Palace supporters, still in pain from 1990, head to the FA Cup final

Crystal Palace plays Manchester City at Wembley on Saturday in the FA Cup final, and both teams are looking to win it for the first time. Before the game, talk about the club’s amazing and ultimately heartbreaking 1990 season is sure to be high on the agenda.

That year’s semi-finals and final(s) were probably the most exciting in the long history of the tournament. For every Palace fan who watched them, they were the happiest and saddest times of their lives.

It was hard for Palace to get used to the Premier League after being promoted, and they had already been beaten 9-0 by Liverpool early in the season.

They didn’t do much better in the Cup either. They beat Portsmouth, Huddersfield Town, Rochdale, and Cambridge United, all of whom were from lower leagues, to make it to the semi-finals for the first time since 1976, when they lost to Southampton as a third-division team.

Liverpool, who are the current FA Cup holders and defending champions, look like they will be too strong to beat in the semis. An Ian Rush goal put the Reds ahead at Villa Park at break.

After Mark Bright and Gary O’Reilly gave Palace an unexpected lead, things went crazy. It took only two minutes for Liverpool to get back ahead, but Andy Gray shocked the odds-on favorites in the 88th minute to make extra time necessary.

Surprisingly, Alan Pardew scored for Palace in the 109th minute to secure the win. Pardew would later become the club’s manager.

It was the first year that both semi-finals were shown live on TV, and the excitement didn’t even dull when Manchester United’s opponent, Oldham, showed up to Maine Road to play them.

The second division team hadn’t beaten a top-flight team in 66 years, but they beat four that season on their way to a double cup run that made the whole country talk.

Oldham twice came from behind to tie 3-3 after extra time, thanks to Joe Royle’s fast, attacking football. That meant that an amazing 13 goals were scored on an unimaginably dramatic day. Oldham’s dream came to an end when United won the match 2-1 with six minutes left in extra time.

TEAM ONLY USING ENGLISH

The last all-English team to play in the final was Palace at Wembley, and the last all-English team to win it was United.

Four years after taking over at Old Trafford, United manager Alex Ferguson was under a lot of pressure to win a prize. However, O’Reilly scored the first goal for Palace.

Bryan Robson and Mark Hughes turned things around, and United looked like they were going to win. But then Ian Wright came off the bench and had the best 20 minutes of his life.

The ex-non-league scorer missed most of the season because he broke his leg twice, but he came off the bench and scored the equalizer with almost his first touch and then put the Londoners ahead early in extra time.

“Because of everything that had happened up to that point, it’s still easily the best moment of my career,” Wright told the Palace website on Friday.

“I came up through the ranks at Palace and soon found myself on the Wembley pitch, the biggest stage in English football.”

“What happened after that was like something out of a fairy tale.” Absolutely, definitely was.”

Hughes scored a late equalizer, though, while Palace fans sang in a dreamy state.

Five days later, the repeat wasn’t as good as the first game. Palace fought hard, but United won 1-0 thanks to a goal by Lee Martin.

The loss left the losers with a huge hole in their hearts, but it was the win that set Ferguson and United on their crazy path to success, which included another extra-time FA Cup final win over Palace in 2016 after Ferguson had retired.

Wright later won many prizes, including two FA Cups with Arsenal. “I would have loved to have won that FA Cup, and we were only seven minutes away,” he said. “Eight minutes. I really still can’t handle it.”