Villa 2 Internazionale 0

U.E.F.A. Cup 2nd round 1st leg, 24th October 1990.

Graham Taylor once said that if all eleven of your team played to the best of their ability then you could beat anyone, regardless of the opposition. Never was his theory more spectacularly proved than in this match.

Inter at the time could have made a reasonable claim to be the best side in the world. They were full of internationals and their team read like a who's who of world football - Zenga, Bergomi, Brehme, Matthaus, Serena, Klinsmann, coached by Giovanni Trapattoni, who had been in charge of Juventus at Villa Park eight seasons earlier.

UEFA regulations restricted the crowd to 36,461, with the whole of the North Stand and Witton Lane away sections being given to Inter despite their having barely a couple of hundred supporters at the game - a surprisingly low turnout for a club who could boast home gates regularly in excess of seventy thousand. Those who did make the journey, though, made their presence felt when a flare thrown onto the pitch caused the kick-off to be delayed for several minutes until the smoke had cleared.

When the match did get underway it soon turned into one of the most memorable nights in Villa Park's history. Roared on by a passionate Holte Villa tore into the Italian side, Paul Birch effectively putting Lothar Matthaus out of the game with his first tackle.

Being used by this time to disappointment from the Villa we expected the early promise to soon fade, but Kent Nielsen put us in front with a memorable twenty yard volley. It was at this point that I got pitched thirty yards forward and lost contact with everybody I'd gone to the match with. It was also the last time for a considerable while that I could feel my feet touching the floor. Half time came and went with no let-up and in the second half David Platt made it two-nil. He also missed a chance that would probably have put the tie beyond Inter's reach a few minutes later, but then again the referee would almost certainly have disallowed it if his performance in the San Siro was anything to go by.

So two-nil was how it finished, and unfortunately it wasn't enough. A fortnight later Inter showed what they were capable of in a three goal victory that drew another European adventure to a halt. At least we had the consolation of going out to the eventual winners of the competition.

And the way they played in subsequent rounds showed just what Villa had achieved in beating then in the first leg. David Platt gave the most faultless display possible. Tony Daley had the sort of game when he's unstoppable, Gordon Cowans played the last great match of a great career. Birch kindly led Matthaus around Villa Park, never leaving his side for fear that the German might get lost. Players such as Chris Price and Stuart Gray gave the best performances of their lives. None of them were capable of reaching such heights again, and after being knocked out of the UEFA Cup the team went into the alarming slump which landed them in relegation trouble and prematurely curtailed the Venglos Experiment. At least we'd proved that when we got our act together, the Villa team and supporters could beat anyone.