Arsenal legend Alan Smith

It was a big thing for us, you know,

and people maybe look down on the Cop Winners Cup now.

People of a younger generation don't quite know what it was all about,

but there was some very good size in that year, Val Madrid,

PSG, obviously. So we were delighted to be in it. And I think we felt probably we'd got a point

to prove, having got knocked out of the European Cup a couple of years before.

On May 4, 1994, Arsenal traveled to Copenhagen, undermanned and decidedly as underdogs,

to face Parma in the European Cup Winners' Cup final.

A return to glory for Alan Smith and a performance that was familiar to Arsenal fans by

the famous Back Four would

seal a Gunner's win, the club's most significant European achievement in its history.

Three decades later, for a legion of global fans and young fans alike, yearning for European

glory, that triumph has been largely forgotten or overlooked.

But it remains one of the shining moments in Arsenal history.

This is 1-0 to the Arsenal, the story of the 94 European Cup Winners Cup victory.

I'm your host, Kent Malmrose.

We're telling the story of that team in eight parts.

Each episode will focus on a unique attribute of the squad and will also move through the season and the European Trail chronologically.

Part 1. The gravity of Europe.

Before we tell the story of that team, that season and that win, we have to set the stage.

Why is it worth highlighting a distant 1994 victory

...