By any sensible measure, a goal has to be considered as an all-time classic if it leads to Barcelona’s goalkeeper dropping his shorts and mooning at the referee in anguish. If it is a plunging header in the 104th minute of a contest so brutal that Uefa’s disciplinary chief declares himself “sick and fed up” and threatens to ban Barcelona from European competition, then so much the better. Let us, then, delight in the memory of Ken McNaught’s magnificent header for Aston Villa in the second leg of the 1982 European Super Cup final, a match that Villa had to win because, in the words of their then-manager Tony Barton, “if Barcelona’s tactics succeeded, we would have to fear for the future of football.” Ach, how the world turns.

Golden Goal: Raúl for Real Madrid v Ferencvaros (1995) | Jacob Steinberg Read more

More than a club

Barcelona were more than a club alright. They were also a gang of “butchers” and “animals”, or were so branded by the English press in the wake of relentless fouling while beating Tottenham Hotspur in the semi-finals of the 1982 European Cup Winners’ Cup. “If we play in Spain the way Barcelona did here, there will be a revolution,” said the Spurs manager, Keith Burkinshaw after a first leg in which a policeman had run onto the pitch to stop Manolo Martínez from assaulting Graham Roberts. Spurs were aghast to be fined £2,250 by Uefa after that clash for “unnecessarily hard play” but the Catalan club were ordered to pay triple that amount. They were fined even more after the final, in which Barça lowered Standard Liège. So they were notorious by the time they took on Villa, conquerors of Bayern Munich in the 1982 European Cup final. The two-legged ’82 Super Cup final did not take place until January 1983 because that was the earliest date that the clubs could agree on (the 1981 edition never took place at all because Liverpool and Dinamo Tbilisi could not make space in their diaries). When the ceremonial tie eventually got under way, Barcelona contrived to make their reputation even worse.

The Super Cup was, as you will have gathered from the nonchalant scheduling, generally less sought after than it is today but both these teams were eager to win it, nonetheless. Villa, admittedly, viewed it mainly as a primer for their upcoming European Cup quarter-final against Juventus, but Barcelona craved the trophy on its own merits and their players were offered a £1,000-per-man incentive to bring it home. “We simply have to win this trophy,” said their manager Udo Lattek before the first leg. It was the only European trophy that Lattek had not won but, more significantly at that time, the manager needed as much silverware as possible to atone for spluttering domestic form. That was an intolerable situation for the richest club in the world, who had splashed out on six new players the previous summer, including Diego Maradona, in a bid to end their nine-year wait for the Spanish title but took on Villa while languishing fourth in La Liga.

(Barça finished second in La Liga in 1982 and had been on course to win in ’81, the year Villa won the English league, but whereas Villa had been spared injuries and used only 14 players during their triumphant campaign, Barça’s challenge was derailed when their top scorer, Quini, was kidnapped on his way home from a 6-0 win over Hércules. The erstwhile league leaders picked up a solitary point in their next four matches before Quini was released following the payment of a ransom into a Swiss bank account. The criminals, evidently no masterminds, were collared when they went to withdraw the loot. D’oh! Three of them were sent down for 10 years, while Barça’s wait for the title went on.)

Maradona could not play against Villa because he was ill and, besides, the Argentinian was having trouble adapting to Barcelona and did not get along with Lattek any better than the team’s other big foreign star, Bernd Schuster, did. It was an open secret that Barça were planning to ditch Lattek and make the former Argentina World Cup-winning coach César Luis Menotti the highest paid manager on the planet. Meanwhile at Villa, the miserly Doug Ellis had just returned for a second stint as chairman and made it clear that the club, despite being the reigning European champions, had no intention of competing with the likes of Barça financially: he used his programme notes for the home leg of the final to ask Villa fans to raise money by selling lottery tickets, while a job advertisement on the same page read: “Aston Villa require an experienced person to operate their video camera for selected home matches. Anyone interested in this position on a voluntary basis please contact the club secretary.”

