In mid-September, Tyneside starts to turn wintry. While the trees lining the Great North Road are still in leaf, cold winds blow in over the Pennines, and some Geordies even begin to consider wearing a second layer.
So it was on 17th September 1997, when Barcelona came to St James’s for Newcastle United’s first ever match in the European top tier. I was 14, and it was just over 6 years since my first match, a 2-0 win over Port Vale. In the meantime, there had been the doomed ecstasy of the Kevin Keegan years. For my generation of fans, that period had been an exhilarating induction into the sport, leaving us with the conviction that defending was generally to be frowned upon, and that starting 4 centre forwards in a Premier League away game was an acceptable way to behave.
Our season tickets were in the middle of the Gallowgate, and that night, even more than usual, there was the sweet stench of beer fumes, urine, chips, and the smog of Marlboro Lights. It was all men. While Barcelona warmed up with their rondos - Rivaldo, Figo and Luis Enrique looking slick - Newcastle seemed amateur in comparison: Rob Lee’s preparation seemed to consist of repeatedly trying to lob Shay Given from the halfway line. Also warming up, his gleaming head bobbing 6 feet above the turf, was the greatest referee in football: Pierluigi Collina. I stared into the chilly haze, hardly able to believe this was happening.
Watching the match back in 2024 is a lovely if confusing experience for those of us now accustomed to the Champions League of the 21st century. The ball, for example, was the Mitre Ultima FA Premiership ball, in a UEFA Champions League match. Imagine such brand contamination today! The kits were baggy, David Batty’s unfettered tackling was generally permitted by Collina, and the goalies walloped it up the pitch at every opportunity. Tactically, the main thing the modern fan notices is that there was no pressing: teams were free to bring the ball up to the halfway line and beyond, completely unopposed. Philippe Albert, therefore, bestrode the pitch like a colossus - his lovely brown hair flowing behind him, while Dalglish looked nervous in the dugout.
The game was, essentially, an hour of Newcastle being brilliant, followed by half an hour of Barcelona being brilliant. In the first 10 minutes, Jon Dahl Tomassson was played in by John Barnes, but slid the ball wide of Ruud Hesp’s near post.
Tomasson, a sandy-haired Dane, had been at the centre of one of Newcastle’s many ‘sliding doors’ moments a few weeks earlier. In the opening game of the 97/98 season, at home against Sheffield Wednesday, he’d gone clear on goal in the first 5 minutes after an impish backheel from Faustino Asprilla. Tomasson took a few touches, the crowd anticipating a cool finish from this dashing new Nordic striker…then slid it, left-footed, straight into Kevin Pressman’s grateful midriff. It is my firm belief that, had Tomasson scored this chance, he would have become a Geordie hero, and we would have won the double in 1997-98. As it was, he scored 3 goals that season and left, a failure, doomed to become an AC Milan legend and Champions League winner.
Anyway, back in the Barcelona match, Newcastle were haring down on the Catalans. The best-supporting-actor of this game, Northern Irish winger Keith Gillespie, was sprinting downhill towards the Gallowgate, outstreaking defenders. Gillespie, a head-down winger from County Antrim who would later lose £7m betting on football and author the bestseller How Not to Be a Football Millionaire, was on the money that night: every 5 minutes, it seemed, he would fly past Sergi Barjuan and unleash his trademark fall-on-your-arse cross into the Barcelona box. The first few times, he was too quick for anyone else, teammates included.
After 22 minutes, Tomasson, flitting about between the lines, slid a pass through for Asprilla to run in on goal. St James’s gasped. Hesp slid straight into Asprilla’s ankles, and Collina, to our disbelief, blew the whistle. I remember a nanosecond of silence in the Tyneside night before we all went berserk: a penalty! Against Barcelona!
Faustino Asprilla - the Colombian striker who took that penalty - now makes condoms. His brand, Tino, has a signature guava flavour, which is Asprilla’s recommended option: “When I was growing up, we had a guava tree in our garden and that’s a flavour and aroma that’s very good for romancing…”, he told the Guardian, astonishingly, in 2014. This is conduct typical of a man who seemed intent on enjoying himself all the time, no matter the situation.
