May 25 – The Lisbon Lions
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.”
As always we’ll be back tomorrow with more, but until then, have a read about an England captain getting into a bit of a scrape in Colombia…
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