The Athletic has live coverage of the Newcastle vs Barcelona game. 

Eddie Howe said it will be “magical”, “special” and “the type of game you’re desperate to be part of”. Newcastle United versus Barcelona in the Champions League is an occasion dressed up as a football match, at least on Tyneside, at least until kick-off.

Thursday’s match at St James’ Park is a fixture that instantly transports those of a certain generation back to September 1997 and the night Faustino Asprilla rose as high as the decibel count to register a Newcastle hat-trick that sent visitors Barcelona home, bemused and defeated.

“I swear, I’ve never heard noise in a football stadium like that,” says Shay Given, who was in goal for the hosts that day, up against Luis Figo, Rivaldo and Luis Enrique. “One of those crazy nights. Nuts.”

 

It was Newcastle’s first-ever game in the Champions League proper, and the anticipation was tangible. “It is arguably the biggest-ever football night in the city,” began one Tyneside newspaper preview.

It was always going to be memorable. Asprilla scoring in the 22nd, 31st and 48th minutes to put Newcastle three goals up — they eventually won 3-2 — made it unforgettable. St James’ Park’s capacity was 36,600 then, 16,000 less than it is today, but the noise the crowd generated made the attendance seem twice that. When referee Pierluigi Collina, whose mere presence was a sign of the evening’s status at continental level, blew the final whistle, all bar the Catalan contingent left the stadium drained as well as elated.

“I was made for nights like this,” Asprilla recalled a few years ago, and few have ever sought to debate the maverick Colombian’s judgment.


Faustino Asprilla is congratulated by Jon Dahl Tomasson (Owen Humphreys/PA Images via Getty Images)

‘The Barcelona Game’ is a landmark in Newcastle’s history. Just over five years earlier, the club had finished 20th in English football’s second tier, a place below Grimsby Town. But Kevin Keegan arrived as manager to transform Newcastle’s universe and, although he resigned nine months before Barcelona landed on Tyneside, one of his last major acts was to sign Asprilla. He had also signed the winger who placed two goal-making crosses on Asprilla’s forehead that night, Keith Gillespie.

Keegan’s successor was Kenny Dalglish. This was Newcastle’s superstar-manager era. Dalglish guided them to second place in the 1996-97 Premier League, bringing the reward of a Champions League qualifier against Croatia Zagreb (now Dinamo Zagreb), who they squeaked past 4-3 on aggregate after extra time. Now it was Barcelona in the first match of a four-team group that also contained Dynamo Kyiv and PSV.

Barcelona’s recent trajectory had been rather different. While Newcastle were languishing in the second tier, they were winning the 1991-92 European Cup (the competition’s last ride before being rebranded as the Champions League) at Wembley under Johan Cruyff. Two years later, Barca again reached the final, and then beat Paris Saint-Germain in 1997 to lift the old Cup Winners’ Cup in Rotterdam. Barcelona’s European pedigree was proven.

Bobby Robson had been Barcelona manager that night against PSG, but in the summer of 1997, he was eased ‘upstairs’ as the Catalans recruited the most in-demand coach in European football, Louis van Gaal.

Van Gaal’s young Ajax team had won the Champions League in 1995 against Milan and lost the following year’s final on penalties to Juventus. The Dutchman was 46 and utterly assured. His aim was to win the tournament, not merely take part in it.

As Given says: “Barcelona were European heavyweights. We were very much novices. It was like: ‘All Barcelona have to do is turn up’. We used that as a bit of fuel.”


The Barcelona team who took to the field at St James’ Park (Mark Leech/Offside via Getty Images)

Newcastle needed fuel. They had warmed up for this most historic of fixtures with a home game on the Saturday against Wimbledon, who, needless to say, did not play like Barcelona. Newcastle lost 3-1 and as demoralised fans and players trooped out of St James’ Park, the thought of facing Barca four days later felt more ominous than exhilarating. According to the dressing room, Dalglish had been forthright in his post-match analysis.

“Maybe Barcelona will come here a little complacent, especially if their spies in the crowd report back on how poorly we performed,” said captain Rob Lee.

Barcelona won 2-1 against Deportivo La Coruna the same day to continue Van Gaal’s unbeaten league start. Sonny Anderson, the new signing from Monaco and replacement for Ronaldo (the original, Brazilian version), had scored the winner. Anderson had also scored for Monaco at Newcastle in the UEFA Cup in March 1997. Even though Barca travelled to Tyneside without their injured captain, Pep Guardiola, they did not lack ability.

