Crystal Palace’s run to the 1990 FA Cup final remains one of the most memorable chapters in the club’s history.
Former Eagles midfielder Alan Pardew was right in the thick of it, with his extra-time winner against Liverpool in a classic semi-final encounter at Villa Park settling the tie and booking the club’s place at the Wembley showpiece.
Remarkably, the 4-3 victory came just months after the Reds had humbled Palace 9-0 at Anfield.
Pardew on Palace’s FA Cup run
For Pardew, the contrast between these two matches perfectly captured the character of this Palace side, who refused to dwell on that season’s heavy defeat.
“I played in that not-so-iconic 9-0 league defeat against Liverpool a few months earlier,” Pardew recalls to FourFourTwo. The scale and manner of this defeat and subsequent low point would eventually provide the narrative behind one of the greatest moments of his career.
“But I suppose that’s what made the cup win so remarkable,” he adds. “Humiliation one moment, sheer elation the next.”
Indeed it was the response of the group to such a thrashing that defined Palace as a team that season.
“It was testimony to the resilience we had within the group,” he continues, before turning to the part he played in the victory, specifically his 109th-minute winner.
“That goal shot me into the spotlight for probably the first time in my career,” he recalls. “Suddenly, every newspaper, radio station and TV channel wanted to talk to me.”
This exposure was something new for Pardew and his team-mates, not least because of the way that football culture was beginning to move into the mainstream of popular culture, following the dark days of the 1980s.
“I think the two semi-finals that season were the first live on television back-to-back,” he says, before recalling how close the Eagles were to meeting another unfacied side under the Twin Towers.
“I remember us watching the other one afterwards praying that Oldham could beat Manchester United.
“They almost did and it was so nearly a Palace v Oldham Cup final which would have been a bit weird.”
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