The Early Years of the Anglo-Italian Cup : Including Glory for Swindon

The Anglo-Italian Cup - Swindon Town Roasting Roma and Nullifying Napoli

Football Historian Petter Kenny-Jones returns to The Sporting Blog was a fabulous piece about the now-defunct Anglo-Italian Cup

To understand the origins of the Anglo-Italian Cup, there is another competition that needs to be analysed first. The Inter-Cities Fairs Cup or the European Fairs Cup, which was fundamentally the original UEFA Cup (now Europa League), was designed to promote trade between European cities. It progressed from an economically fuelled football event to a more competitive trophy for teams that had finished as runners up in the leagues or as victors in cup competitions.

Swindon Town - The original winners of the Anglo-Italian League Cup

This link to the Anglo-Italian Cup came with Swindon Town winning the League Cup in 1969. As they were a team in the English Third Division they were not seen as a desirable side for the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup who had decided that no team from the third tier could enter the competition. And so, a friendly match was arranged against the Coppa Italia champions, Roma, to compensate Swindon for their cup success.

This unique match-up saw The Robins fly to the Stadio Olimpico for the first leg of the, then called Anglo-Italian League Cup. Goals from Fabio Enzo and Renato Cappellini gave Roma the 2-1 advantage in the first leg. However, the second leg at the County Ground was one to remember for anyone of a Swindon persuasion. New signing Arthur Horsfield scored a hat-trick on a day where Don Rogers added to a famous 4-0 victory to secure the inaugural Anglo-Italian League Cup. 

This was a promising start to the competition as it showed that it was to be a competitive tournament that could showcase the cup winners in both nations. Because of the success, the Anglo-Italian League Cup returned the following year with domestic cup winners Manchester City and Bologna meeting for a two-legged affair that was won by Bologna.

The Anglo-Italian Cup is born

The Anglo-Italian League Cup ran for three years in its initial format, won by Swindon, Bologna and Tottenham. It then took a three-year hiatus before the FA Cup victors were set to play the Coppa Italia champions. This format ran for two years, won by Fiorentina and Napoli before the tournament then ended and has never returned. However, during this stop-start period for the Anglo-Italian League Cup, the Anglo-Italian Cup had begun.

Due to the success of the Anglo-Italian League Cup and the extended break implemented on the football close season before the start of the 1970 Mexico World Cup, the Anglo-Italian Cup was born. Swindon’s omission from the 1969 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup had provided the opportunity to showcase the footballing bond and competitiveness between the two traditional footballing nations.

The opportunity for players to earn extra money during this extended pre-season meant that there was a reason for this to be competitive and provided fans with an opportunity to witness some of the most unusual matchups, that could only have been born in this great competition.

Swindon Town and the Anglo-Italian Cup!

For this first incarnation of the new competition, there were six English and six Italian teams that were brought together to compete for the Cup. The teams were put in three groups of four teams with two from each nation in each. Two points for a win, one for a draw and one for each goal scored. The team from each nation with the most points would face off in the final. The participants were Sheffield Wednesday, Swindon Town, Middlesbrough, West Brom, Sunderland, Wolves, Napoli, Juventus, Lanerossi, Roma, Fiorentina, and Lazio. 

The group stage provided the best and worst of what the competition was to be known for. There was a seven-goal thriller at Hillsborough where Sheffield Wednesday ran out as the 4-3 victors over Napoli. Then, the dark side of the competition was revealed as Lanerossi (L.R. Vicenza Virtus) hosted West Brom in Italy.

The game was stopped after 75 minutes, with the Italian side 1-0 up, due to crowd trouble. Baggies’ midfielder, Asa Hartford, caused a mass brawl amongst the players following a strong challenge on the Italians, this spread to the supporters in the stands. Unable to take control, the referee had to abandon the game and so both teams received a 2-0 loss for the events that unfurled. 

Swindon return to take on Napoli - and the Neopolitan crowd

Unfortunately, this was not the only case of crowd trouble in the competition’s formal maiden voyage. Following the conclusion of the group stages, the two best teams were pitted against each other, Napoli hosted Swindon Town in what is now known as the Diego Armando Maradona Stadium.