Newcastle were never knowingly undramatic in those years and the Monday before the game brought the announcement of chairman Sir John Hall’s retirement. Hall had been the financial and big-picture architect of Newcastle’s rise as a club, and Barca were his inspiration.

“Barcelona was the first place I visited when I set out to build Newcastle United and start a sporting club… to be playing Barcelona in the Champions League is the realisation of a dream,” Hall said at his retirement press conference, shortly before a fire alarm went off.

As Hall spoke, Van Gaal’s Barca were arriving. The next morning, they trained at the unlikely venue of New Ferens Park, home of non-League club Durham City, 15 miles south of Newcastle. The eager north-east media was allowed in and after a brief altercation with photographers, Van Gaal was out on the turf instructing Rivaldo, Figo and a couple of other midfielders, Luis Enrique and Ivan de la Pena.


Louis van Gaal ushers away photographers at Barcelona training (Owen Humphreys/PA Images via Getty Images)

Those of us reporting were enlightened. Considering that midfield array and the fact Newcastle had started a 33-year-old John Barnes and 35-year-old Ian Rush against Wimbledon, Van Gaal had reasons to believe Barcelona would flatten any remaining Geordie optimism.

Barnes and Rush had been brought to Newcastle by Dalglish. They had been mainstays of his Liverpool team, illustrious players, and brought vast experience, but Van Gaal, while trying to acknowledge those strengths, said: “The disadvantage of having Rush and Barnes is that their age will count.”

It was the same hard fist in a velvet glove when Van Gaal addressed English football overall — its clubs were allowed back into Europe in 1990 following the ban after the Heysel disaster five years earlier. “I do have respect for English football,” he said. “When I go to English matches, I love the game, I love the atmosphere. But I would like them to think in a little bit more of a tactical way.”

As for his Camp Nou colleague, Robson, a Newcastle fan born and bred in Durham, Van Gaal said coldly: “I have had little contact with him. He is in Egypt.”

Robson was in Cairo watching the Under-17 World Championship, wondering how he missed such an event involving two clubs he loved and perhaps why he had turned down Newcastle when Keegan left.

There was one other player question for Van Gaal: what did he think of Faustino Asprilla?

A mixture of reality and folklore tells us that Asprilla first appeared on Tyneside in a snowstorm wearing a knee-length fur coat and toting an unspecified amount of baggage.

It was February 1996, and Newcastle were top of the Premier League and seemingly destined to be champions of England for the first time since 1927. Keegan saw Asprilla as the man who would ensure the title was secured and, just 48 hours after joining, the Colombian was thrust into action at Middlesbrough as a second-half substitute. Newcastle were losing 1-0 and second-placed Manchester United were winning by the same score at Blackburn Rovers.

Famously, Asprilla had thought he would not be required and had a lunchtime glass of wine.

It all added to the reputation.


Faustino Asprilla is challenged by Middlesbrough’s Phil Whelan (Mark Thompson/Allsport/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Asprilla — ‘Tino’ to everyone — was 26. Born in Tulua, Colombia, he moved to ambitious Serie A club Parma in 1992 and helped them reach the Cup Winners’ Cup final at Wembley a year later. Unfortunately, Asprilla spent the game, which Parma won 3-1 against Royal Antwerp, on the bench as he had injured himself back in Colombia when kicking open a bus driver’s door after the vehicle had hit his car.

That was on top of the firearms conviction. “Hey, I like guns but I don’t shoot my own horses!” he once said in an interview with FourFourTwo magazine. “And ages ago, the police stopped my sister here in Tulua and found some guns that I’d brought from Italy in the car. They kicked up a bit of a fuss.”

It was why that afternoon in Middlesbrough, there were T-shirts with “Asprilla: Armed & Dangerous” across the front.

Then there was Asprilla’s interest in the opposite sex. Even in the lads-mag 1990s of English football, Asprilla was regarded as exceptional. Having once spent a couple of hours in his rented house in the Woolsington suburb of Newcastle for an interview, his dedication to the female form can be independently verified. At the end of a previous interview, he had shouted back: “Hey, you didn’t ask about the women.”

The tape wasn’t long enough.

“Did I ever room with Tino?” Given says. “Did I what? Are you mad? He was no stranger to a party, Tino. Didn’t have much English, yet he always seemed to have enough in a nightclub.”

