The Crazy Gang: how Wimbledon beat Liverpool in 1988

On 14 May 1988, in front of 98,203 at Wembley, Wimbledon beat Liverpool 1-0 to win the FA Cup. Eleven years earlier that club had not even been in the Football League.

Where Wimbledon came from

Wimbledon won three consecutive Southern League titles between 1974 and 1977, and for 1977-78 they were elected into the Football League, taking Workington's place. Nine years after that election they were in the First Division: five promotions and two relegations in that span.

The 1987-88 season was only their second in the top flight and Bobby Gould's first as manager, succeeding Dave Bassett. They finished seventh on 57 points.

And where Liverpool came from

Their opponents were the league champions, and not an ordinary set of champions. Kenny Dalglish's Liverpool finished that season on 90 points, nine clear of Manchester United, losing two of forty matches. They went twenty-nine games unbeaten from the start, equalling Leeds' record, until losing 1-0 at Goodison Park on 20 March.

They were chasing a second Double, after 1985-86. It would have made them the first English club to do it twice.

The goal, and the one that did not count

Lawrie Sanchez scored in the first half: a Dennis Wise free kick from the left and a looping header over Bruce Grobbelaar. It was the only goal of the match.

But minutes earlier something happened that almost nobody remembers. Peter Beardsley was fouled, played on, went round Dave Beasant and put the ball in the net. Referee Brian Hill had already blown for the foul rather than playing advantage, so the goal did not stand. Liverpool took the free kick and did not score.

The penalty

In the second half Liverpool were awarded a penalty for a Clive Goodyear challenge on John Aldridge; many judged it harsh, and on the replays Goodyear appears to reach the ball. Aldridge took it himself and Beasant dived to his left and saved it. Aldridge was substituted shortly afterwards.

Beasant thus became the first goalkeeper to save a penalty in an FA Cup final at Wembley. And in lifting the trophy he was also the first goalkeeper of the Wembley era to do so as captain.

What that team cost

Wimbledon's squad was cheap to the point of comedy. Beasant had arrived in 1979 from Edgware Town, an amateur club. Vinnie Jones cost ten thousand pounds from Wealdstone, and before turning professional he had worked as a hod carrier on building sites. Sanchez cost thirty thousand from Reading, and held a management sciences degree from Loughborough that he earned while playing.

A month after the final, Wimbledon sold Beasant to Newcastle for £850,000.

To reach Wembley they had knocked out Luton Town in the semi-final, 2-1 at White Hart Lane on 9 April in front of 25,963, with a John Fashanu penalty and a Wise winner. The other semi-final was Liverpool 2-1 Nottingham Forest, at Hillsborough: the same tie at the same ground that, a year later, would end in the 1989 disaster.

""The Crazy Gang have beaten the Culture Club." The line that closed the broadcast of that match."

There is a context that is easily forgotten now: in 1988 English clubs were still banned from European competition under the sanction imposed after the Heysel disaster of 1985, and the ban would run until 1990. Neither the league champions nor the cup winners would be playing in Europe that season. That final carried no continental place at all: it was worth exactly what it was, a trophy and an afternoon. Perhaps that is part of why it is remembered so vividly — there was nothing else at stake, only the match itself.

The end of the story is considerably less cheerful than the match. Wimbledon left Plough Lane in 1991 and began ground-sharing with Crystal Palace, more than seven miles from the neighbourhood the club was named after. In 2002 a commission authorised their relocation to Milton Keynes, more than fifty miles away, and in 2004 the club was renamed MK Dons. Supporters who refused to follow it founded AFC Wimbledon that same year, started in the ninth tier of English football, and were back in the Football League by 2011 — five promotions in nine seasons, which is very nearly the same climb the 1988 side had made. The team that won that FA Cup, as it was, ceased to exist.

One thing should be said about the nickname: it was not born that day. They were already the Crazy Gang before the final.

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