Swindon Town and their Anglo-Italian Cup victory are the feature of a new book by Simon Turner looking into the world on forgotten tournaments.

“Tinpot: Football’s Forgotten Tournaments” is the fourth book by Walsall fan Turner in which he looks into 40 old football tournaments, which includes Town’s success in Naples.

Speaking to The Adver, Turner discussed what he found fascinating about Swindon’s unlikely triumph against the big names of Italian football and the genesis of the competition.

Turner's book is out nowTurner's book is out now (Image: Simon Turner)

He said: “Famously Swindon beat Arsenal to win the League Cup but weren’t allowed in Europe because they were so far down the pyramid, so to the Football League’s credit, they did something about it and organised what was called the Anglo-Italian League Cup.

“That was a one-off final between Swindon and Coppa Italia winners Roma, in a two-legged final where Swindon emerged victorious.

“I think that established a relationship between the English FA and their Italian equivalents, so they decided to establish the Anglo-Italian Cup, which was a much more ambitious project because it was a bigger affair with six teams from each nation.

“I think many people might look at it now with a knowledge of modern football and think that Juventus must have played their reserves or an academy side but that wasn’t the case, they played their first team in both matches against Swindon.

“Italian football was very strong at the time, in 1970 Italy were the runners-up at the World Cup, but for whatever reason English clubs in the Anglo-Italian Cup clearly had the better of them.

“One of the reasons was at the time English football was much more direct and attacking and the Italians were much more defensive and the more attacking direct English teams was clearly more successful.”

Swindon famously became the first English team, and indeed only one until Manchester City in 2017, to win in Naples in European competition.

Turner said: “It is an interesting game because it is the final but being held at Napoli’s own ground, so they have home advantage, there would have been a smattering of Swindon fans there but not many, so it was a very hostile environment.

“The match was abandoned not long after Swindon scored the third goal because Napoli fans started ripping up the stadium in frustration at the result and throwing bits of the concrete seats onto the pitch.

“There is a photograph in the book which shows the team walking across the pitch with the trophy and you can see all the concrete bits which had been thrown on.”

 

 

The tale of Swindon becoming champions of Italy is one of 40 in the book, which was released on August 5, discussing the many exciting minor competitions that have populated football.

Turner said: “This is the fourth book that I have written and during the third I briefly made mention to some of the tournaments that are now in this book, in particular the Anglo-Scottish Cup and that caught my attention and thought there must be more to it.

“I saw that the last one was won by Chesterfield and I just wanted to find out more about these various competitions and you do come across these odd things.

"Chesterfield winning that last Anglo-Scottish Cup became particularly interesting when I found out they had knocked out Glasgow Rangers in the quarter-finals.

“We all remember the great FA Cup shocks of the past but there are some big shocks that came from these minor tournaments but they just are not so well known about.”