EVERYONE remembers Manchester United’s great comeback victory against Bayern Munich in the 1999 European Cup final. It was a great, dramatic win and to do it from being 1-0 down in the last minutes of the game is pretty good, but, United fans, it was not even the best fightback victory of the week.
That honour surely belongs to United’s rivals Manchester City who, today in 1999, just days after That Magical Night in Barcelona (TM Clive Tyldesley), staged their own improbable comeback win against Gillingham in the Division Two play-off final at Wembley.
The match was goalless until the 81st minute when Carl Asaba scored for Gillingham, and then Robert Taylor added another five minutes later.
All of a sudden, City were 2-0 down and surely out. But then, in the 89th minute Kevin Horlock popped up to pull one back, but surely it was too late? Paul Dickov didn’t think so, the diminutive striker scored in the dying seconds of injury time to force the game into extra time.
There were no more dramatic goals and so to penalties. Gillingham missed their first two efforts, while Dickov also failed to hit the target. Nicky Weaver then saved from Paul Smith and Guy Butters to win it for City. Gillingham, having looked a cert at 2-0 up with one minute left, had somehow snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Not that City fans cared. As someone once said: “Football, bloody hell!”
City boss Joe Royle said: “We never gave up,” adding, with brilliant understatement: “It looked unlikely.”
This unlikely win also happened on this football day, so check that out, and come back tomorrow for more from the football time machine.
HERE at OTFD we normally like to bring you a quirky, hopefully fairly interesting story each day from the world of football, but it would be wholly remiss of us not to mark the events of this day in 1985 when 39 football fans died in the Heysel disaster.
Italian giants Juventus met Liverpool in the final of the European Cup. At the time Liverpool were kings of Europe, holders of the cup and four-time winners in a seven year period.
Juve had never won it, but had been losing finalists twice before.
That the disaster is named after the stadium it occurred in is tragically apt; for the stadium itself was in large part to blame for the events that unfolded that night. Dilapidated and crumbling, Belgium’s national ground was nowhere near adequate to host such a big game, but Uefa had selected it anyway.
They blundered again when they ordered that a section of the ground be give designated for neutral fans, which simply meant Italian and English supporters ended up mixing in the supposedly neutral zone.
About an hour before kick-off trouble began to flare between the two sets of supporters as missiles were thrown, and a charge from the Liverpool fans forced their Juve counterparts to retreat. As they did so many fans were crushed against a retaining wall which soon collapsed. It was at this point that thirty-nine Italian supporters were killed, and a further 600 injured.
Then many more Juve fans began rioting in retaliation. The Belgian police were hopelessly inexperienced at dealing with such trouble and a fierce and long-running battle ensued between them and the Juve fans.
Amidst all this, the players were in the dressing rooms, waiting to play out what was supposed to be the most important match in the club football season.
Captains of both teams, Gaetano Scirea and Phil Neal appeared to ask the fans to calm down so the game could begin. Despite the reservations of many, the authorities then ordered that the game be played, fearful there would be more violent recriminations if it were not.
Accounts differ as to how much the players knew when they stepped over the white line, but it is likely none of them knew the enormity of what had happened. Jim Beglin told the Independent in 2005: “We started to hear that there was serious violence as we were putting the finishing touches to our preparations in the changing-room. I was eventually told there might be three deaths, but not until just before we finally went out. I knew something bad was going on but had no idea of the scale. We were being told to stay focused. It’s possible the management and my more experienced colleagues shielded me from things.
“On a recent TV documentary we’ve all said we thought the final shouldn’t have gone ahead, but I can understand why Uefa and the police said we should play. Worse trouble could have ensued.”
The game itself, not that it mattered, saw Michel Platini score a debatable penalty to win it 1-0. Never has a result mattered so little. Beglin said: “The enormity of Heysel hit me like a train after the game. Dejection over losing the European Cup final to Juventus quickly gave way to disbelief when I learned that 39 people had died. I walked with my Liverpool team-mates to where the wall had crumbled and the Italian fans were crushed. The remnants of people’s lives – handbags and shoes, scarves and spectacles – were strewn among the rubble.
“Win, lose or draw, we usually had a party after a big game. But the atmosphere at our base in Brussels was very sombre. We swapped stories and several of the wives and girlfriends were distressed because they had actually seen the bodies being piled up under the stand. Paul Walsh’s partner, Melissa Berry, had been manhandled by an agitated Italian. The players all felt numb. We just wanted to get home.”
