The 14th of April 1999 is the day that I saw my team involved in possibly the best game I have seen played between two English teams. Liverpool vs Newcastle circa 96 is the best Premier League clash, but this game pips it for me.
An FA Cup semi-final replay may be just one of the last truly memorable cup games of my lifetime, a game that I look back on and bask at the level of both teams and the drama it gave us. A Manchester United side on the verge of greatness and an Arsenal side on for a potential back-to-back Double. Sir Alex Ferguson had an adversary in Arsene Wenger who pushed him, and they brought out the best and sometimes the worst in each other.
The two teams had played out 0-0 draw after extra time a few days prior. Then, under the lights at Villa Park the stage was set, the two best teams in the country with a heated rivalry between managers and players under the floodlights in one of the most iconic grounds in the country.
Arguably the best league fixture in my lifetime might be the Liverpool 4-3 against Newcastle in the 1995/96 season, but for this game, there was more riding on it than there was that night if that were possible.
Both sides were going for the league title again and United still carried the scars from the previous season losing the title after being in front to the point Fred Done of bookmaker Betfred paid out on United, despite Arsenal going on to win the league.
Getting home after school the day of this fixture and having to wait with a combination of excitement and potential dread before the game made the spectacle of the event massive to a young 9-year-old me.
Today it would be built up with combined XIs/tactical analysis and relentless pontificating from every corner of the football media, this would have been the biggest match of the season so far and given how these games had been in recent years it was appointment television.
This is the rivalry the success of the Premier League is built upon; the current Manchester City vs Liverpool rivalry is a great watch technically but doesn’t carry the same sense of event that this did by a long way.
Having the game at Villa Park also gave the game a different feel, today this would be at Wembley and there would be no replay, so this was one of the last days of two teams rocking up to another ground with each team filling half the stadium and an atmosphere you just don’t get at semi-finals now.
Also, the brilliant quality of a midweek game in April is starting a game in the daylight and finishing under floodlights just gives it another slight edge and a quality that is brilliant for a spectator inside the ground and as a fan watching it at home.
Normally a game of this magnitude would be a cagey and cautious affair, a dull bore fest described as a tactical battle by people on Twitter, however this did not. After a long punt up the field from Peter Schmeichel found it’s way to David Beckham who plays an unorthodox 1-2 with Teddy Sheringham and then on his own from outside the box whips a brilliant shot past a despairing David Seaman and it’s first blood to United.
United went in 1-0 at the break but you knew that was not going to be enough, both teams would have chances, but the best fell to Ole Gunner Solskjaer in the second half who drew a superb save from David Seaman. Then with twenty minutes to go Arsenal’s Talisman Dennis Bergkamp hit a deflected shot past Schmeichel, but the drama had been raised a notch and the match almost slipped away from United.
Peter Schmeichel fumbled a Bergkamp shot but Nicolas Anelka had strayed offside much to the relief of every United fan, so 1-1 heading towards full time would and at this point you would take extra time just to regroup but Roy Keane was sent off for his second yellow card so United were going to have to do this with 10 men.
The toughest game of their season so far was about to get tougher, if you were a neutral this game had everything so far, but this game was not going to drift into extra time without more potential drama so enter Ray Parlour.
Parlour ran at Phil Neville in stoppage time and Neville brings him down in a decision that to this day I still can’t fathom what he was hoping to achieve, so a penalty in stoppage time for Arsenal win and to end United’s treble bid and to take momentum towards the League fell to Dennis Bergkamp.
Bergkamp had scored a penalty past Schmeichel in Euro 92 in a shootout so he had whatever psychological advantage an already great player can have. But Schmeichel guessed the right way and pulled off a save that kept the dream alive, Neville would commit a similar sin a year later for England but no Schmeichel to bail him out as England lost 3-2 to Romania to exit Euro 2000.
Bergkamp and Schmeichel would carry on their own personal due in extra time with the Dutchman forcing a superb save from the Great Dane, watching this game was torture as you knew Arsenal would find a way through as United had 10 men and would soon tire.
They were the best team in the country apart from United and those games had a needle as well as a class that defined a generation before every game was analysed and pulled apart in every detail. There is something about seeing two rivals who don’t like each other go at it, a kind of sense that neither team wants to concede an inch but will put everything on the line to get one over the other.
It is extremely hard to believe that Ryan Giggs didn’t start this game, even more to say he was not playing that well at the time but sometimes it just takes a moment or in this case a rather weary pass from Patrick Vieira.
He takes the ball from the halfway line and slaloms between 3/4/5/6 players, my memory of that goal is of slowly rising in my seat sort of moving with him from the comfort of my chair at home. Contorting my body as if I were Giggs way before Virtual Reality was even a thing, when he roofs the ball into the net it was everything.
A release of joy and just losing all my faculties and volume control as only a football fan can, you knew this could be the moment where you dare to believe but in the moment it’s just all about hugging the people watching it with you trying to comprehend how he did that.
No matter how smart we all think we are and how we can articulate greatness it’s always after the event, with your brain becoming complete mush for about 1 or 2 minutes afterwards. All I remember is the whistle blowing and that they had done it, held out against our biggest domestic rivals and something special was happening.
Nostalgia can play tricks on you sometimes as you can look back at something and say that this was the best moment of your life but it’s relative to our human experiences, but for football this era is as perfect as it gets, and this game is a true symbol of it.
Arsenal for me never had a better team under Wenger, this had a perfect blend of the old school English players in Seaman, Adams, and Parlour but the foreign brilliance of Bergkamp/Vieira and Petit. A hero is only as good as the villain in any story and this team was a perfect epitome of it, you hated them, but you also respected them because they could play but also dish it out.
Like I said before, they brought out the best and the worst in each other, but I will always take that rather than a rivalry which keeps everything civil. Let’s face it football has gained a lot in recent years but also lost just as much, the ability to lose yourself in a game or a season is kind of lost with 24 hour rolling news and analysis from talking head ex-pundits to wannabe internet tacticos.
Football has that power to give you a night to remember for the right or wrong reasons depending on how it goes but the important thing is that you don’t forget it. Sean Bean in a 97/98 Sky Sports advert said it’s Ecstasy, Anguish, Joy and Despair and as a kid you feel every one of those emotions because it’s the first time feeling them, but you don’t want to quit no matter what.
The rivalry would go on, but this was the peak of it, United went on to a Treble and Arsenal won nothing, but it could easily have seen Arsenal win back-to-back Doubles and United win nothing, the margins are so small, and history could have been so different.
Sometimes when you witness something truly special you just know, Sky tries everything to say this team or title race is the best ever but it’s simple over egging the pudding. If you see something great it doesn’t need hyping up its just kind of obvious, you watch in awe and amazement as sometimes you can’t quite put your finger on it, but you just know.
I’m not going to bore you with talking about a detailed breakdown of this game or pontificate that it reached some higher plain of existence as this is not the Anfield Wrap, instead I will just say if you saw then you know and if you were there you can’t forget but it’s always worth revisiting like a comfort blanket and with it being 25 years since it happened it is certainly worth revisiting.
A milestone for the club and for myself personally as I can recall where I was for pretty much every game that season, mostly on the sofa but still. This game fills a special place for me not just for the result but the manner in it and the opposition and the stakes coming together in a perfect storm, this game is a perfect night capped off with a goal fit enough to win any game and if you can I implore you to rewatch it if you can.
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