131: Dennis Wise, Chelsea, Merlin’s Premier League 99 Official Sticker Album

“The game’s gone.” Whether it’s VAR, sleeve sponsors or hugely inflated salaries and transfer fees we, as in all of us over the age of thirty, all have a reason why we’ve decided football wasn’t as good as it used to be. If I had to have one complaint it would be the spreading out of games over the week so that there isn’t a day without a high profile match live on one channel or another. I appreciate this probably sounds ridiculous after what’s happened to the 2019/20 season for most clubs in England but just think back to that ‘winter break’ to ease fixture congestion and allow players to rest and recuperate mid-season. Even if you loved the thinly spread feast of football you’ve got to admit it probably wreaked havoc with your fantasy team.

However, when I step back from it this is nothing new. Back in the 90s there was Monday night Premier League, League Cup, FA Cup replays and Champions League on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, UEFA Cup on Thursdays before a full weekend of Premier League or FA Cup games. At least we had our Fridays. It is also worth remembering that in these halcyon days there was yet another club cup competition shoehorned in to the bloated schedule. No, not the Zenith Data Systems Cup but the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup as modelled below by Chelsea’s Dennis Wise in May 1998. Just one year later the tournament was no more.


It might be hard to imagine but back in the late 1990s it was quite hard to hate Chelsea and their array of continental flair players like the Italian legends Gianfranco Zola, Roberto Di Matteo and Gianluca Vialli. Having grown up with the Saturday morning staple of Gazzetta Football Italia the idea of these stars plying their trade in the Premier League made the Blues an exciting side and their arrival at Stamford Bridge, along with the likes of Frank Leboeuf and Gus Poyet, transformed Chelsea from a solid mid-table side into genuine title contenders a long time before Roman Abramovich started splashing the cash in West London. The 1996/97 season which had welcomed the aforementioned Italian trio had also seen the Blues win the FA Cup and thus gain access to European football for the following season through the Cup Winners’ Cup.

UEFA’s third club competition quite literally did what it said on the tin and pitted the winners of Europe’s domestic trophies against each other in a series of two-legged knockout games to decide who was the ultimate cup winner. Since its conception in 1960 it had provided several British clubs with their first, and in many cases only, taste of European silverware with the likes of West Ham United, Everton, Aberdeen and Rangers among its champions. However, by the time the 1997/98 edition of the tournament began it had become derided as a second-rate competition as the all-consuming Champions League swelled in size to reward teams for coming fourth rather than for actually winning anything. With this in mind UEFA decided to make the 1998/99 edition of the tournament the last with domestic cup winners instead rewarded with a place in the UEFA Cup.

Undeterred by the machinations in the shady boardrooms at UEFA, Chelsea set out ahead of their 1997/98 Cup Winners’ Cup campaign determined to bring the trophy back to Stamford Bridge. In a series of ties taking in trips to Slovakia, Norway, Spain and Italy they racked up 21 goals in eight games en route to a final meeting against German side VfB Stuttgart. A solitary goal from the imperious Zola secured them the trophy and a guaranteed place in the tournament’s swansong as defending champions. Clearly Chelsea were determined to be involved as they had also won the League Cup with a 2-0 win over Middlesbrough mirroring their FA Cup final success a year earlier albeit without a screamer from Di Matteo within a minute of kick-off. You can’t have it all I guess.

Determined to collect all of the superfluous European trophies on offer Chelsea kick started their impressive 1998/99 campaign by beating Real Madrid to win the UEFA Super Cup and got as far as the semi-finals in their defence of the Cup Winners’ Cup. Mallorca denied them the chance to be the last ever winners of the competition and were ultimately beaten by Lazio in the final final. Nevertheless Chelsea reached the quarter-finals of both domestic tournaments and finished third in the Premier League entering them into the Champions League for the first time.

I appreciate that I haven’t really said anything about Dennis Wise who captained Chelsea to all of the glory mentioned above but, no offence to their inspirational leader, he was never the story in this sticker. I started by complaining about the overwhelming volume of football nowadays but the sheer simplicity of the Cup Winners’ Cup means that if it was brought back I would be one of the first people applauding the decision. Quite frankly I’d take it over the Europa League and maybe even the Champions League. Maybe I’m just saying this because of the unlikelihood of Palace qualifying for those prestigious tournaments. Who knows? What I do know is that the Cup Winners’ Cup was great and fair play to Chelsea for taking it seriously in the autumn of its years. The game’s gone.

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