In the aftermath of the tragedy, the fingers of blame were pointed squarely at the Liverpool fans. Within days English clubs had been banned from European competition – all clubs for five years, Liverpool for six. “We have to get the game cleaned up from this hooliganism at home and then perhaps we shall be able to go overseas again” Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said.
Yet the veteran football journalist Brian Glanville felt blaming the English club was all too easy, and disagreed with the ban. He wrote in 2005: “This never seemed fair to me. Not fair to English football, not even fair to Liverpool as a tarnished city. A week earlier, in Rotterdam, on the occasion of the European Cup Winners’ Cup final, I saw Everton’s supporters behave themselves almost impeccably. The one misdemeanour I noticed was when an Everton fan walked out of a cafe without paying the bill.”
Glanville contends Uefa had just as much culpability in the disaster as the rioting fans: “That Heysel was ever chosen for the game was a shocking commentary on the folly of Uefa and the idleness of its team that was meant to inspect the stadium. The word was that the day they came, it was very cold, and that they scarcely bothered to emerge from the warmth to see what should have been obvious to them — that this stadium was not fit to stage a game of such magnitude.”
GREAT Scott! This day in history is littered with key events and significant happenings in the world of football. As Doc Brown surmised in Back to the Future Part II: “It could mean that that point in time inherently contains some sort of cosmic significance, almost as if it were the temporal junction point of the entire space-time continuum. On the other hand, it could just be an amazing coincidence.” Heavy.
Today in 1982, Aston Villa defeated the might of German giants Bayern Munich in the De Kuip Stadium in Rotterdam in the European Cup final.
It was a harsh lesson for Ron Saunders in the importance of timing – he had been the Villa boss for half of that season but resigned before the quarter-final stage because of a contract dispute with the board. His assistant Tony Barton took over and led his team to the final.
Then disaster struck just ten minutes into the game when first choice goalkeeper Jimmy Rimmer went off injured. In his place came untried youngster Nigel Spink, making only his second appearance of the season. “I didn’t have time to get nervous and that was the big factor on the night,” he said later. He played a blinder and kept a clean sheet that was key to Villa’s victory. “We defended resolutely and I probably had half a dozen saves to make,” he explained. “In a game, which was supposed to be so one-sided it wasn’t a great deal.”
At the other end, Tony Morley’s excellent work down the left teed up Peter Withe to score the only goal of the game, although he did not get a clean hit on the ball. “It just hit a bobble and sat up a bit. I half hit it with my foot and half hit it with my shin,” he explained later.
Brian Moore’s commentary of the goal is displayed on a giant banner across the North Stand of Villa Park: “Shaw, Williams, prepared to adventure down the left. There’s a good ball in for Tony Morley. Oh, it must be! It is! Peter Withe!”
Bayern Munich were again the opponents when Villa’s fellow English team Manchester United made it to the European Cup final in 1999.
United had already wrapped up the Premier League title and the FA Cup and entered the final hopeful of completing a historic treble, and winning the Cup for the first time since the days of Matt Busby.
Bayern went a goal up after just six minutes through a deflected Mario Basler free kick. As the clock ticked past 90 minutes United’s dream looked to be in tatters. Thereafter began perhaps the greatest comeback in modern football history.
First Teddy Sheringham scored from a corner to get United back in it. And while Bayern were contemplating just how they had come within a couple of minutes of winning the trophy only to be pegged back at the last, United went and did it again, super-sub Ole Gunnar Solskjær grabbing the most dramatic goal in European Cup history to win the trophy for Sir Alex’s team. “Football, bloody hell!” was all Fergie could say as the celebrations got underway. Bloody hell indeed Fergie.
Well folks, if we can reach 88 miles per hour and get our flux capacitor working, we will be back tomorrow bringing you more tales from football’s past. Until then dear readers.
IMAGINE if Celtic beat the might of all Europe’s top clubs and won the European Cup – the greatest prize in club football. Now imagine that they did it with an entire team made up of Scottish players. But not just players from Scotland, but all who were born within 30 miles of Glasgow. That is exactly what they did today in 1967 when the Hoops became the first British team in history to win the European Cup.
