Chelsea history in the Super Cup: A wonderful win, a sorry streak
Chelsea will travel to Northern Ireland in the coming days for its UEFA Super Cup match against Villarreal. Opportunities to kick the season off by winning a European Cup are rare, but the Blues have spurned such chances far too many times in the bygone decade. This is one trophy that has evaded the team in times of the Roman Empire. In fact, Chelsea’s last—and only—win in the Super Cup came five years before Roman Abramovich bought the club from Ken Bates. Those were different times and that was a different team.
In this piece, we recap the Blues’ rare achievement and the subsequent failures of their successors. This is Chelsea’s history in the UEFA Super Cup:
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Chelsea 1-0 Real Madrid (1998)
23 years ago, Chelsea went to Monaco and beat Champions League winners, Real Madrid, to lift its first—and only—UEFA Super Cup. Those were different times, the pre-Roman era of hipster signings, title challenges and identity crises. An era, which, in the Chelsea lore, has been restricted in its purpose as a retort to be used against ignorant rival fans. Was Chelsea even relevant before 2004? Yes, and we won more European Cups than you, ha!
On May 13, 1998, Chelsea won the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup by beating Germany’s VfB Stuttgart 1-0 in the final. A week later, Real Madrid overcame Juventus by the same scoreline to lift the Champions League, and in doing so, set up the Super Cup clash against the Blues. The two teams traveled to Monaco three months later to play in the final, after UEFA decided to replace the two-legged tie with a one-off game.
Marcel Desailly and Frank Leboeuf was the starting centerback partnership for Chelsea that night while Gianfranco Zola, Roberto Di Matteo and Pierluigi Casiraghi were deployed up front from the start. Dennis Wise captained the team, and future Chelsea coaches Eddie Newton and Jody Morris found themselves sitting beside their then-manager Gianluca Vialli on the bench.
Real Madrid—with the likes of Raul, Fernando Hierro, Roberto Carlos, Clarence Seedorf, and others—was the favorite heading into the match, but the Blues gave them and their manager Guus Hiddink a tough time throughout. It took 83 minutes for Vialli’s side to find the breakthrough, though, and it was substitute Gus Poyet with a stunning strike from outside of the box that sealed the win for the Blues.