Swindon were proving to be a strong cup team, winning the English League Cup and Anglo-Italian League Cup in 1969, they were now in the final of the Anglo-Italian Cup in 1970, despite being in the second tier of English football. Napoli were an established Serie A side and were strong favourites on home soil.

Swindon displayed their cup conquering talents yet again and a double from Peter Noble within the hour meant they were firmly in the driving seat, much to the disdain of the native supporters at the ground. It was an Arthur Horsfield goal, much like he did in Rome, that put Swindon 3-0 up and lit the sky-blue touch paper in Naples.

Horsfield’s goal came with little more than 10 minutes to play, this led to the fans throwing a barrage of bottles and stones onto the field of play in protest of their team’s performance against Swindon. In retaliation to this, the Police reacted by using tear gas on the unruly supporters, this only incited more violence. More missiles were created and continued to be thrown on the pitch, one hitting the linesman which prompted a halt in proceedings. This is somewhat impressive given the large gap between the supporters and the field of play.

Arthur Horsfield!

As the teams and officials were exiting the pitch, the Swindon players were then the target of the Neapolitan abuse and missiles, goal scorer Horsfield was targeted and hit during the onslaught. The referee was left with no option but to end the game prematurely and award Swindon the victory.  

In many ways, the success of the Robins was diminished in light of the crowd trouble that ensued, following their success. The media only wanted to report on the violent actions that concluded the game. The 1970s and 1980s are often remembered for the crowd troubles that were all to common in the game at the time. The Anglo-Italian Cup came on the dawn of this double decade and signalled a start for the darker days that were to follow, in a period that was to end with stadium safety and reformation.

On a footballing side, the Swindon team had showcased the brighter side of English football. As well as this, the final was played 3 days before the start of the 1970 World Cup and so provided English hopes of a successful tournament a huge boost. England were, of course, the holders of the Jules Rimet trophy in Mexico, in a tournament where they were ultimately dumped out in the Quarterfinals at the hands of the West Germans.

As for the Anglo-Italian Cup, many would assume that the competition would be hamstrung by the hooliganism that ensued during the final and group stages. Nevertheless, this was the first of six consecutive seasons that the competition was held. The reason it is remembered so fondly, particularly amongst the English clubs, is that it threw together some of the more bizarre fixtures in football history. 

The 1971 Ango-Italian Cup Final: Bologna Vs Blackpool

The 1971 final saw Blackpool defeat Bologna, Blackpool were looking to retain their title until they were beaten by Roma in 1972. The following campaign saw Newcastle defeat Fiorentina who themselves returned to defeat West Ham in the 1974 final. Until the last of the six consecutive campaigns saw Napoli finally lift the cup after defeating Southampton in 1975.

Despite these unique and memorable matchups, the interest in the cup was dwindling. Attendances were dropping and the attraction of England vs Italy every summer had appeared to run its course. Because of this, the competition was reformed and became known as the Anglo-Italian Semi-professional Cup from 1976. As the name suggests, the competition was then only open to semi-professional outfits and during this period the likes of Staines Town, Skelmersdale United and North Shields faced Stefer Roma, Ponte San Pietro and Montebelluna.

In 1993 the tournament became professional again and the finals were played in Wembley and won by Brescia, Cremonese, Notts County and finally Genoa. However, attendances dropped from 37,000 to 11,000 in that short period and so the competition was finally scrapped for good. This was down to an inability to select a time for the fixtures to be played and a lack of interest in the competition.

The Glory Days of the Anglo-Italian Cup

This era for the competition did provide some more unusual matchups but the halcyon days of the cup will forever be remembered as 1970-1975.  The domino effect caused by the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup not allowing third-tier teams to participate, ultimately led to Port Vale losing 5-2 to Genoa at Wembley in 1996. The beauty of time and hindsight can help to gloss over the crowd troubles that this tournament created but they shouldn’t be ignored. Crowd troubles were rife in Europe and particularly England and Italy during this period, culminating the Heysel Stadium disaster in 1985, which again saw English and Italians fans clash. 

Despite this, the Anglo-Italian Cup should be remembered and celebrated for allowing Swindon Town to topple Napoli and Roma in consecutive years. It provided many matchups that were not mentioned above that will likely never be repeated. Although the competition is now extinct, it will remain very much alive in the hearts and minds of those lucky enough to be involved.