The heavy pre-match favourites for the game at the Portuguese National Stadium in Lisbon were Internazionale who had been champions of Europe three times in the past four years.
But manager Jock Stein simply told his players to “go out and enjoy themselves” at the start of the match but within minutes of kick-off defender Jim Craig felled Renato Cappellini and Alessandro Mazolla netted the resulting penalty.
Stein didn’t panic and neither did his players. Shortly after half time Celtic full-back Tommy Gemmel scored the equaliser and they were back in the game. They continued to attack the Italian goal until Gemmel again stormed up the left wing, passed back to Bobby Murdoch whose shot towards the goal was deflected into the net by Stevie Chalmers. Celtic had done it and on the final whistle the impeccably behaved Celtic fans poured onto the pitch as the celebrations began.
With the pitch full of thousands of ecstatic and exuberant Scotsmen the team were unable to be presented with the trophy so captain Billy McNeill had to go outside the stadium and be escorted around to the other side of the ground to receive it.
Jock Stein said: “There is not a prouder man on God’s Earth than me at this moment. Winning was important, but it was the way that we won that has filled me with satisfaction.
“We did it by playing football; pure, beautiful, inventive football. There was not a negative thought in our heads.”
ONE of the reasons Alex Ferguson did not retire as planned a few years ago, was his burning desire to win the European Cup at least one more time. He felt that a club like Manchester United should have won the trophy more often. Compare United’s three wins to Real Madrid’s nine, and AC Milan’s seven.
It was today in 1963 that Milan got their European trophy cabinet collection started when they won the competition for the first time.
In the early days Real Madrid enjoyed something of a monopoly on the cup, winning it for each of the first five years it was held.
It was Benfica who finally wrestled it away from Real in 1961, and then retained it the following year, Eusebio helping the Portuguese club to a 5-3 win over Real in the 1962 final.
Benfica made it three finals on the trot in 1963 but this time Milan were waiting for them, and their defence was not nearly as charitable as Real’s had been in 1962.
But it was the Italian side that conceded first in the showpiece game that was being held at Wembley Stadium for the first time. Eusebio scored after 18 minutes but that would prove to be all the joy he and Benfica got all night.
In the second half Milan hit back thanks to Brazilian striker José Altafini who scored twice in eight minutes to give them a 2-1. For the rest of the match the Italians’ defence, led by Giovanni Trapattoni, held firm and Milan took the victory and prevented Benfica from sealing a hat-trick of European Cup wins.
The Cup was brought back to Milan in each of the following two years but not by AC Milan; cross-city rivals Internazionale were instead victorious.
Milan’s seven wins in the competition make dismal reading for fellow Italian giants Juventus who have just two European Cup wins to their name. The second came today in 1996 – as chirpy newspaper boys in the 1930s used to say “read all about it here”.
More tomorrow readers so until then, don’t have nightmares…
JOSE Mourinho seems like such a big figure in the football universe that it seems hard to remember a time when he wasn’t there, dishing out his pearls of wisdom like a cool, modern-day version of Brian Clough.
But it was today in 2003, just six years ago, that the Portuguezzer pricked the collective consciousness of British football fans for the first time when his Porto team took on Martin O’Neill’s Celtic in the Uefa Cup Final in Seville.
The Bhoys were hoping for a triumph to add to the famous 1967 European Cup win and 80,000 of their fans descended on Seville for the game.
But standing in their way was Mourinho and his team who took the lead just before half time thanks to Derlei. Henrick Larsson equalised soon after, and had to do so again on 56 minutes after Dmitri Alenitchev had put Porto ahead again just two minutes earlier.
The match went to extra time and with just five minutes before penalties, Derlei scored the winner to break Celtic hearts.
Martin O’Neill was unhappy at some of Porto’s tactics. “I will probably get into trouble for this, but it was poor sportsmanship,” he said. “The rolling over, the time wasting. But they have beaten us, well done to them and it’s up to us to learn from this.
“It is a steep learning curve, but this was a wonderful, wonderful experience. The players put everything into it and the fans have been fantastic.”
Predictably, Mourinho begged to differ with O’Neill. “I’d prefer to ask whether the behaviour of the Celtic players was normal in your country,” he said. “What Balde did to Deco in front of me could have ended his career. The referee didn’t affect the result, in that there were no doubtful decisions, but I think Balde could have had a direct red for his foul and Thompson could also have seen a second yellow card on two occasions.