But Asprilla was more than a character. He was a spectacular footballer, a footballer capable of the spectacular. The two goals he scored for his country in their 5-0 trouncing of Argentina in Buenos Aires in qualification for the 1994 World Cup demonstrated that. He became ‘The Black Arrow’.

And here he was, in freezing February at the Riverside Stadium, making Middlesbrough’s defenders look drunk. Newcastle’s 1-0 deficit became a 2-1 victory and the table showed they had a nine-point lead with a game in hand.

Newcastle won only one of the next six matches, though, and Asprilla started them all. He scored their third in the infamous 4-3 defeat at Liverpool. Newcastle finished second and, 30 seasons on, Asprilla’s mid-season introduction to the side is still questioned.

They had broken their transfer record to sign him — £7.5million ($10.2m at modern rates) — and then the world record in the summer of 1996 to bring in Alan Shearer for £15m. They already had Les Ferdinand as another option up front, but on a freakish afternoon in the 1997-98 pre-season, Shearer sustained a horrible ankle injury just as his fellow England striker was sold to Tottenham.


Faustino Asprilla, held aloft by Fernando Couto and Massimo Crippa, had made his name at Parma (Clive Brunskill/Allsport/Getty Images)

Dalglish had bought Jon Dahl Tomasson that summer to play off Shearer but the young Dane had not settled immediately. Now Shearer was missing, Ferdinand was gone and, a week out from Barcelona’s visit, Asprilla was playing for Colombia against Venezuela in Barranquilla, 5,000 miles away. He returned in time to be a substitute for that loss to Wimbledon.

In Durham, Van Gaal was asked if he would put an extra man on Asprilla. “He is a very dangerous player — I know, as I played against Parma with Ajax,” he replied. “But I don’t put two players on one player.”

When Asprilla tumbled over the challenge of new Barcelona goalkeeper Ruud Hesp to earn and convert a penalty, then rose to power in a header to make it 2-0, even Van Gaal may have questioned his decision-making. With Lee immense in the middle, Gillespie was ripping apart the Barca left flank and the Dutchman’s Durham plan.

Another superb cross brought another imperious Asprilla header. Howe may have seen a hint of that in Jacob Murphy’s cross to Nick Woltemade last Saturday, and in the German’s finish.


Barcelona are helpless as Faustino Asprilla heads home (Stu Forster/Allsport/Getty Images)

St James’ was shaking. History was in the making. Across town, Oasis, who may live forever, were playing a sold-out gig. Liam Gallagher, wearing a long-sleeved Newcastle jersey, barked out score updates mid-concert. Newcastle-upon-Tyne felt like the centre of things.

Back at the stadium, now Paris Saint-Germain coach Luis Enrique pulled a goal back on 72 minutes, then Figo snatched a second with two minutes of the 90 left. As Geordie hearts sank, the noise went up.

“I remember that, hanging on,” Given says. “It was 3-2 and just wave after wave of their attacks. We were just getting deeper.”

Newcastle held on to the final whistle. Afterwards, Van Gaal referenced Gillespie and Asprilla, who sauntered past the press saying, “Three goals, not bad.” Dalglish thought a few beyond Catalonia would take note.


Pierluigi Collina blows the final whistle (Bradley Ormesher/Mirrorpix/Getty Images)

As it turned out, however, Newcastle ended up third in the group and Barcelona bottom. Both were out of Europe before Christmas. Shortly after it, less than four months on from the high of ‘The Barcelona Game’, Asprilla was sold back to Parma. His last Newcastle goals were that hat-trick.

As Barcelona won La Liga, Newcastle trailed home 13th in the Premier League and Dalglish did not see the first anniversary of the win over Barca, being dismissed in August 1998. Ruud Gullit came next.

It took until 2002 for Newcastle to return to the Champions League, by which time Robson was finally in charge. Of course, they drew Barcelona. A 2-0 home defeat in the old second group stage was not quite 1997, though. Little is. Newcastle stalwarts say that alongside Keegan’s debut as a player in 1982 and the 4-1 defeat of PSG in 2023, Barcelona 1997 is one of the best three atmospheres at St James’ Park in the past half-century.

Tomorrow night could be another. “Special,” as Howe says.

It is sold out, but apparently a spare ticket has been found for a man flying in from Colombia.

(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Kelsea Petersen)





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