They shall not pass

Having defended their domestic title with the élan that Chelsea would later aspire to, finishing 11th the year after winning the league, Villa were again spluttering on the home front and travelled to the Camp Nou for the first leg on the back of a 2-0 defeat to Sunderland that left them seventh in the table. In Barcelona they suffered only a narrow defeat. “We never turned up basically,” recalls McNaught. “But we managed to slip away with only a 1-0 defeat.” So Villa went into the home leg a week later with the trophy still up for grabs. Barça, meanwhile, went into it with a diabolical resolve to hold on to their lead by any means necessary. Five years previously, in a Uefa Cup tie between the same clubs, the Villa Park faithful had applauded Barça off the pitch after a 2-2 draw in the first leg (Barça won the second 2-1), grateful for having witnessed a magical performance by Johan Cruyff in his last appearance in England. There would be no such pleasantries this time.

With Villa’s captain, Dennis Mortimer, out injured, Barton entrusted the leadership of the team to McNaught – the perfect choice, and not just because the Scottish centre-back’s towering frame and blonde helmet hairdo made him look like the fearsome elder brother of A Clockwork Orange-era Malcolm McDowell, fitting for the night of ultra-violence ahead. McNaught had a knack for scoring in Europe: five of his eight goals in 207 appearances for Villa were against continental opponents who could not cope with his aerial power and timing and, indeed, one of them had been a stupendous diving header against Barcelona in ’78, a precursor of what was to come in the Super Cup. What also followed was a rousing performance by the Scot and one particularly choice flourish that must rank alongside Bruce Grobbelaar’s spaghetti-legs routine as the most amusingly inspired mind game manoeuvre in the history of English clubs in European competition. More about that in due course.

This Barça team were full of excellent players, all internationals. Villa were never required to recover from a first-leg deficit during their glorious 1981-82 European Cup campaign and it was obvious from early in this second leg that Barça were going to make it extremely difficult for them to do so now – and that if Villa did manage to infiltrate the visitors’ high-class defence, Barça would immediately chop them down. The Belgian referee, Alexis Ponnet, booked Julio Alberto in the ninth minute for doing exactly that after Andy Blair broke through. “Barcelona have a reputation for that kind of thing and the best way to stop them is to produce a yellow card,” reckoned the BBC commentator Tony Gubba. But the card did not stop them. They were only getting started.

Golden Goal: Ian Wright for Arsenal v Leeds United (1995) | Rob Smyth Read more

Urbano Ortega was cautioned in the 40th minute for scything down Des Bremner, but for most of the first half Barça, in fairness, did not need to resort to skulduggery because they defended superbly. Alberto had man-marked Gary Shaw out of the first leg and was diligently subduing Villa’s thrilling forward again, only occasionally deploying tugs and kicks. Villa’s only real chance of the first period came when Alberto slipped and Shaw teed up Peter Withe, who shot wildly from 12 yards.

There was something almost admirable about the conviction with which Barça defended, their paradoxically puritanical insistence that Villa would not get past them even if it meant perpetrating the filthiest deeds. Alberto escaped a second yellow for a blatant body check on Shaw early in the second half but just before the hour he found that tripping or shoving were not possible so he just jumped to catch a lofted Villa through-ball with both hands. That was too brazen for the referee to ignore. Alberto was sent off and Barcelona became even more defensive.

Flowing moves were rare but this was a grippingly hurly-burly contest in which Villa were not simply victims. McNaught clobbered Quini, the striker having come on in the first half as a substitute for the injured Franciso Carrasco. Allan Evans, who had been a forward when Villa made him the most expensive Scottish teenager in 1977 but had since become McNaught’s trusty partner in a central defence so secure that every other Villa player felt free to attack at will, also went into the referee’s book, for throwing Urbano to the ground in frustration at the visitors’ time-wasting. Meanwhile Withe was engaged in an enthralling battle with Migueli, an imperious defender whose hardness had been established beyond doubt when he played in most of Barcelona’s victory Fortuna Düsseldorf in the 1979 Cup Winners’ Cup final, including extra time, with a broken collarbone.