“There was a lot of commitment in Celtic’s game, commitment, toughness and aggression. I’m tempted to use another word – but I won’t.”
“We have given a great example to the world and those who love football and we have also made history by taking the Uefa Cup to Portugal for the first time ever,” he added.
The following season Mourinho led Porto to the European Cup, making more history in the process and paving the way for his move to Chelsea.
ON this day last year we brought you the story of the 1960 European Cup Final. The Real Madrid team of Ferenc Puskas and Alfredo Di Stefano destroyed a hapless Eintracht Frankfurt side 7-3 in Glasgow in a show of such brilliance and domination that it is remembered as the best ever final in the history of the big-eared trophy.
The final played today in 1994 is perhaps the only one to rival the great Madrid performance, and is certainly the best final played in modern times when, with so much at stake, the final can often be terribly boring as neither side wants to make the crucial mistake.
None of that today when Johan Cruyff’s Barcelona ‘dream team’ were favourites against Fabio Capello’s AC Milan. Barca had marched to the final with an aplomb and were confident of a winning the cup for the second time in three years.
By contrast, Milan were not in great shape coming into the game. In the 3-0 win over Monaco in the semi-final at the San Siro, key defenders Franco Baresi and Alessandro Costacurta both received yellow cards that ruled them out of the final. Worse still, Capello was forced to leave out Florin Raducioiu, Jean-Pierre Papin and Brian Laudrup as well because of the Uefa rules about fielding a maximum of three non-nationals.
One of the non-nationals Capello did pick was Marcel Desailly, the Frenchman who, the previous season, had been in the Marseille team that had beaten Milan in the final.
Despite all the changes Capello had been forced into, his side quickly began to take a hold on the game, denying highly-fancied Barca the chance to impose themselves on it.
After 22 minutes Milan made their pressure pay when Dejan Savicevic ran down the right flank and passed to Daniele Massaro who tapped the ball into an empty net. 1-0. It was 2-0 just before half time when Massaro bagged his second of the night after being set up by Roberto Donadoni from the left wing.
Barca went in 2-0 down at the break and hoping to re-group. But any hopes of a famous come-back were surely snuffed out just two minutes after the re-start when Dejan Savicevic capitalised on a defensive error by Miguel Angel Nadal to lob goalkeeper Andoni Zubizarreta for the third goal.
Eight minutes later and Desailly, who Capello, in a tactical masterstroke, had played in front of the back-four, made it 4-0 when he beat the offside trap to score.
It was a crushing victory and Capello’s finest hour as coach and Desailly became the first man to win the European Cup in successive seasons with two different clubs.
Watch the whole darn shooting match above, and come back tomorrow when we’ll have more tales of the unexpected (by which we mean ‘about football’). TTFN.
THE FA Cup. The oldest cup competition in the world. As English as warm beer, cricket and celebrity-based tittle-tattle magazines.
Today in 1997 the Cup was won by a foreign manager for the first time ever (which we found a tad surprising given the oft-peddled assertion that all players, managers and owners have been from abroad ever since Rupert Murdoch began running the game in 1992).
The victorious man in question was Rudd Gullit who was then the gaffer at Chelsea. In those heady pre-Abramovich days the Stamford Bridge regulars were not quite as spoilt as they are now and Chelsea were looking for their first FA Cup win since 1970.
Their opponents were those heroic failures Middlesbrough who, under the able stewardship of Bryan Robson had not only managed to get relegated, but had also already lost the League Cup final.
The portents were not good for Robson’s band of merry men and they didn’t get any better when the match started.
It was took just 42 seconds for the ‘Boro defence to be breached when Juninho gave away the ball and Dennis Wise passed to Italian midfield maestro Roberto Di Matteo who carried the ball unopposed into the ‘Boro half and let rip from fully 35 yards. Ben Roberts in the ‘Boro goal was beaten and the Smoggies season just got that little bit worse.
Even worse was to come when Fabrizio Ravanelli limped off injured after just 20 minutes, but they were spared when a goal by Gianluca (Uncle) Festa was chalked off for offside.
But late in the second half Gianfranco Zola superbly back-heeled the ball in midair to Eddie Newton who blasted home the winner.
