Castel di Sangro’s 1996 promotion rested on two extreme substitutions: a defender who scored within seconds and an unused reserve goalkeeper who stopped Ascoli’s eighth penalty.
KV Mechelen followed an unbeaten Cup Winners’ Cup run and a 1–0 final win over Ajax by beating European champions PSV 3–1 on aggregate.
West Brom controlled the first hour of Wembley’s first League Cup final, then Third Division QPR scored three times in 18 minutes.
Nene Park, rapid promotions and Max Griggs’s backing carried a merged club into Division Two, but the transfer of the ground could not supply a successor operating model.
Tottenham recovered from a 2-0 quarter-final deficit, then beat Atlético Madrid 5-1 in Rotterdam to become Britain’s first major European trophy winner.
Boavista’s first Portuguese league title came from 23 wins, only three defeats and a defence that conceded 22 goals while the established powers dropped points.
At the hour Atlético Nacional should have hosted Chapecoense in the 2016 Copa Sudamericana final, supporters filled the Medellín stadium in white and carried candles instead.
Oxford United followed consecutive promotions with a 3–0 League Cup final victory during their first season in England’s top flight.
FC United moved from a Rusholme curry-house meeting to league football in weeks, using one-member, one-vote rules to turn supporter protest into a durable institution.
In April 2017, a peaceful pitch occupation forced Leyton Orient’s match with Colchester to stop, empty and restart nearly two hours later.
