When Swindon Town Ruled Europe...Well, Italy Anyway.

Swindon Town has come up against the snobbery and unjust powers that be of the footballing world more than once in its history. After winning the 1990 Division 2 Play Off Final against Sunderland to achieve promotion to the then top flight Division 1, the demotion that followed for "financial irregularities" was harsh, especially when compared with the punishments dished out to Chelsea F.C. in 1991 and Tottenham Hotspur in 1994 (see Football Hypocrisy). A strange thing to note is that it is difficult to find anything about the Chelsea financial irregularities on the internet!?.

Before that episode, though, Swindon Town was denied the right to represent the English Football League in the 1969 - 70 Fairs Cup (later UEFA Cup). After thrashing Arsenal F.C. 3 - 1 at Wembley in the 1969 League Cup Final, being the winners should have given Swindon Town the right to compete in one of the then 3 European cup competitions, but, because they were not a First Division club, the Wiltshire team were deemed ineligible. It would seem that there was little or no support from the Football League in defence of the club's qualification to play in Europe, but a two-legged match was arranged between them and the winners of the Italian League Cup (the Coppa Italia) AS Roma. On 27th August 1969, Swindon Town lost the first leg in Rome 2 - 1, but won the second leg, and the cup, with a 4 - 0 victory.

The Anglo-Italian League Cup Winners' Cup

Anglo-Italian Cup

Buoyed by the success of the two matches, the two football associations organised an end of season competition, the Ango-Italian Cup, with six teams from each national league entering for the right to play for the trophy. In three groups, two English teams were paired with two from Italy in the group stages with each team playing a home and away leg with the teams from the other country in their group. At the end of the group stage, the team with the most points from both countries went through to the final - at this point, it is pertinent to add that Swindon Town not only beat Juventus 1 - 0 in Italy, but also thrashed them 4 - 0 at the County Ground! (see 1970 Anglo-Italian Cup).


The final took place on 28th May 1970 at the home of Napoli in front of

55,000 fans. A rampant Swindon Town had scored 3 goals by the 62nd minute and the hostile home crowd was not pleased. Ripping up seating and concrete, projectiles were thrown on the pitch and at the players and officials. After two pitch invasions, the match was abandoned after 75 minutes played and Swindon declared the winners. The idea of placating the crowd by displaying the trophy was a wrong move and Swindon Town players were injured when more rocks were thrown at them.

The unfortunate thing is that there is no video footage of the game itself, but footage of the victorious Swindon Town team displaying the trophy and of the rioting Napoli supporters has surfaced on Youtube (Napoli v Swindon Town - Anglo-Italian Cup).

This was not the first episode of crowd disturbance during this competition as the group stage game between L.R. Vicenza and West Bromwich Albion was abandoned when the Italian home crowd rioted. When one considers that these fans are now in their 60's at the very least, it's sad to note that football violence is not a new phenomenon.