The 1998–99 Irish League Cup (known as the

Coca-Cola Coca-Cola, or Coke, is a cola soft drink manufactured by the Coca-Cola Company. In 2013, Coke products were sold in over 200 countries and territories worldwide, with consumers drinking more than 1.8 billion company beverage servings ...

League Cup for sponsorship reasons) was the 13th edition of the

Irish League Cup The Northern Ireland Football League Cup (known as the BetMcLean Cup for sponsorship purposes, and commonly known as the Irish League Cup) is a national football knock-out cup competition in Northern Ireland open to all member clubs of the ...

Northern Ireland Northern Ireland ( ; ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, part of the United Kingdom in the north-east of the island of Ireland. It has been #Descriptions, variously described as a country, province or region. Northern Ireland shares Repub ...

's secondary

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

knock-out cup competition. It concluded on 4 May 1999 with the final. Linfield were the defending champions after their fourth League Cup win last season; a 1–0 victory over

Glentoran Glentoran Football Club is a professional football club based in East Belfast, Northern Ireland, that plays in the NIFL Premiership. The club was founded in 1882 and has since won more than 130 major honours. They are one of three Northern Iris ...

in the previous final. This season they became the first club ever to successfully defend the trophy. In a repeat of the previous final, Linfield once again came out on top with a 2–1

extra time Overtime (OT) or extra time (ET) is an additional period of play to bring a game to a decision and avoid declaring the match a tie or draw where the scores are the same. In some sports, this extra period is played only if the game is required t ...

victory against Glentoran in the final, lifting the cup for the fifth time and condemning the Glens to defeat in the final for the third season running, which is a record for successive final defeats in the competition that still stands. The competition was re-structured this season, allowing only the 10 top-flight clubs and the 8 second-tier clubs to enter. This reduced the number of clubs taking part from 32 down to 18.

Preliminary round

First round

Quarter-finals

Semi-finals

Final

References