Arsenal star Ian Wright was left devastated and in tears after one particular time in his Gunners career
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Ian Wright says he “never cried so much” as when Arsenal suffered a gut-wrenching defeat in the last minute of extra-time against Real Zaragoza to lose the Cup Winners’ Cup final.
The Gunners were bidding to win the European trophy for a second consecutive season in 1994/95, having beaten Parma in the showpiece game a year earlier.
John Hartson struck to cancel out Juan Esnaider’s goal in the second half and force extra-time. But with one minute to go until a penalty shoot-out, a dipping long-range wonder-strike from Nayim won it for the Spaniards.
“With us in the final the second year – and Nayim from the half-way line – it was devastating,” Wright said on the Stick to Football podcast.
“I’d started thinking, ‘right, I’m going to take a penalty, I’m going to probably get the fifth one’, [then I] looked over and it was the last second.
“It was like ripping your heart out and letting you see it before you fall over.
Wright described the pain of losing a final (Image credit: Jon Hobley/MI News/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
“When he hit it, I looked at the goalie and you could see he was backtracking. He’s like, ‘Jesus!’, and then when you saw it go in – I’ve never cried so much.
Get FourFourTwo Newsletter
The best features, fun and footballing quizzes, straight to your inbox every week.
“Opportunism is what I thought to myself. You’re not expecting it. I’m thinking about the penalties and then ‘bam!’ he does that.
“What happened was I was this side, and all their fans were down [the other side], and you know when you see other fans erupt – my heart was broken, trampled on.”
Wright would recover from the disappointment to win a superb Premier League and FA Cup double with the Gunners in 1997/98, his final season at Arsenal.
He left north London as the club’s all-time top scorer with 185 goals, until Thierry Henry later took the record from him by reaching 228.
Alasdair Mackenzie is a freelance journalist based in Rome, and a FourFourTwo contributor since 2015. When not pulling on the FFT shirt, he can be found at Reuters, The Times and the i. An Italophile since growing up on a diet of Football Italia on Channel 4, he now counts himself among thousands of fans sharing a passion for Ross County and Lazio.