He was part of the gloriously fun Parma side of the mid-1990s - Buffon, Cannavaro, Sensini, Zola, Brolin, Stoichkov - which had been built on the success of Parmalat, the milk company at the centre of biggest financial fraud in European history. A couple of seasons before the Barcelona game, Asprilla had been blamed by a xenophobic and turgid English media for Newcastle blowing their 13 point lead in the 95-96 title race (of course, it couldn’t possibly be anything to do with the English manager and the completely inept mostly-English defence). Anyone really paying attention knew that Asprilla had helped an already-potent attacking side become one of the sharpest offensive forces in Premier League history, only thwarted in 1996 and 1997 by the extraordinary generation of young players emerging at Manchester United.
Asprilla crossed himself, looked up, ambled towards the ball - the crowd roaring “Tino Tino Tino” - and stuck it into the top right corner. We were beating Barcelona in the Champions League.
Barcelona, being Barcelona, had enjoyed over 60% of possession in the first half hour. As the game continued, the studs-up tackling battle between David Batty and Ivan de la Peña grew in intensity, and the respective number 8s Rob Lee and Luis Enrique stayed well clear and waited for the ball to emerge (if it was ever even there).
On 35 minutes, Lee got hold of the ball and slid it out to Keith Gillespie on the corner of the box. The modern player gets his head up in this position, but Gillespie dropped his entire upper body and roasted Sergi once again…and this time, through the Gallowgate night came a supercharged Colombian missile, as Asprilla walloped a header into Hesp’s net for 2-0.
2-0.
The man next to me, a quiet builder from North Shields called Tommy, roared until his vocal chords gave out. My dad, who hadn’t seen these days since he was in the Gallowgate for the Fairs Cup final win in 1969, just stared. Asprilla did a languid cartwheel. The noise was everywhere.
Just after half-time, Keith Gillespie set off on another of his head-down runs.
The thing about running towards the Leazes end at St James’s (at full whack with your chin in your chest) is that it is uphill: the goal at the Leazes is five metres further up the north side of the Tyne Valley than the Gallowgate.
This time, Gillespie started deep in his own half. He absolutely tore past Sergi, again, and just kept sprinting until the time came, once again, for him to fall on his arse and put in a perfect cross. And there, to the disbelief and ecstasy of 35,000 Geordies, was Tino Asprilla, again, flying through the night, again, burying the header.
3-0.
My uncle at this point, two seats down, was exclaiming “lads, boys, remember this, never forget this, it’ll never be like this again, like” and I was thinking “ah shut up uncle Des, we’re gonna win the treble”.
But he was right, it was never like this again.
Are you watching?
Are you watching?
Are you watching, Sunderland?
Are you watching, Sunderland?
I imagine they’d switched off by this point, but as a consolation for any teflon-coated Sunderland fans that had kept the telly on, Barcelona proceeded to outplay Newcastle for the remainder of the match. There was wave after wave of slick attacking from the Catalans: Figo was a proto-de-Bruyne, serving the ball gorgeously to substitute striker Christophe Dugarry, while the awoken Rivaldo began to dominate the centre of the pitch.
Luis Enrique chested in a Figo cross after 73 minutes, and when Figo found the bottom corner after 85 minutes to make it 3-2, every adult in the home end (and some kids) simultaneously lit another cigarette: this was going to be tense. Steve Watson, Albert’s partner at centre-back, barked instructions to try to organise the defence. But Figo just kept pushing and swerving, and after 91 minutes, another peerless ball curled beautifully into the Newcastle box. On the penalty spot, waiting, with his flowing hair, was future World Cup winner Dugarry. He leapt, connected well, and (oh f**k, deep breath) missed. Smokey relief billowed from Geordie lungs. Collina, wide-eyed, blew the wonderful whistle.
It would never be like this again.