The breakthrough

As time ticked down at Villa Park, Migueli’s brilliance was frustrating Villa almost as much as Barcelona’s flagrant and covert fouling was. Villa were getting so frantic in their attempts to penetrate that they left themselves open to a sudden counter-attack in which Schuster hit the post. Then, with 10 minutes left, Gordon Cowans clipped a free-kick into the Barcelona box, Bremner helped it on and Migueli, for once, was unable to cut it out because, in the words of McNaught, “he had come across the end of Peter Withe’s elbow”. Shaw swept the ball into the net from 10 yards to make the scores level on aggregate – and totally unbalance Barcelona.

“Migueli had been mopping up everything that came into the Barcelona box and I had mentioned to Peter that we needed to do something about the big fella,” says McNaught. “No sooner had I said that than, you know, it was fixed. Then it all kicked off. Barcelona weren’t too happy about what had happened but in those days you could get away with those things, especially as they had been dishing it out themselves throughout the match – big style.”

Many Barcelona players lost their heads and their fouling was no longer aimed solely at snuffing out attacks – much of it seemed plain malicious. But not, perhaps, that of Migueli, whose shirt was drenched in his own blood and who left a little something on Withe in every subsequent tackle. Withe gave about as good as he got. Their duelling seemed gentlemanly, in a ferocious sort of way.

Before the end of normal time Schuster effectively ordered the referee to add his name to the five Barcelona players already in the book when he mowed down Colin Gibson with a two-footed assault that could have made even Wes Craven wince.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ken McNaught seals Villa’s victory with a diving header. Photograph: Colorsport/Rex/Shutterstock

Keeper of the flame

Villa resumed their pursuit of a winning goal as soon as extra time started. But Barça’s rugged defiance continued. In the 100th minute, however, Mark Walters, the 18-year-old who had been thrust on in place of the unusually quiet Tony Morley, was brought down in the box by José Vicente Sánchez. After much gnashing and mewling by Barça, Cowans stepped up to take the penalty. He had already scored seven times from the spot that season. But this time he missed, Urruti making a good save. No matter, Cowans converted the rebound. Urruti blew a fuse. As Cowans tried to collect the ball from the net, the raging keeper gave him an almighty whack from behind and then ran around the box in a manner that suggested there was plenty more where that came from if any Villa player fancied a rumble. Enter McNaught, the Obi Wan Kenobi of Kirkcaldy.

The Scot marched into the box and stopped just short of Urruti before essaying some impromptu shadowboxing, bobbing and weaving in front of the goalkeeper while sporting a big cheesy grin that spoke of his derisive certainty that Urruti would beat a hasty retreat. Sure enough, the goalkeeper was suddenly becalmed, allowing himself to be ushered away by team-mates forthwith. Barça only needed to score once to regain the lead on the away goals rule – but they were beaten men. McNaught sums it up well: “When Gordon went to retrieve the ball, the Barcelona keeper stuck him up into the roof of the net. He just took a big swipe at him. Obviously it kicked off again then. Andy Blair got involved but Andy was never going to take on anybody so I went in to retrieve the situation. There was no way the goalkeeper was going to try to stick one on me. After that Barcelona just went to pieces.”

Four minutes later Manolo kicked Shaw to the ground to concede a free-kick. Villa took it, whereupon Manolo kicked Shaw to the ground again, this time getting the yellow he seemed to be seeking. Cowans floated over the resultant free-kick from the left and McNaught escaped his marker and dived at the dropping ball before sending a glorious header into the net from six yards. As Villa players rejoiced, Marcos Alonso spat at Walters. He got away with a red card.

