Nicknamed the "Crazy Gang" because of the team's eccentric style and ragtag mix of players, Wimbledon became one of the most unlikely winners of the FA Cup when it brought down mighty Liverpool in the 1988 final.

Twenty-four years later, the club no longer exists in the same form after being controversially relocated but a team resurrected in its spiritual honor by angry fans is the subject of the latest plot twist to absorb the iconic competition.

AFC Wimbledon, created in 2002, will play Milton Keynes Dons, the club that took over the identity of the original Wimbledon, in the second round of the cup on the weekend of Dec. 1-2 after both won their first-round replays this week. It will be the first time they have met and the game promises to be a highly charged, emotional affair.

"This has reopened a lot of scars," said Simon Wheeler, chairman of the Independent Wimbledon Supporters Association. "We never wanted this to happen and frankly I feel numb."

Much bitterness and acrimony lingers.

Wheeler is like many AFC Wimbledon fans in saying the uprooting of the original club, moving it 90 kilometers (56 miles) from south London to a commuter town in Buckinghamshire — a county north of the capital — ripped the heart out of the community. Unlike in the United States, transplanting a team to a different town or city is uncommon in English sport because of its deep ties to the local area.

"England's greatest cup competition has produced a very historic moment for Round 2 and I can't wait," MK Dons manager Karl Robinson said.

"I think the whole of football will be watching," he added, "because people will be aggrieved, will have anger whereas others will see it as exciting."

The original Wimbledon was promoted to England's top flight — then called the First Division — for the first time in 1986, having most of its 97-year existence as a semi-professional club in the non-league ranks. By racing up the divisions after election to the Football League in 1977, the club grew in stature quicker than expected and still retained an amateur feel to it when it reached the 1988 FA Cup final.

There it met Liverpool, then the biggest team in England, in a match one commentator described as "the Crazy Gang versus the Culture Club." Wimbledon won 1-0, causing one of the biggest shocks in the competition's illustrious history.

Wimbledon soon hit financial problems, leading to its relegation from the Premier League in 2000. Its owners were approached the following year with a plan to import the club to Milton Keynes and after the move was ratified by an FA-appointed commission, it was completed in 2003 and the team was renamed Milton Keynes Dons in 2004.

Meanwhile, in 2002, fans angry with what had happened to the team created a phoenix club — AFC Wimbledon — which started out in the ninth tier of English football. It took the side nine years to get promoted to the Football League. It meant the grudge match against MK Dons was always likely to happen.

"It was inevitable at some stage — we enter three cups together," Robinson said. "It's something the football world has been waiting for.

"Somebody told me it's the biggest second-round draw in FA Cup history and if that's the case, we can't wait for it."

Many AFC Wimbledon fans will boycott the match against the club they have christened "Franchise FC." Indeed, after the second-round draw was made, the club's supporters' association released a statement in which they reminded football fans that MK Dons "stole a Football League place through the theft and franchising of Wimbledon FC."

In 2007, MK Dons gave up its claim to the pre-2004 history in the original Wimbledon by returning the old replica trophies and other memorabilia, declaring no links to the 1988 FA Cup final victory.

AFC Wimbledon, which claims on its website to be the "continuation of the spirit which formed Wimbledon Old Centrals in 1889," plays in the blue-and-yellow colors of the old team and some of its fans are still campaigning for the MK Dons to drop "Dons" from its name.

AFC Wimbledon reached the second round on Monday by beating York 4-3 after extra time in a replay. MK Dons joined them with a 6-1 win over Cambridge City on Tuesday, also in a replay.