On 20 May 1992, at London's old Wembley, Johan Cruyff's Barcelona and Sampdoria played the last final under the name "European Champion Clubs' Cup". On 20 May 2027 it will be 35 years since the night a free kick in extra time gave the Catalans their first European Cup. It was also the season the competition tried a group stage for the first time.

The road through the groups

Barcelona got past Hansa Rostock and then, thanks to a late Bakero goal, beat Kaiserslautern on away goals. They topped their group ahead of Sparta Prague, Benfica and Dynamo Kyiv. There were no semi-finals: the two group winners went straight to the final.

Vujadin Boškov's Sampdoria, Italian champions making their debut in the competition, beat Rosenborg and Honvéd. Their group also included Panathinaikos, along with Anderlecht and Red Star Belgrade, who because of the war in Yugoslavia played their "home" games in Sofia and Budapest.

Wembley, 70,827 fans and an old debt

The two sides knew each other well, having met in the 1989 Cup Winners' Cup final, which Barça won. There were 70,827 spectators at Wembley and the referee was Germany's Aron Schmidhuber.

For Barcelona the pressure was huge. They had lost the finals of 1961 and 1986, and Seville was still fresh in the memory.

Cruyff started with Zubizarreta, Ferrer, Koeman, Nando, Eusebio, Guardiola, Bakero, Laudrup, Juan Carlos, Salinas and Stoichkov. Goikoetxea came on in the second half and Alexanko in extra time, the same man who had missed a penalty in Seville. Opposite them, Sampdoria relied on their “goal twins” Vialli and Mancini.

The orange shirt

Barça's blaugrana and Sampdoria's blue could not share a pitch, so the Catalans played in their orange change shirt. It had been introduced in the summer of 1991, when the club's supplier was the Spanish brand Meyba.

After the final whistle the players pulled on the classic blaugrana for the trophy presentation, which is why orange is missing from the celebration photos. Sampdoria wore the blue Asics shirt of the time, with the white, red and black hoops across the chest that recall the two clubs it was born from, Andrea Doria and Sampierdarenese.

Chances and the post

The final was open and full of chances. Gianluca Vialli, who had scored six goals in the competition, had an off night. He fired over from close range from a Lombardo cross and was denied by Zubizarreta on another occasion, while Lombardo also found the Basque goalkeeper.

At the other end, Hristo Stoichkov hit the inside of the post after a pass from Michael Laudrup. He also headed a Eusebio cross at Pagliuca and later shot wide of the near post. Pagliuca in the Sampdoria goal kept it 0-0 over 90 minutes.

The free kick in the 112th minute

In the 112th minute the referee gave a foul by Invernizzi on Eusebio just outside the box, a decision many disputed. Stoichkov touched the ball, Bakero stopped it and Ronald Koeman struck it with all his power.

The ball flew into Pagliuca's corner, at a speed some sources put at around 188 km/h. The Italians felt hard done by and did not turn up for the press conference.

Why it went down in history

It was Barcelona's first European Cup and the peak of Cruyff's "Dream Team", with Guardiola, Laudrup, Stoichkov and Koeman. The league title followed two weeks later, and many see that night as the foundation for everything the club achieved afterwards.

For Sampdoria it was the end of an era, as Boškov left for Roma straight afterwards.

The boots in which Koeman scored the goal are kept today as a relic, as the photo shows. And the orange Wembley shirt became one of Barça fans' favourite retro designs.

See our Champions League club jerseys at sportarena.gr.

Photo: Ronald Koeman's boots from the Wembley final – Mutari, Wikimedia Commons, public domain.