The Football League Super Cup (known for sponsorship reasons as the Screen Sport Super Cup) was a one-off football club competition held in England in the 1985–86 season. It was organised by the Football League and was intended as a form of financial and sporting compensation for the English clubs which had qualified for European competition in the previous season but had been banned from entering European tournaments by UEFA following the Heysel Stadium disaster. With the ban set to last into the foreseeable future, England's clubs stood to lose a great deal of revenue, and would also have fewer opportunities to win silverware, so the Super Cup was established in the hope of offsetting at least some of this lost income, as well as offering additional competition for them.
The Football League's original intention was to hold the Super Cup annually for the duration of the UEFA ban on English clubs (which ultimately turned out to be five years) but the competition was largely seen as a poor substitute for the glamour of European tournaments and offered nothing different from the two domestic knockout competitions that already existed, the FA Cup and League Cup. Consequently, it generated minimal interest from the clubs involved. With the competition's final postponed until the beginning of the following season due to fixture congestion, the Super Cup was ultimately abolished after only one tournament had been held.
Interest in the competition was so low that the Football League initially failed to attract any form of sponsorship for it. Cable TV sports channel Screensport agreed to sponsor the tournament's final in September 1986.
Format The six clubs invited to participate, and the European competitions they would have qualified for, were: Everton (Football League champions, European Cup) Manchester United (FA Cup winners, European Cup Winners' Cup) Norwich City (League Cup winners, UEFA Cup) Liverpool (UEFA Cup) Tottenham Hotspur (UEFA Cup) Southampton (UEFA Cup)
To create a sufficient number of games, the teams played each other home and away in two groups of three teams, with three points awarded for a win and one point for a draw, with the top two teams in each group advancing to the semi-finals. Both the semi-finals and the final were held over two legs, home and away, which was perhaps another factor which may have contributed to the competition's failure to attract much interest from the clubs participating, as the tournament did not offer the prospect of a day out at Wembley for the finalists.
Competition history Merseyside rivals Liverpool and Everton won through to the final, but with both these clubs being involved in a battle for the league championship and both of them also reaching the FA Cup final (as well as Liverpool being involved in the semi-finals of the Football League Cup), fixture congestion became a problem, with Liverpool's semi-final second leg having to be delayed until the final week of the season, two days before the FA Cup final. The English football season had to come to an end immediately following the FA Cup final due to the preparations for the imminent FIFA World Cup in Mexico (which many Everton and Liverpool players were to be involved in), which meant that there was no opportunity for the delayed Super Cup final to be played after the FA Cup final and that the Super Cup tournament could not be concluded before the 1985–86 season ended.
The absence of any conclusion of the Super Cup before the season's end may have put paid to any possibility of a second Super Cup tournament being organised in the 1986–87 season, although the perceived failure of the inaugural competition and its unpopularity with the clubs made such an eventuality unlikely in any case. (If the 1986–87 Super Cup had been staged, it would have been contested by Liverpool, Everton, West Ham United, Manchester United, Sheffield Wednesday and Oxford United).
Ultimately the 1985–86 Super Cup final had to be held over until the following season and was finally played in September 1986, by which point the competition had finally attracted some sponsorship. Everton, however, fielded a virtual reserve team in the two-legged final (although they were in the middle of a genuine injury crisis) and Liverpool won the trophy 7–2 on aggregate. The games are remembered for Ian Rush's impressive haul of five goals for Liverpool over the two games (although these goals are sometimes excluded from his official record-breaking Merseyside derby tally) and for Kevin Sheedy's spectacular goal for Everton at Anfield, scored from a long-range free-kick at the Kop end. Having lost the League and Cup double to Liverpool the previous May, Everton later that season managed to pip Liverpool to the League Championship.
The Super Cup was not a success as it was unable to substitute for games against the best sides in Europe in prestigious UEFA competitions. Attendances were generally poor and the clubs involved apparently regarded the tournament as a pointless addition to the existing three national tournaments and a source of fixture congestion. Consequently, the Super Cup was abolished after only one season and it has not been held since. The competition is now largely forgotten.
Similar competitions The Full Members' Cup, another Football League cup competition also launched in 1985 for similar reasons (to create additional competition, revenue and opportunity for silverware for English clubs, as well as a final at Wembley Stadium), fared marginally better and ran until 1992, often better remembered as the "ZDS Cup" due to that competition being sponsored by Zenith Data Systems. A similar competition to the Super Cup, the Mercantile Credit Centenary Trophy was played in the early weeks of 1988–89 to celebrate the league's 100th birthday between the top eight Football League teams from the previous season. The competition, played over three rounds on a knock-out basis, was won by Arsenal.
Group stage Key to colours in group tablesTop two places advance to the semi-finals
Group 1
18 September 1985Manchester United2–4Everton2 October 1985Everton1–0Norwich City23 October 1985Norwich City1–0Everton6 November 1985Manchester United1–1Norwich City4 December 1985Everton1–0Manchester United11 December 1985Norwich City1–1Manchester United
Group 2
17 September 1985Liverpool2–1Southampton2 October 1985Tottenham Hotspur2–1Southampton22 October 1985Southampton1–1Liverpool3 December 1985Liverpool2–0Tottenham Hotspur17 December 1985Southampton1–3Tottenham Hotspur14 January 1986Tottenham Hotspur0–3Liverpool
Knockout stage
Semi-finals
First leg
Second leg
Everton won 3–1 on aggregate
Liverpool won 4–2 on aggregate
Final
First leg
GK 1 Mike HooperRB 2 Barry VenisonLB 3 Jim BeglinCB 4 Mark LawrensonLM 5 Ronnie Whelan CB 6 Gary GillespieSS 7 Kenny Dalglish RM 8 Steve NicolCF 9 Ian RushCM 10 Kevin MacDonaldCM 11 Steve McMahonSubstitutes:MF 12 John WarkMF 14 Jan Mølby Player/Manager: Kenny Dalglish
GK 1 Bobby MimmsRB 2 Peter BillingLB 3 Paul Power CB 4 Kevin Ratcliffe (c)CB 5 Ian Marshall CM 6 Kevin LangleyRM 7 Neil AdamsST 8 Paul WilkinsonST 9 Graeme SharpCM 10 Trevor StevenLM 11 Kevin Sheedy Substitutes:MF Warren Aspinall Manager: Howard Kendall
Second leg
GK 1 Bobby MimmsRB 2 Peter BillingLB 3 Paul Power CB 4 Kevin Ratcliffe (c)CB 5 Derek Mountfield CM 6 Trevor StevenRM 7 Neil AdamsCM 8 Adrian HeathST 9 Graeme SharpST 10 Paul WilkinsonLM 11 Kevin Sheedy Substitute:MF Warren Aspinall DF Neil Pointon Manager: Howard Kendall
GK 1 Bruce GrobbelaarRB 2 Gary GillespieLB 3 Jim BeglinCB 4 Mark LawrensonLM 5 Ronnie WhelanCB 6 Alan Hansen (c)SS 7 John Wark RM 8 Steve Nicol CF 9 Ian RushCM 10 Jan MølbyCM 11 Steve McMahon Substitute:DF 12 Barry Venison FW 14 Paul Walsh Player/Manager: Kenny Dalglish
Liverpool won 7–2 on aggregate
Top goalscorers PlayerClubGoalsIan RushLiverpool7Mark FalcoTottenham Hotspur4Graeme SharpEverton3Kevin SheedyEverton3
External links The story of the Super Cup