Arsenal vs Manchester United: Ryan Giggs, Gary Neville and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer remember 1999 semi-final

Villa Park, 14 April 1999: When English football was purified to the point where only its most potent and alluring parts remained

“It was the only time in a football match where I ever smiled when I was playing,” says Gary Neville, thinking back to one specific moment in the 1999 FA Cup semi-final replay between Arsenal and Manchester United at Villa Park, perhaps the greatest single game of English football’s modern era. “That is the only time I have done that in a pressure moment.”

In just one of the evening’s many dramatic strands, during the first-half of extra time, Peter Schmeichel had tweaked his thigh with United down to 10 men having used all three substitutions. Neville was assigned to take their goal kicks. “I walked towards the fans to take one and smiled thinking: ‘This is unbelievable, this’,” he recalls. “You know when you just feel: ‘This is something special’.”

By that late stage, those 30,223 supporters in attendance had already witnessed 94 minutes of direct, uncompromising and exhilarating play. This was English football purified to the point where only its most potent and alluring parts remained. There had been a long-range strike by each side, a goal disallowed for Arsenal, a sending off for United and, minutes earlier, a fateful late penalty.

The moment which stands above any other in the memory was still to come, of course.

Yet that moment seemed far off when Neville was launching goal kicks forward to eight physically and emotionally drained team-mates; further away still when referee David Elleray penalised Neville’s younger brother for bringing down Ray Parlour inside the penalty box and Dennis Bergkamp stood over a spot-kick in the final minute of normal time.

“I always remember Phil giving the penalty away and me thinking: ‘Oh my god, not you,’ the older Neville recalls. Both he and his brother understood how the mistake, in the final minutes of an enthralling game, could define United’s entire season. At Sir Alex Ferguson’s side were just one point clear of Arsenal at the top of the Premier League table with eight games to play.

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, who started up front that night at Villa Park, understood the consequences perfectly. “If Bergkamp had scored, they’d have won the double,” he said yesterday, as he prepares to take charge of United in a fourth round tie at the Emirates this evening. “That’s how small the margins are. That’s the stand-out for me.”

Such was the breathless pace of the game, Schmeichel had lost track of time and believed there were as many as eight minutes left to play. Bergkamp, an altogether more delicate and fragile mind, perhaps understood the magnitude of that moment too well. He had scored 21 of his 23 career penalties up to that point. The 24th was saved down low to Schmeichel’s left. Bergkamp never took another.

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer started up front for United in the fixture (Getty)

If the night had ended there and then, with Schmeichel beating away David Beckham’s attempt at an embrace as forcefully as he had Bergkamp’s spot-kick, then the game would still be regarded as a modern classic, but by definition this last-ever FA Cup semi-final replay had to be won on the night.

Patrick Vieira would never play a more famous pass. He was seeking the marauding Lee Dixon. Instead, he found the only player on the pitch in the 109th minute who was capable of carrying the ball out of his own half, beating four players – passing Dixon twice – and lifting the ball over Seaman from a narrowing angle.

“When I got the ball my feeling was that I was having a bit of a nightmare,” Ryan Giggs recalls. “I had come on for Jesper [Blomqvist] and I kept giving the ball away so I took the decision that the next time I get the ball I was going to have a little dribble so that’s what I did and before you knew it, it was in the back of the net.”

“I don’t remember the moment when Ryan picked up the ball, when it went in and I was just screaming,” Neville says. “I always remember after the game, we were being carried off the pitch but Tony Adams and Lee Dixon were standing outside our changing rooms to shake our hands.

“That is the one big thing that stands out for me. I remember thinking: ‘Bloody hell, they are proper guys these two to well done to them to do that.’” Two decades on, those memories endure. “It was the best game of football I have ever played in and I think all of us say the same thing.”