Newton said later the team had been raring to go before kick-off. “In the final itself, we were very confident going into the game. We honestly believed we would win if we stuck to our gameplan, and we did,” he said.
“I played in 1994 when we lost to United. We had a lot of young players who hadn’t experienced the big-time games yet. This was a totally different scenario. We had such a good blend of youth and experience, and of English and foreign players. It just seemed the perfect mix. We got the best possible start through Roberto Di Matteo’s goal and the rest is history as they say.”
See both goals below and come back tomorrow for another bite-sized dose of football history. Until then ratfans, check out this story which, had it played out differently, could have altered the course of British football history FOREVER! WHoooaaaa!
TOTTENHAM Hotspur manager Keith Burkinshaw stunned British football when he signed Ossie Ardiles and Ricky Villa in 1978. Spurs had just been promoted back to Division One and Burkinshaw brought in the two Argentine World Cup stars to boost his side – they were the first high profile foreign stars to be brought to an English club.
Some claimed it would be a disaster, that they would never keep up with the pace of the English game, and even that they would not be able to adapt to the colder climate.
But the two proved all their doubters wrong and became two of the most celebrated players in Spurs’ history.
Today in 1981 Ricky Villa cemented his place in Tottenham legend when he scored the best goal ever seen in an FA Cup Final.
The first time Tottenham lined up to face final opponents Manchester City, Tommy Hutchison was both hero and villain for City when he scored for them, before also scoring an own goal, meaning the tie was level at 1-1 at the end of 90 minutes.
In those days the Cup Final went to a replay and it was in that second match that Villa got his shooting boots on. He scored his first in the eighth minute before Steve MacKenzie got one back just three minutes later. A Kevin Reeves penalty followed by a Garth Crooks goal meant the teams were again level, this time at 2-2.
The Villa stepped up to the plate. He picked up a pass from Tony Galvin on the edge of the area and then weaved his way past Tony Caton, Ray Ranson then, almost humiliatingly, Caton again before sliding a shot beyond the advancing Joe Corrigan.
Tottenham had won the Cup and Villa was an instant hero, and his goal was later chosen as the best goal ever scored at Wembley. He said: “That goal immortalized me, I even received a prize for it. It was a goal in the Argentine way: cunning and imaginative.”
And he knows the place his goal has in English football, adding: “I recognise that I am a little part of the history of English football.”
His pal Ossie Ardiles says Ricky has a script when asked about the goal. “People ask the question and it’s like he’s turned a tape recorder on,” he said. “I know exactly what he’s going to say. Seriously, he only talks about it when he’s been asked and it deserves the attention. It was a wonderful, wonderful goal and I am so pleased that it has been chosen as one of the best FA Cup goals ever.”
Have a look at the goal here, and come on back tomorrow for more football history from us. Also, you may remember this happening a few years back. Apparently it was something of a shock…
SUPPORTERS of Dutch second division club PEC Zwolle watch their football in the Johan Cruyff stand. Cruyff never played for the club but they did provide the opposition when he played his very last match, on this day in 1984.
When property developer Marten Eibrink took over Zwolle in 1982 he had the club’s stadium renovated and decided to commemorate the moment by renaming the stadium’s main stand after the Total Footballer.
Cruyff’s final season as a player was not at his beloved Ajax, but instead with Feyenoord. After leading Ajax to a league and cup double in 1982-83, Cruyff was incensed when the club decided not to offer him a new contract, presumably because they thought he was past it.
Cruyff responded to the snub by signing for arch rivals Feyenoord but initially he might have feared the worst: in the first meeting between the two clubs since Cruyff’s switch Feyenoord were absolutely hammered 8-2 – their heaviest ever defeat.
But Cruyff and Feyenoord responded brilliantly, dishing out a 4-1 defeat in the return fixture several months later. And just to prove the Ajax directors spectacularly wrong, Cruyff played 33 of 34 league games and led Feyenoord to the double – so much for being past it.
Ajax ended the season trophyless and with more egg on their faces than Edwina Currie (on this website even our jokes are historical).
So the Total Footballer played his last ever match at PEC Zwolle and the story of the most gifted and remarkable player to ever emerge from Europe was over. Oh, and he went out a high – Feyenoord won 2-1.
Take a couple of minutes out of your day to watch the video above of Cruyff at his best, and come back tomorrow for more from us. Or if you want more now, have a look at this story, also from this day in football history.
