Newcastle United beat Liverpool on penalties at Wembley – No, it really did happen… | OneFootball

In the days before the Premier League and when English football was on the bones of its backside, the centenary of the Football League was marked by a number of events that took place between 1987 and 1988.

Viewed through the lens of 2024 and considering how Sky Sports and other productions now dissect every minutiae of the game, what the Football League deemed appropriate to celebrate such a historic landmark seems rather bizarre.

Even back then, these events didn’t really capture the public’s attention.

They were not well attended and the consensus at the time was that they’d been an abject failure.

There was an encounter at Wembley between a Football League XI and a Rest of the World XI (featuring Diego Maradona and Gary Lineker), as well as a match between League champions Everton and Bayern Munich, with Everton winning 3–1, a repeat of the scoreline of the second leg of the European Cup Winners Cup semi final at Goodison Park in 1985, at a time shortly before English clubs were banned from Europe.

There was also the Football League Centenary Trophy which was a competition between the sides who had finished in the top eight from the 1987/88 season. The tournament wasn’t a curtain raiser to mark the opening of the 1988/89 season as such, for whilst it began in August, it didn’t conclude until early October.

Owing to Newcastle United’s very credible eighth place finish, we secured a berth, losing in the semi final in extra time to Man United, who in the end, finished runners up to Arsenal.

It was a Michael O’Neill goal, also in extra time, against Wimbledon in front of 17,141 hardy souls at St James Park, that paved the way for that encounter with Man United.

The semi final, played at Old Trafford, attracted an even smaller attendance, a paltry 14,698 turned out in a stadium that at the time, could hold upwards of 60,000. A sign of the times perhaps but nevertheless, me and one of my mates were in the away end that night, trading insults with the Mancs who were sat in the seats above.

Such was my passion for music and all things Newcastle United back in the day, I would travel far and wide (had even been to Merseyside – if ya kna, ya kna) for the craic and had loyalty points been a thing, I’d have a darn sight more than the four me and the lad currently possess.

Towards the end of the 1988/89 season, when the Football League Centenary Tournament (also known as the Mercantile Credit Football Festival) played out over the weekend of 16th and 17th April at Wembley Stadium, me and my mate were also in attendance.

The tournament was the most bizarre spectacle.

Sixteen clubs drawn from all four Divisions participated and the old stadium accommodated fans from them all, at least it did on the Saturday, before half of the sides in the competition bit the dust, with only eight sides progressing to the competition’s finale on the Sunday.

This no doubt affected the attendance figures. Despite the hopes of the Football League, the tournament only attracted a crowd of 41,500 on the first day and this dropped to 17,000 for the second, in a stadium capable of holding 100,000. The attendance situation was not helped by London clubs such as Arsenal, Tottenham, West Ham and Chelsea failing to qualify.

At the time, hooliganism was a problem that blighted the English game and although those big clubs from London weren’t there, having fans from the likes of Newcastle, Sunderland, Leeds, Everton, Man U, Liverpool, Forest and Wolves all descending on Wembley and congregating in the same place, at the same time, seemed like a recipe for disaster.

To my recollection, the segregation in the stadium helped and the tournament passed off without any unsavoury incidents.

Me and my mate had travelled down on the Armstrong Galley Clipper on the Friday night, leaving from outside the old Odeon at midnight and were staying at my aunt’s, in a very desirable suburb not far from Wembley itself.

Let’s just say the weekend got off to a less than auspicious start, when my cousin appeared in her dressing gown, leaving nothing to the imagination, as we were tucking into a full English, cooked up by aunty. My mate’s inability to keep his eyes (and his inner most thoughts) to himself, made for an uncomfortable episode, before we dumped our gear and headed off in the direction of the Empire Stadium.

The tournament was won by Nottingham Forest, who beat Sheffield Wednesday in the final on penalties.

As for Newcastle United, following a goalless draw with Liverpool, we progressed via a penalty shootout, before suffering the ignominy of losing to Fourth Division Tranmere Rovers, typical Newcastle.

With our hopes extinguished, me and my mate headed for the solitude of the bars of central London before heading back to my aunt’s in a very drunken state.

After my mate’s faux pas at breakfast the previous day, we gave thanks to Newcastle United’s appalling cup record, which gave us a gilt-edged excuse to politely decline another evening’s board and lodgings, and hungover to hell, we set off in search of transportation back to the North East a day earlier than planned. HTL.