English soccer’s biggest modern-day grudge match stems from a rare, U.S.-style team relocation that harbors contempt and hatred more than two decades later.
The latest chapter of the incendiary rivalry between AFC Wimbledon and MK Dons will be played out on Sunday in the first round of the FA Cup, the oldest knockout competition in world soccer. The teams’ history includes off-field disorder, on-field brawls, interventions from authorities and mud-slinging that might seem petty to neutrals but couldn't be more serious for the protagonists. “It really is the North Carolina vs.
Duke of (English) football,” said Sam Spencer, an American-based AFC Wimbledon fan. It all goes back to 2002, when the owners of Wimbledon FC — the winner of the FA Cup in 1988 and a team known as the “Crazy Gang” — went in search of a better home stadium and were allowed to uproot the club 90 kilometers (55 miles) from south London to Milton Keynes, a commuter town north of the capital. It became known as MK Dons.
Such a relocation is common in American sports — the list of cities that have lost pro teams includes Oakland, San Diego, Seattle, Houston and Baltimore — but not in England. It was regarded as a betrayal by long-time fans of the original Wimbledon team, who responded by forming a team within weeks: AFC Wimbledon. The phoenix club started out in the ninth tier, the bottom of the English soccer pyramid, and rose rapidly up the league system.
This season, AFC Wimbledon and MK.