“You’re actually a member of the last Liverpool team to win a trophy at the old Wembley.”
“Oh yeah?” says a sheepish Stig Inge Bjornebye, when speaking exclusively to the ECHO and reflecting on his Liverpool career. “Okay. Good, good.”
To Kopites, Wembley was ‘Anfield South’. For the best part of three decades, the Reds had dominated at the home of English football, winning their first five FA Cups, three of their first five League Cups (replays were needed for the other two), and even their second European Cup.
As a result, many a Liverpool legend had pulled on the famous Reds shirt and walked out under the famous Wembley twin towers over the years. Some of the greatest players to ever play for the club in fact, during their period of dominance as the best side English football had to offer.
READ MORE: Xabi Alonso phonecall helped Liverpool beat Man City and Chelsea to £17.5m transfer
READ MORE: Real Madrid star slammed Liverpool team-mate and 'walked out' on squad after row with Everton hero
As a boyhood Liverpool fan who had had endured a slow start to his Reds career, perhaps that’s why Bjornebye came across a little awkwardly when such a fact was put to him. An unknown Norwegian when moving to Anfield from Rosenborg in 1992, soon after scoring the winning goal in his native cup final, his opportunities were initially limited.
But the appointment of a new manager in Roy Evans and a loan return to Rosenborg ahead of the 1994 World Cup acted as a reset button for the wing-back. And 12 months on, come April 1995, he was walking out at Wembley for Liverpool in the League Cup final.
Handed his 43rd appearance of the season, of which all but one had been starts, he was now firmly first choice at Anfield. A change in formation to 3-5-2 had ultimately seen him thrive at left wing-back, with the Norwegian providing 10 assists in the 1994/95 season as the Reds closed in on the first silverware of his Liverpool career.
While he might have offered an understated reaction to following in the footsteps of so many Reds legends at Wembley, make no mistake: winning the 1995 Coca Cola Cup final for his beloved Liverpool, as a Steve McManaman brace earned a 2-1 win over Bolton Wanderers, was the highlight of Bjornebye’s career.
“That was a dream,” he recalled. “I’m not normally one for picking out single games or single experiences. For me it’s more holistic when I look back at the whole story.
“But if I have to pick out some pieces, it leads me to that cup final at the old Wembley. It speaks for itself, the atmosphere.
“I had my parents over which I was really happy with, that I could share the experience with them. I also invited them into the tunnel after the match because the security measures weren’t at the level there is today so it was possible to sneak them in there.
“So I managed to see them before we went to celebrate. That was a special occasion and a special memory.”
Unfortunately for Bjornebye, no sooner had the winner’s medal been placed around his neck and he was holding the trophy aloft and he was brought crashing back down to earth. Three days after winning the League Cup, he suffered a broken leg in a 3-1 victory over Southampton.
He would feature just twice in the following season as a result as he embarked on a lengthy journey to return.
“It was days, just days. Four or five days, it was the next match,” he said. “It was probably the strongest point of my career. It was a complicated fracture and it took a year.
“I think I played two matches, maybe, the year after. I think most people thought I was finished but I came back and had my strongest season after being out for a year so that’s probably one of the things I’m most proud of because that year was so tough.
“To get back to that kind of level takes a lot of hard work. The rehabilitation and the gym work and everything I did throughout that year made me stronger. And again Roy Evans took me back in the team.”
Bjornebye was a spectator for most of the 1995/96 season as a result of his injury, and didn’t feature in the 1996 FA Cup final against Manchester United as a result. But that didn’t spare him from those infamous cream suits as Liverpool returned to Wembley for the second time in the space of a year. Unfortunately, this time there would be no happy ending.
“I did have a cream suit and some funny sunglasses,” he admits. “I was at Wembley with the squad. It’s been a joke ever since, that we turned up in those suits.
“As far as I can remember it was part of David James’ model contract with Armani. He organised everything, I don’t know how. I think that’s how it came about but it wasn’t a good idea.”
So what’s happened to Bjornebye’s cream suit now, three decades later? Understandably, it didn’t live to tell the tale.
“I wore it at a fancy dress party after that,” he revealed. “We drew messages on it and things like that. I didn’t wear it properly again!”
Bjornebye would indeed bounce back from injury to enjoy the best season of his career in 1996/97 as Liverpool challenged for the Premier League. An ever-present in the English top flight, he made 52 appearances in all competitions, starting all of them, and was named in the PFA Team of the Year.
Yet despite competing with Manchester United for the title, the Reds’ ultimately collapsed at the back-end of the campaign. They would end up finishing fourth in what had previously been a two-horse race, seven points off the Red Devils and missing out on Champions League football as a result.
Despite such disappointment, Bjornebye stills looks back on the strongest season of his career fondly.
“Roy Evans made some changes, signed some other players and we had a very interesting team in 96/97,” he said. “I think we were heading the table for the most part of the season.
“We cracked up a little bit at the end, unfortunately. We probably should have won the league that year but unfortunately we didn’t. But we played some great football and the year overall was really enjoyable.
