Eleven years after Sir Alex Ferguson won his first European Cup, he was still manager of Manchester United, a season after his third final, a season before his fourth. Eleven years after Jose Mourinho’s maiden triumph, he was in his second spell at Chelsea, claiming the Premier League title for the third time. Eleven years after Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona passed their way to glory in 2009, he had a rare off-year at Manchester City, the only time in the last seven seasons when he did not secure the Premier League title.
And the only manager to make Aston Villa European champions? Eleven years after beating Bayern Munich in Rotterdam, Tony Barton agreed to become manager of a club in the Wessex League, the ninth flight of English football, the fifth tier of non-league.
Barton feels the forgotten European Cup winner, perhaps the lowest-profile manager ever to claim the club game’s most prestigious prize. Whereas Guardiola has coached Barcelona, Bayern and Manchester City, while Mourinho leapt from Porto to Chelsea and then Internazionale and Real Madrid, Barton had two managerial posts: at Villa and Northampton Town. And, in 1993, Barton was set to take over at Petersfield Town, the Hampshire club in a division with Whitchurch and Wimborne. Barton, the scourge of Bayern Munich in 1982, could have been facing Brockenhurst or Bernerton Heath Harlequins. “I thought, ‘blimey, that is a bit of a coup’,” said Mark Nicoll, Petersfield’s long-serving club secretary.
Which, if anything, is a bit of an understatement. Petersfield Town was actually a new club, formed as Petersfield United folded, equipped with a new owner. “In 1993, we came out of the Isthmian League, we couldn’t afford to remain at that level,” Nicoll added. “We then had a fairy godfather in Peter de Sisto, who took over and became chairman.” De Sisto’s reign was to unravel. He was, Nicoll recalled, “a bit of a rogueish character”, but he arrived with ambition.
“One of the first things he said was that he was going to bring in a well-known manager and he said Tony Barton,” Nicoll recalled. “How he knew him, I don’t know. But within a few days of becoming chairman he said he had this manager lined up. And then within a week or two, he convened another meeting and said unfortunately Tony Barton has been recommended by his doctor not to take on the role.” That medical advice proved sadly accurate: Barton had suffered a heart attack during his time in charge of Northampton. He had another in August 1993 and died at just 56; it says something about his relative obscurity then that The Independent’s news story of his death was just 99 words long.
There was a postscript. Petersfield got an appointment accustomed to football at higher levels. “De Sisto had two others lined up, Gary Stevens and Alan Devonshire,” Nicoll said. “He pulled the rabbit out of the hat in terms of the two big-name alternatives.” Stevens, the former Tottenham defender who was in England’s 1986 World Cup squad, took the job.
And while Barton never managed Petersfield, their Love Lane ground did host a memorial match for him, in October 1993. The crowd, Nicoll thinks, was between 1,000 and 1,500 but the cast list was remarkable. A Villa side was based around the majority of Barton’s European Cup winners: the teamsheet features the late Gary Shaw, the final scorer Peter Withe, the captain Dennis Mortimer, plus Tony Morley, Gordon Cowans, Des Bremner and Kenny Swain.
They were joined by Tony Cascarino, a later Villa signing, a forward who would play at the following summer’s World Cup and, on one day, a scorer at Petersfield. Their opponents, the Petersfield all-stars, included Glenn Hoddle, then player-manager of Chelsea, his former Spurs teammate Stevens and a host of old Portsmouth players. “De Sisto organised it with Gary,” Nicoll said. “How they got Aston Villa to come down, I don’t know. We had brilliant names there.” There was almost another. Alan Ball was slated to play but was a late withdrawal.
A star-studded line-up shows the esteem in which Barton was held. The link with Petersfield came in part because Barton lived in Hampshire: a former Portsmouth player, he had served as assistant manager at Southampton to the ex-Villa defender Chris Nicholl and then returned to Fratton Park.
More famously, he was Ron Saunders’ assistant when Villa, who had not been champions since 1910, won Division 1 in 1981. The following February, the abrasive Saunders walked out, soon to take charge of Birmingham. His more amiable sidekick Barton was put in charge. His sixth game in charge was a European Cup quarter-final against Valeriy Lobanovskyi’s Dynamo Kyiv. His 13th was the first leg of a semi-final against an Anderlecht team who were to win the following season’s Uefa Cup. His 25th match as a manager was against a Bayern side featuring Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, Paul Breitner, Klaus Augenthaler and Dieter Hoeness. The 16 players Barton named in the Villa squad ended their careers with just 34 caps between them. They nevertheless beat Bayern.
There is a sense in which it is an extraordinary anomaly. Consider Barton’s subsequent managerial career: he lost six of his first seven games at Northampton and, following his heart-attack, resigned before an end-of-season rally still left them 91st out of 92 in the Football League; it was just three years after glory in Rotterdam.
But then he and his Villa side may have been a remarkable blend of the ordinary and the extraordinary. Under Barton, they won the European Super Cup in 1983, beating Barcelona 3-0 in the second leg of the final. They were only eliminated from the 1982-83 European Cup by a Juventus side featuring a core of Italy’s World Cup winners, garnished with the talents of Michel Platini and Zbigniew Boniek.
But after finishing fourth in the old Division 1 in 1977, however, their next 10 league finishes were eighth, eighth, seventh, first, 11th, sixth, 10th, 10th, 16th and 22nd: they were relegated five years after conquering Europe. Barton was sacked in 1984; Doug Ellis, the chair whose two spells in charge did not include the glory of 1981 and 1982, dismissed him. The job offers instead came from Northampton and, later, Petersfield. But when Villa host Bayern on Wednesday, it will be a reminder of the wonderful achievements of Barton, the unassuming, unheralded, unlikely European Cup winner.