Villa began showboating, indulging in some ostentatious tiki-taka long before Barça tormented the world with it. The jubilant Villa Park crowd lapped it up, cheering every pass with English glee because they didn’t know the Spanish for Olé. Evans threw in some cheeky keepie-uppies. “Taking the Migueli!” quipped Gubba on TV. But Evans then put the ‘s’ into laughter by misplacing a pass and cynically wiping out Miguel Alonso with a Barcelona tribute tackle. Off he was sent, too.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ken McNaught with the notably unshowy Super Cup ‘trophy’ after Villa won 3-1 on aggregate. Photograph: Colorsport/Rex/Shutterstock

The aftermath

Monsieur Ponnet had generally distinguished well between wholesome ruggedness and dastardly violence but nonetheless the match ended with him having shown 10 yellow cards and three reds. “I have never refereed a game like that,” he said later before offering the sort of broad and frank analysis that would get an official the boot nowadays, or at the very least a Twitter lynching: “The Spaniards disregarded the red and yellow cards where those shown to Villa had a calming influence. It wouldn’t have made a difference if I had given them five red cards. They lost their nerve when Schuster hit a post with a shot before Villa scored, yet if they had played football and attacked perhaps they would have got the goal they needed. One of their players told me he was going to take the team off at one stage. I told them that they would forfeit the game if they had not returned within five minutes. Towards the end of extra time I could have sent two more Barcelona men off but I thought at 3-0 that was enough. Some of the Spanish officials apologised for their players’ behaviour after the game.”

Lattek offered an alternative take: “The referee was incompetent and should not be allowed to officiate any more games. He did not see that the violence was not just our fault but also Aston Villa’s. Shaw’s goal should not have been allowed because Migueli had been elbowed in the face by Withe. Aston Villa do not know how to play football. I can’t understand how they won because they are so bad.”

Villa can’t have been all that bad, as Maradona is reputed to have sent his agent to their dressing room after the game to ask for Shaw’s shirt. “I wouldn’t have recognised him at the time, but that’s the story Shawsy puts about,” says McNaught with a chuckle. Uefa’s disciplinary secretary, René Eberle, was in no doubt where the badness really lay, telling the Guardian in the week after the match that: “I was horrified. We are all getting sick and fed up with Barcelona behaving in this way. Football has a bad enough reputation as it is and they are making it worse.” He mooted kicking them out of European competition: “If you fine them they just laugh at you. I have seen performances like this from other Spanish teams – it seems a way of life there and in the end it will kill football.”

Golden Goal: Angelos Charisteas for Greece v Portugal (Euro 2004 final) | Niall McVeigh Read more

Barcelona’s president, Josep Luís Núñez, suggested that a goodwill mission could set the record straight, if only an error-free official could be found. “The image of our club has been harmed: we are always labelled as animals, which is very upsetting,” he groaned. “We should like to come to England to play a friendly to show we can play good football but there always seems to be a problem with the referee.” In the following decades a shiny new Barça twice won Europe’s top prize at Wembley, making the most of the fact they were still allowed to fraternise with the rest of the continent.

For after the Super Cup donnybrook, Uefa decided to give Barcelona another fine – £20,000 – and a final warning. Four of their players were suspended, including Urruti for five matches, a report revealing that the goalkeeper had bared his backside to the official to express his disgust. Or something. Villa were cleared of any blame.

Uefa also decided, several years later, to upgrade the Super Cup trophy, possibly having noted that McNaught’s reaction to the ’82 memento was reminiscent of the Stonehenge scene in This Is Spinal Tap. “The only disappointing thing of that night was when we were all celebrating after the final whistle and the Uefa representative came up and gave me a plank of wood,” says McNaught. “I said: ‘What’s this?’ And he said “no, no, no, turn it around”. There was a Uefa badge on it. It was nothing like the trophy you get nowadays, but hey, it was still the European Super Cup so I was still proud to hold my plank of wood aloft.”