“It was the highlight for sure. Obviously I played a lot and it was so enjoyable. It was just a shame we didn’t win the title in the end but there you go. But it was so enjoyable.
“I think Jan Molby once told me during a tough patch, he said to me on the coach as we were driving to Anfield: 'I remember those times when we knew we were going to be 3-0 up at half-time'.
“I’d never experienced that but I think through that Christmas programme, we were playing games pretty much every other day, but I felt when I was coming off the field after playing 90 minutes, that I could have played another half!
“I just felt so fit and it was so enjoyable. The mentality and everything was so good. For sure it was the most enjoyable season I played.”
So why didn’t Liverpool win the league that season, despite looking favourites at one point? Bjornebye puts it down to naivety when looking at what Evans’ men lacked in comparison to Sir Alex Ferguson’s United.
“What we lacked and what stopped us from winning the league was that we weren’t clinical enough in those even games,” he said. “The best teams, they make sure they can win 1-0 or keep a lead even on a difficult day.
“But we just kept playing and playing and playing and sometimes I think we were a little bit naive. That was probably a part of the game that we lacked.”
If Bjornebye was playing now, he’d be lauded as one of the best attacking full-backs around. He registered an incredible 17 assists in that 1996/97 campaign, after all - a club record that Trent Alexander-Arnold only just about managed to beat in the 2021-22 season. Alas, at the time the Norwegian’s record did not get the attention it would warrant today, not that the modest defender is overly fussed either way.
“Statistics are more developed and more exposed now,” he ponders. “There must have been some Norwegian newspapers that picked up on my statistics from that year. I wasn’t even aware of it, that they kept records like that.
“But I do remember I had lots of assists, that’s for sure. But I had a thankful role in the team and I had some good passers of the ball in the middle of the park. I was stuck on the left doing the hard work, with Jason McAteer doing the same on the other side. We were pretty much running up and down every time we attacked and every time we had to defend.
“We were doing a lot of running but obviously on the offensive part of the pitch, my job was to provide and to provide for Robbie Fowler and Stan Collymore who both had good seasons as well. They understood me quite well. They knew pretty much when the cross was going to come.
“I guess it made it easy for them because they knew I wasn’t going to dribble past three defenders before I crossed it. Especially with Robbie, we had a really good link. We understood each other and probably crossing with my left foot was the strongest part of my game.
“I was in a role where I could explore the strongest parts of my game. It’s not a bad idea to be honest, that’s how you put together a team and make sure the players can offer their strengths to the team.
“It was a dream in many ways because we enjoyed the football so much. Sometimes too much because we cracked up towards the end of the season instead of making sure that we kept the lead that we had throughout most of the season.
“That was the sad part, that we didn’t win, but at least we were back playing some really good football and won some fantastic matches.”
Liverpool would revert back to a 4-4-2 formation in the 1997/98 season, and with it Bjornebeye’s assists dwindled as his game-time was reduced. Out of favour under new manager Gerard Houllier, he would reunite with his former boss Graeme Souness at Blackburn Rovers on this day in 2000.
At Ewood Park, the Norwegian showed his ability once more. Helping Blackburn win promotion to the Premier League in his first season, he got his hands on the League Cup again in 2002 as Rovers beat Tottenham in the final - this time at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium.
Yet, as had been the case back in 1995, a serious injury lay in wait just around the corner. He fractured his eye-socket in a freak training ground accident in April 2002, which would require corrective surgery.
And while he would return to action seven months later, he suffered a second career-threatening injury when making his comeback against Wigan Athletic in the League Cup. Having injured his foot, he was recuperating in Norway before he had to be rushed to hospital after complaining of numbness.
There, surgeons were forced to by-pass two failing arteries in a five-hour operation to save his foot from being amputated. He would retire at the age of 33 in March 2003 - little over a year after starting for Blackburn in their own League Cup final triumph.
“We won promotion in the first season so I came back into the Premier League,” he said. “But in my third season, I think my body said stop because I picked up two injuries. I was always really lucky with injuries, other than that fracture in 1995.
“Apart from that, I was really lucky. I was strong physically and I didn’t pick up too many injuries. But in my last season at Blackburn, I picked up two and they were both career-threatening. I was 33 and it was time to stop.
“They were serious injuries. Very freak and rare. I ripped an artery so the scar tissue when it was healing, it blocked my blood stream to my foot. That was serious.
“When I was training and playing matches, I pushed it too far before I took it seriously. I had to go through two big operations on that. With the accident in training, I crushed the orbital floor. It was an orbital blowout fracture which is also very, very rare.
“I don’t know what happened but the doctor said to me, ‘This can’t continue. You have to look after yourself now.’ So I was thinking it’s time to call it a day.
“I was again thankful. I was 33 and I was thinking I could have been 23. I had a good ride. If it’s time to stop, you have to stop and move on.”
A version of this article was first published in March 2023.
