No English men's club had ever won the league, the FA Cup and the European Cup in a single season. None did it again until Manchester City in 2022-23. For eleven days in May 1999, Manchester United won all three, and the way they finished it has never stopped being told.
The league, on the last day
It went to the final afternoon. United needed to beat Tottenham at Old Trafford and went a goal down, then recovered to win 2-1 and take the title by a single point from Arsenal. Eleven months of football decided by one result on one Sunday.
The FA Cup
Six days later, on 22 May, United beat Newcastle 2-0 at Wembley to make it a domestic double. By then the season's last and largest prize was already in view.
Camp Nou, 26 May
The Champions League final against Bayern Munich looked lost. Bayern led from a sixth-minute Mario Basler free-kick and had hit the woodwork twice. United, without the suspended Roy Keane and Paul Scholes, trailed into stoppage time. Then it turned. Teddy Sheringham bundled in an equaliser from a David Beckham corner. Barely a minute later, another Beckham corner, Sheringham flicking on, and Ole Gunnar Solskjær stabbing it into the roof of the net. Two goals in stoppage time, the trophy turned around in a hundred seconds. "Football, bloody hell," said Ferguson, and it became the most quoted sentence in the club's history.
Why it mattered
The treble crowned Ferguson's first great team and remains the high-water mark of English club football. It was won without two of its best midfielders in the biggest game, off the back of a season of comebacks, by a side built around the academy graduates of the Class of '92 and a spine of Schmeichel, Keane and Cantona's successors. Barcelona, Inter Milan, Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain have all won a treble since. In English football only Manchester City, in 2022-23, has matched it.
Correction, 22 September 2026: this page said no English men's club had won the treble since 1999 and that Real Madrid had since matched it. Manchester City won the Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League in 2022-23, and Real Madrid have never won a treble (ESPN and Manchester City, 10 June 2023; ESPN, 2023, and Wikipedia's Treble (association football) list on Real Madrid).