The Chelsea FanCast looks back, season by season, to 50 Years of Chelsea history from 1970 to the present day.
Stamford Chidge is joined by Jonathan Kydd and Mark Meehan to look back at the 1998-99 season.
In part two, we pick up the season in January. Chelsea are 7th in the Premier League, their league form having suffered from rotation due to participation in the Champions’ League. They faced Nottingham Forest in the 4th round of the FA Cup and were making good progress in the Champions League group stage 2.
Chris Sutton had been firing blanks and Vialli shocked the football world with the signing in January of AC Milan’s George Weah, a former World Footballer of the Year. Weah became an instant Chelsea cult hero by socring the winner against Spurs in the 87th minute to keeo our 10 year unbeaten run against them in tact.
Chelsea’s league form was still up and down but the FA Cup and Champions’ League were a different story. Gillingham were dispatched 6-1 in the FA Cup quarter-final with John Terry scoring his first Chelsea goal and despite defeats to Olympique Marseille and Lazio, a superb 3-1 win against Feyenoord with some of the best football we’d seen from a Chelsea side was enough to set up a mouthwatering and daunting Champions League quarter-final against Barcelona.
The 3-1 victory at Stamford Bridge with Chelsea scoring 3 goals in 8 minutes will go down as one of the best performances seen at the Bridge. Could Chelsea reach the semi-final of the Champions’ League at the first attempt? They had given themselves every chance.
It all went horribly wrong in an intimidating Camp Nou where having gone 2-0 down, Flo scored in the 60th minute with a goal that would send Chelsea to the semi-final. We were only 7 minutes away when Barcelona scored the goal that took it to extra-time and after Babayaro was sent off, Barcelona ran out comfortable 5-1 winners (6-4 on aggregate).
But the season would still end on a high after two Gus Poyet goals helped Chelsea defeat Newcastle in the FA Cup semi-final and Robbie DiMatteo scored his second FA Cup final goal as Chelsea beat Aston Villa 1-0 to lift the FA Cup for the third time in the last final at the Old Wembley.
