Mike Reed still remembers the feeling in the pit of his stomach. 

It's February 1997, the FA Cup fifth-round replay between Chelsea and Leicester City at Stamford Bridge, two sides who face each other in the quarter-final on Sunday.

As the first tie had ended level, so too had the rematch. Even extra-time appeared unable to separate them. Penalties, three minutes away, looked the only way to decide it.

That's when Erland Johnsen picked up the ball.

The Norwegian centre-back marauded forwarded into the Leicester half.

He passed the ball to Gianluca Vialli. He kept running. Vialli's return effort looped high into the air. Johnsen was in the box by now.  

As he chested the ball, Leicester defender Matt Elliott raced across and stuck out his leg.

Johnsen went down, colliding into the back of Spencer Prior.

It all happened in a flash. Reed, the referee that day, trusted his gut.

‘I can remember thinking "Oh, he's took him",' Reed tells The Mail on Sunday, 23 years later.
‘You get a feeling in the stomach, that instinct, and I just blew the whistle.'

The problem was, his instinct was wrong. Johnsen had dived. Daylight separated him from Elliott's leg while Johnsen had flung himself into Prior.

Leicester's players raged.

Prior screamed at Johnsen. Dennis Wise grasped Prior by the shirt. More Leicester players chased after Reed, who cast them away with a flick of his hand.

‘I had thought I could get there and make the challenge, but realised halfway through I wasn't going to get there and pulled out,' says Elliott.

‘Johnsen thought I was going to make it, took a tumble and bundled into Spencer. It was never a foul.   

'The referee had taken the bait.

Johnsen made a quick exit. He had got his reward. I think he knew he had cheated the ref. I lay more blame at the ref. He panicked and it cost us.'

Frank Lebouf scored the penalty and Leicester were out.

Have a read of any list of worst refereeing decisions in football history and Reed's that day will feature in all of them.

Scandal ensued.

Not only were Leicester out of the FA Cup because of it, but presenter Danny Baker was sacked by the BBC for bắc kinh an on-air rant in which he declared that ‘football has a maggot at its golden core, and that maggot is referees' and urged supporters to picket Reed's home. 

The incident was brought up in the House of Commons after a Leicester fan sued the FA for ‘trauma, shock and distress' caused by the decision.

It was not until the next morning that Reed realised his mistake.

‘In those days they used to give you the footage on a VHS tape,' he says. ‘I shoved it into the player and started to watch. 

When it happened I wondered what the fuss was about. Then they went to the end of the show and bắc kinh Andy Gray and Richard Keys took it to pieces and bắc kinh showed the angle from behind the corner flag.

I looked at it and thought "Ah, I know what they're talking about now". 

‘A very good friend of mine, who is also a Leicester supporter, rang me and his words were: "At the time I thought what a stupid challenge, then from the eighth replay from behind the corner flag I thought "Mike, you've been conned".'

Reed, with his Brummie lilt, talks openly about the incident with charm and grace. He can laugh about it now, nearly a quarter of a century on. That can't be said of many Leicester fans, who go into today's quarter-final with Chelsea, still having never seen their club lift the trophy.

They aren't the only ones unable to forget it.

‘Until this day, every time I see Martin O'Neill at a game, he turns to me and says: "You cost me the FA Cup you did, Reedy!"

‘I just look at him and say: "Martin, you still had two games to play." He says: "No, no, it was our season." We have a laugh and about it now. I don't think he would have done 20-odd years ago.'

He didn't. After the game, O'Neill called it ‘shocking'. ‘The efforts of my players were heroic and after going out like that, with that penalty, we are all heartbroken to be honest,' he told reporters afterwards. 

Chelsea went on to face Portsmouth and Wimbledon before beating Middlesbrough in the final to lift their cup silverware in 27 years.

What does Johnsen remember of it?

His reply to our approach to reminisce leaves little doubt as to his desire to do so.

‘I have been asked about the infamous penalty 100 times and I am not interested in talking about it, sorry!' the text read.

Even after more than 20 years, it appears a touchy subject.
Not that it's through any sense of guilt, though.

‘Of course it was a penalty,' he told Chelsea's official website last year. ‘I don't know what VAR would have done with the the referee's decision. But I do know I wouldn't have had to answer the question "Was it a penalty? about a thousand times!'

Reed knows full well what VAR would have made of it. ‘If we had got VAR, it would never have stood,' says Reed. ‘It would have taken a bit to find it but it would have been a free-kick the other way.'

If it had, it might also have saved the FA some hassle and money.

Leicester fan John Regan had been at Stamford Bridge that day.

He, like many of the travelling supporters, had been left stunned by Reed's decision.

‘I walked through a pub two days after, and I heard a bloke say that if he had the money, he'd sue them,' Regan, former editor of the Where's The Money Gone?

fanzine, told The Mail on Sunday. 'So, I did. The judge said I couldn't sue the referee, I had to sue his place of work, which was the FA.'

Regan, now 68, paid £20 to take out a legal writ to claim £160 for his travel costs to Stamford Bridge, the price of his match ticket, his court fee as well as two days earnings after having to take them off work to recover from the ‘trauma, shock and distress' of the decision.

But when the court date arrived, Regan did not attend.

The moment had passed. ‘It was all a bit of fun but it got quite serious in the end,' says Regan. ‘The FA sent me a great big parcel all about me with a whole load of details on the case. I'm told they spent £33,000 defending it.'

Reed, meanwhile, requested a local game to get the mistake out of his system, refereeing an under-21 county cup replay in the Birmingham leagues.

‘I knew I was wrong,' he says.

‘It was a massive decision because it knocked Leicester out. ‘You never forget it but you have got to move on and learn from otherwise you might as well give up. It's like a centre-forward, if you miss an open goal, you move on to the next one.'

Reed, now a referee assessor, says he never had any trouble from Leicester supporters because of it.

Eight months later, he was back at Filbert Street for a Monday night game between Leicester and West Ham.

‘As I drove on to the car par, there were loads of people there. I thought "oh crap". I had taken my dad with me. As I turned the engine off, I handed him the keys.
"The kit is in the boot," I said. "I'll see you in the dressing room." "Where are you going,'" he replied. I said I'm going to make a run for it!

‘But the people there just wanted to talk to me, they were as friendly as could be.

A lot of them wanted programmes signing from that Chelsea game.

‘The game kicked off and I got booed. I gave a free kick to Leicester within 12 seconds. The crowd cheered and then shouted ‘…but you're still a f****** w*****!' Matt Elliott and I wet ourselves laughing.'

Reed can joke about it now.

Leicester fans are still not quite ready to see the funny side. But if they can get the better of Chelsea today and go on to lift the FA Cup at last, maybe they will be able to forgive him after all.