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Eleven years after Sir Alex Ferguson won their first European CupOne season after their third final, and one season before their fourth, he was still manager of Manchester United. eleven years after jose mourinho’s first winHe was in his second spell at Chelsea, and claimed the Premier League title for the third time. Eleven years after Pep Guardiola led Barcelona to glory in 2009, he had a Rare off-year at Manchester CityThis is the only time in the last seven seasons that they have not won the Premier League title.
and the only manager to create Aston Villa European champion? eleven years after the beating Bayern Munich In Rotterdam, Tony Barton agreed to become manager of a club in the Wessex League, the fifth tier of non-league, the ninth flight of English football.
Barton feels the forgotten European Cup winner, perhaps the lowest profile manager ever Claim the club game’s most prestigious prize. While Guardiola has coached Barcelona, Bayern and Manchester City, while Mourinho moved from Porto to Chelsea and then to Internazionale and Real Madrid, Barton has had two managerial posts: at Villa and Northampton Town. And, in 1993, Barton was set to take charge of Hampshire club Petersfield Town, in a division alongside Whitchurch and Wimborne. In 1982 the scourge of Bayern Munich could face Barton, Brockenhurst or Bernerton Heath Harlequins. “I thought, ‘Blimey, this is a bit of a coup’,” said Mark Nicholl, Petersfield’s long-serving club secretary.
Which, if anything, is a bit of an understatement. Petersfield Town was actually a new club, formed as Petersfield United, equipped with a new owner. Nicol said, “In 1993, we came out of the Isthmian League, we couldn’t afford to stay at that level.” “Then we had a fairy godfather in Peter De Sisto, who took over and became president.” De Sisto’s reign was unraveling. He was “a bit of a rogue character”, Nicholl recalled, but he came with ambition.
“One of the first things he said was he was going to bring in a famous manager and he said Tony Barton,” Nicholl recalls. “How he knew her, I don’t know. But within a few days of becoming chairman, he said that he had lined up this manager. And then within a week or two, they called another meeting and said that unfortunately Tony Barton has been recommended by his doctor not to play the role. That medical advice proved tragically accurate: Barton suffered a heart attack while in charge of Northampton. He suffered a second stroke in August 1993, dying at the age of just 56; This says something about his relative obscurity The Independent’s The news of his death was only 99 words long.
There was a postscript. Addicted to football, Petersfield was appointed at a higher level. “De Sisto had two other guys, Gary Stevens and Alan Devonshire,” Nicholl said. “They pulled a rabbit out of the hat in terms of two big-name options.” Stevens, a former Tottenham defender who was in England’s 1986 World Cup squad, took over.
And while Barton never managed Petersfield, their Love Lane ground hosted a memorial match for him in October 1993. Nicoll believes the crowd was between 1,000 and 1,500 but the list of performers was remarkable. A Villa side based around most of Barton’s European Cup winners: the teamsheet included the late Gary Shaw, eventual scorer Peter Withey, captain Dennis Mortimer, plus Tony Morley, Gordon Cowans, Des Bremner and Kenny Swain.
He was joined by Tony Cascarino, later a Villa signing, a forward who would play in the following summer’s World Cup and, one day, was a scorer at Petersfield. Their opponents, the Petersfield All-Stars, included Chelsea’s then player-manager Glenn Hoddle, his former Spurs teammate Stevens and several old Portsmouth players. “De Sisto organized it with Gary,” Nicole said. “I don’t know how they let Aston Villa down. We had great names there.” There was almost another one. Alan Ball was supposed to play but made a late comeback.
The star-studded line-up reflects the esteem in which Barton was held. The connection with Petersfield came about partly because Barton lived in Hampshire: a former Portsmouth player, he had worked as assistant manager to ex-Villa defender Chris Nicholl at Southampton and then returned to Fratton Park.
More famously, he was Ron Saunders’ assistant when Villa, who had not been champions since 1910, won Division 1 in 1981. The following February, the aggressive Saunders moved out soon after to take command of Birmingham. His more amiable partner Barton was put in charge. His sixth game in charge was the European Cup quarter-final against Valery Lobanovskyi’s Dynamo Kyiv. Their 13th leg was the first leg of the semi-final against an Anderlecht team that was to win the following season’s UEFA Cup. His 25th match as manager was against a Bayern team that included Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, Paul Breitner, Klaus Augenthaler and Dieter Hoeness. Of the 16 players Barton named in the Villa squad, he ended his career with only 34 caps. Still they beat Bayern.
There is a sense that this is an extraordinary anomaly. Consider Barton’s subsequent managerial career: he lost six of his first seven games at Northampton and, following his heart attack, resigned before the end-of-season rally, yet he finished 92 in the Football League. Ranked 91st from; This was exactly three years after Pride in Rotterdam.
But then he and his Villa side must have been a remarkable mix of the ordinary and the extraordinary. Under Barton’s leadership, they won the European Super Cup in 1983, defeating Barcelona 3–0 in the second leg of the final. They were only knocked out of the 1982–83 European Cup by a Juventus team, one of Italy’s World Cup winners, equipped with the talents of Michel Platini and Zbigniew Boniek.
But after finishing fourth in the old Division 1 in 1977, their next 10 league finishes were eighth, eighth, seventh, first, 11th, sixth, 10th, 10th, 16th and 22nd: five years after they had conquered Europe. is removed. Barton was dismissed in 1984; Doug Ellis, the chairman whose two spells in charge did not include glory in 1981 and 1982, sacked him. Instead job offers came from Northampton and later Petersfield. But when Villa host Bayern on Wednesday, it will be a reminder of Barton’s amazing achievements as the simple, unheralded, unlikely European Cup winner.