’s Euro 96 squad. A central midfielder in the Man United youth team, Ferguson had eased Beckham into the first team on the right, taking advantage of the ball striking and crossing that would become his trademark.
He wasn’t even wearing his own boots. Look closely and you will see the word ‘Charlie’ stitched into his Adidas Predators. Beckham had asked to try some, and the only size eights they currently had available were a custom-made pair for Rangers’ Charlie Miller.
“That moment was the start of it: the attention, the press coverage, the fame,” he penned in his autobiography, My Side. “When my foot struck that ball, it kicked open the door to the rest of my life.”
He wasn’t wrong. Ferguson prevented Beckham from doing Match of the Day interviews in a vain attempt to shelter the youngster, as he had with Ryan Giggs. King Canute had an easier job. Within 12 months Becks had signed lucrative contracts with United, Brylcreem and Adidas, become a Three Lions regular and met a Spice Girl. Goals change games, but this goal changed a life.
63. Brilliantly rubbish away kits
Some things are so bad, they’re good, and away kits in the ’90s were often gloriously dreadful. The most infamous was the ‘invisible’ Man United change strip of 1995/96 that Alex Ferguson insisted was to blame for a poor first-half showing at Southampton. United trailed 3-0 at the interval, changed to blue and white, then won the second half 1-0. So Fergie was right – until his side lost 6-3 at The Dell in blue and white six months later.
Other top-flight classics include Chelsea’s ‘charcoal and tangerine’ monstrosity of 1994-96, Tottenham’s ‘yellow with a hint of birds**t’ (which somehow lasted from 1991 to 1995) and the Liverpool ‘ecru’ number of 1996/97 (a colour so obscure, the Reds’ use of it actually warrants a mention on its Wikipedia page).
There were some belters further down the league ladder, too. Bristol City’s purple and lime eyesore earned such a cult following, the club brought the colour scheme back in recent seasons. Although we reckon Peterborough are unlikely to do the same with their 1993/94 strip of red and, well, every other colour.
68. Kevin Pressman’s powerful penalty
The decade’s most famous goal by a keeper was by Jimmy Glass in 1999, but the Sheffield Wednesday custodian’s shootout cannonball against Wolves almost blasted the goal out of the ground.
69. Bonkers keeper kits
Jorge Campos may have been the king of the retina-blitzing keeper kits, but even he would be proud to wear Newcastle’s keeper top from ’96/97. It featured a silhouette of the Toon skyline backdropped by a delightful sunset. Then there was England’s Euro 96 atrocity and Tottenham’s floral ‘Magic Eye’ shirt. Pure class.
78. Players humiliating themselves in photo shoots
These days Premier League players hire publicity teams to manage their public image, but back in the ’90s things were a little more relaxed. So much so that when some cheeky little scamp asked Sheffield Wednesday’s Carlton Palmer to don a Sonic the Hedgehog costume, he thought nothing of it.
Years later, Wednesday’s Italian duo of Benito Carbone and Paolo Di Canio gamely tucked into an uncooked pizza, while down in London, Gianfranco Zola dressed up as Robin Hood, inexplicably.
On the tellybox, Gareth Southgate was only too happy to laugh off (and cash in on) his Euro 96 penalty miss by flogging pizzas alongside Chris Waddle and Stuart Pearce, while the self-depreciation level cranked up another notch during Peter Schmeichel’s accordion-tooting promo for bacon, not to mention Ian Wright’s Chicken Tonight ditty. But the daddy of them all? Kevin Keegan teaming up with the Honey Monster to finally put an end to Newcastle’s trophy drought.
79. Adverts that were better than movies
Football truly embraced the power of TV advertising, which actually treated fans as grown-ups. Reebok had Jarvis Cocker, Robbie Williams, Vic and Bob, Jimmy Hill and George Best dreaming they were in Ryan Giggs’s boots.
Sky Sports went upmarket and hired professional Yorkshireman Sean Bean to kick off the 1996/97 season, talking about all the “ecstasy, anguish, joy and despair”. “Football,” said Major Richard Sharpe, “we know how you feel about it. Because we feel the same.”
80. The original and best Ronaldo
Imagine O Fenomeno’s Real Madrid and Portugal namesake crossed with Lionel Messi, and you are getting close to just how good peak Ronaldo was in scoring 47 goals in 49 games in his sole season at Barcelona in 1996/97.
“He’s the most spectacular player I’ve ever seen,” team-mate Luis Enrique later told FFT. “He was strong – a beast. We’re now used to seeing Messi dribbling past six players, but not then.” No goal proves Enrique’s point more than the third Barça got in a 5-1 victory at Compostela in October 1996. His shins whacked throughout, the Brazilian beat six defenders from inside his own half to score an impossible solo effort. Coach Bobby Robson, after more than five decades in football, put his hands to his head in disbelief, utterly unable to comprehend what he’d just seen.
"Pele returns,” read the front page in the following day’s AS. Ronaldo was now box office, and he turned down a not-insignificant sum of money to appear in a photo shoot with Cindy Crawford because “they should have asked her to pose with me”.
“It’s awe-inspiring how good he is,” Robson told FFT in 1997. “But you just don’t know what’s going to happen to people, do you?”
Robson was right. After blazing a trail in Serie A following a world-record move to Inter, France 98 was supposed to be Ronaldo’s consecration as the world’s best player. The seizure that he suffered on the morning of the World Cup final is now interwoven into ’90s football lore. He was not on the teamsheet, but then reappeared and was clearly a shadow of himself in Brazil’s 3-0 defeat.
81. Milan being ridiculously good
It kicked off with jockeys and swans, concluded with kings and Zorro and counted on both Il Capitano and Billy throughout. Starting with Arrigo Sacchi’s European Cup-defending vintage, no side could combine such consistent success with misty-eyed affection as the Rossoneri in the ’90s.
Dubbed Signor Nessuno (Mr Nobody) by a sceptical Italian media because of his lower-league playing career – famously responding, “I never knew that to be a jockey you had to be a horse first” – Sacchi’s system-first and high-press approach paid huge dividends, despite a squad including Ruud Gullit, Frank Rijkaard and the ‘Swan of Utrecht’ Marco van Basten.
“It wasn’t just the Dutch,” Sacchi told FFT. “The system was ultimately the leader out on the pitch – it never got injured. It wasn’t the players who won all those big games. It was the way we played.” Though the aggressive offside line expertly deployed by Capitano Paolo Maldini, Alessandro ‘Billy’ Costacurta and Franco Baresi was the background for success, Milan could attack like no other Serie A side.
“Sacchi changed Italian football,” Alex Ferguson claimed. “The Italian mentality was to attack with caution. Then all of a sudden there was no more catenaccio, but a four-man defence, with a side that attacked, rather than wait to counter-attack.”
So good was the system – “they were tactically perfect,” said striker Gianluca Vialli – that when assistant Fabio Capello replaced Sacchi in ’91, he won three Serie A titles in a row – a streak that included a 58-match unbeaten record. They even beat an overconfident Barcelona 4-0 in the ’94 Champions League Final thanks to Il Genio Dejan Savicevic’s playmaking genius, Zorro Zvonimir Boban’s industry and the dynamism of Marcel Desailly.
As the decade neared its end, there was still time for another Rossoneri vintage, King George Weah leading Alberto Zaccheroni’s side to a ’98/99 title in Milan’s centenary campaign.
