 | |
| Tournament details | |
|---|---|
| Country | England |
| Dates | 17 September 1985 – 30 September 1986 |
| Teams | 6 |
| Final positions | |
| Champions | Liverpool |
| Runner-up | Everton |
| Tournament statistics | |
| Matches played | 18 |
| Goals scored | 49 (2.72 per match) |
| Top goal scorer(s) | Ian Rush (7 goals) |
The Football League Super Cup (known for sponsorship reasons as the ScreenSport Super Cup) was a one-off football club competition held in England in the 1985–86 season. It was organised by the Football League and was intended as a form of financial and sporting compensation for the English clubs which had qualified for European competition in the previous season but had been banned from entering European tournaments by UEFA following the Heysel Stadium disaster. With the ban set to last into the foreseeable future, England's clubs stood to lose a great deal of revenue, and would also have fewer opportunities to win silverware, so the Super Cup was established in order to hopefully offset at least some of this lost income, as well as offering additional competition for them.
The Football League's original intention was to hold the Super Cup annually for the duration of the UEFA ban on English clubs (which ultimately turned out to be five years) but the competition was largely seen as a poor substitute for the glamour of European tournaments and offered nothing different from the two domestic knockout competitions that already existed, the FA Cup and League Cup. Consequently, it generated minimal interest from the clubs involved. With the competition's final postponed until the beginning of the following season due to fixture congestion, the Super Cup was ultimately abolished after only one tournament had been held.
Interest in the competition was so low that the Football League initially failed to attract any form of sponsorship for it. Cable TV sports channel Screensport agreed to sponsor the tournament's final in September 1986.