Lost Teams story

Wimbledon 1988: The Crazy Gang Beat Liverpool at Wembley

Wimbledon FC at the 1988 FA Cup final.

The score at Wembley on 14 May 1988, between the champions of England and a club that had been playing non league football eleven years earlier.

Who they were

Wimbledon were elected to the Football League in 1977 from the Southern League. They went up through the divisions and reached the First Division in 1986.

They were known as the Crazy Gang, a name that came from what the players did to each other rather than to opponents: clothes destroyed, cars interfered with, new signings treated as a project. The football was direct and the reputation was not flattering.

Liverpool

Liverpool had won the league that season, losing twice. They had Barnes, Beardsley and Aldridge. They were the strongest team in the country and had been for most of a decade.

The goal

In the thirty seventh minute Dennis Wise took a free kick from the left. Lawrie Sanchez got in front of his marker and glanced a header that looped over Bruce Grobbelaar and under the bar.

The penalty

In the second half Clive Goodyear challenged John Aldridge and the referee gave a penalty. Aldridge took it himself.

Dave Beasant had been told that Aldridge favoured the goalkeeper's left when the keeper held his ground. He went that way and pushed it out.

No penalty had ever been saved in an FA Cup final before.

Afterwards

Beasant was the captain, so he was the one who climbed the steps to collect the trophy, the first goalkeeper to do it in an FA Cup final.

Wimbledon never won another major trophy. In 2003 the club was moved to Milton Keynes and renamed, over the objections of its supporters, who started a new club that has since climbed back into the Football League.

The 1988 cup belongs to a club that no longer exists in the form that won it.