On this day in 1992, Sunderland played away at Cambridge United in the preliminary stages of a reformed Anglo-Italian Cup. We drew the game 1-1 but finished bottom of the group having been beaten by Birmingham City.
The competition had replaced the old Full Members Cup and was resurrected in this new format. The Full Members Cup was a competition initially invented to fill the gap in the fixture schedule following English teams’ ban from European competitions due to the Heysel disaster in 1985. All
of the teams in the top two divisions participated until 1992, when the Premier League was formed and the Full Members Cup was abandoned.
The Anglo-Italian Cup was a competition designed for the clubs of England’s second tier to play in an international competition against Italy’s second tier, Serie B. All 24 teams were split into eight groups of three and played two games each in the preliminary round. Only the group winners went on to play against their Italian counterparts in what turned out to be a short-lived competition.
Group 8 turned out to be the tightest of these preliminary rounds, with West Ham and Bristol Rovers having exactly the same points, goals scored, goals conceded and away goals as each other. West Ham proceeded to the international stage as the result of a coin toss! And they say a penalty shoot-out is a cruel way to lose a match!
Attendances were abysmal, and the competition never gained any real traction. Fixtures were shoehorned into the already congested schedule and did not appeal to the supporters at all. A mere 2,199 were in attendance at the Abbey Stadium to see Gordon Armstrong put The Lads 1-0 up, before they conceded an equaliser in the second half.
The group stages were split into two pots, with two English tables and two Italian tables, with games played only against their foreign opponents. The winners of the English leagues then played a two-legged semi-final, with Derby County beating Brentford 5-5 on away goals. The Italian side of the draw saw Cremonese beat Bari 6-3 over the two legs.
The final was played at Wembley Stadium, with Cremonese beating Derby 3-1 to lift the cup. 37,000 supporters attended that day, the highest recorded attendance in the competition, but only two years later, the final between Notts County and Ascoli attracted only 11,700.
The competition was never popular. Fixture congestion, poor attendances and general apathy led to the Anglo-Italian Cup being abandoned in 1996.
