Book Review – Aberdeen Greatest Games: The Dons’ Fifty Finest Matches by Kevin Sterling

Aberdeen are a powerhouse. One of only two teams in Scotland who have never been relegated, they have been there or thereabouts in cups, leagues and European competition for a long, long time. Kevin Stirling has brought 50 of their finest 90 minutes to print with a clear love for the club and for the people behind it.

As a club – aside from the 1980s and more of that later – there are plenty of cup triumphs and stories around their formation as well as more recent and more modest examples of their role at the pinnacle of Scottish football. As such there is a lot for a non-Aberdeen fan, like me, to relish. There are stories of yore including the Great Mystery scandal, their first Cup Final experience in front of a crowd of “at least” 146,433, a tour to South Africa in the 1930s by boat, their first cup final win in 1947 in front of a more modest 135,000, their engagement in the Scottish Qualifying Cup, the Victory Cup and the USA Presidents Cup, the emergence of one Teddy Scott from Sunnybank, their first floodlit match in Leeds, their first championship in ’55 and then the troubles of ’56 before the start of two defining decades. The 1970s began with a Scottish Cup and the 1980s ended with one of the most successful spells in Aberdeen history thanks to two Alexs – Sir Alex Ferguson and Alex Smith – who in 1990 ended the decade as they began 20 years before – with a Scottish Cup win.

As a fan of another club, I was obviously interested to see how a couple of ex-players fared as managers, Sir Alex Ferguson I knew, but Ally MacLeod, who had a successful spell at the club in the mid-1970s before the ignominy of Argentina as boss of Scotland, is very well treated here. I was glad to see that there is a degree of affection for his time in a balanced manner. But it is not for that reason alone that I enjoyed the book.

The level of detail and the overview suggests that Kevin Stirling, author of many books on the club before this one could easily expand this from 50 matches to an official history of the club. His research is meticulous and especially during the early years it is well added to by the detail from interviews with former players from a variety of sources. Having to delve into an archive over a century ago is tough when delivering any history and news reports can be difficult to find. Here, there is a rich seem of interviews from more recent times which have been brought to the fore in the telling of these tales.

It may be noticeable that the stories stop in 2015, and 23 of the 50 are in the Ferguson/Smith eras – each one difficult to argue over their inclusion – as the time of European triumph in particular can feel like an albatross around the neck of any recent manager. Aberdeen, under Ferguson, is the only Scottish club to win two European Cups and their involvement in European has never come close to equalling that.

In choosing the 50 matches to be included, selection would have been a nightmare and favourites were probably jettisoned along the way. Within that criteria, context would be key but also greatest games need an element of excitement. Gothenburg may well be the pinnacle and Cup Finals and the clinching of championships the obvious choices but games where there is the finest comeback, the most runaway win, or the best example of how they play would be great; the rest are significant. On occasion, the telling of the game itself plays second fiddle to the context in which it was played, and you feel the significance is what made it great rather than the football played. I would have liked more of the roar of the crowd and the excitement of the bleak October rain as a backdrop to the game that made their season.

It is, however, a minor gripe, as this grips you. For an Aberdeen fan it will clearly grip them more than I, but it taught me a massive amount, not least that I should continue to be comforted that things were not always a two horse race and there may always be hope for us all – as long as it doesn’t kill is first!

Donald C Stewart

(Publisher: Pitch Publishing Ltd. March 2023. Hardcover: 288 pages)

 

Buy the book here: Aberdeen

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Book Review: Where the Cool Kids Hung Out – The Chic Years of the UEFA Cup by Steven Scragg

Back in September 2019, A Tournament Frozen in Time – The Wonderful Randomness of the European Cup Winners’ Cup, was released by Pitch Publishing, written by Steven Scragg. It was so well received and praised that it was nominated within the football category for The Telegraph Sports Books Awards 2020. Now just a year on the author has followed this up with another nod to European tournaments past, this time focusing on the UEFA Cup, which for readers of a younger age has become butchered to emerge Frankenstein-like as the Europa League, a bloated and poor relation of the money-driven, self-centred tournament that is the UEFA Champions League.

This second offering, which is as excellent a read as the Cup Winners’ Cup book, is spread over twelve chapters, with an Acknowledgment, Introduction and Afterword, bookending them. In terms of the UEFA Cup years, Scragg focuses on the two-legged Finals, which took place from 1971/72 (with Spurs the first winners) through to 1996/97 (when Schalke 04 lifted the trophy), a feature which set the competition apart from the European Cup and Cup Winners’ Cup at the time.

As with the A Tournament Frozen in Time book, this is not plod through the various seasons in timeline fashion, but a series of wonderfully researched chapters that provide context in relation to the history and stories of the competition in terms of the countries and teams that took part. Before the author gets into those specifics, the opening chapter The Inter-Cities Fairs Cup and the Dawning of the UEFA Cup, provides background into the history of the Fairs Cup, which despite bearing more resemblance to the UEFA Cup is not recognised by UEFA itself. It’s a particularly strange stance, when you consider that the UEFA Cup bears little similitude to the Europa League, but is acknowledged by UEFA as its natural predecessor, with even the same trophy presented in its current guise.

Of the main body of the book, the chapters detail the various periods of certain countries involvement, with for instance, A Very English Handover, looking at Spurs and Liverpool in the early years of the tournament, with further English success from Ipswich Town detailed in the chapter, Tractor Beam. Whilst English clubs had their moments, Scragg skilfully details the other chapters to reflect the impact of the other main European football powers such as Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Spain, and ‘cool’ sides such as the Swedes IFK Göteborg.

As with the Cup Winners’ Cup, changes to the UEFA Cup came about through the breakup of the former Communist bloc, necessitating the introduction of a Preliminary Round to the competition. With the two-legged Finals gone in 1996/97 the first steps of change arrived, as the Final morphed into a one-off game at a neutral venue. Further transformation came with the Cup Winners’ Cup demise at the end of 1998/99, and the Groups Stages established in the competition in 2004/05, with the ‘rebrand’ complete in 2009/10. Part of this includes those clubs failing to qualify for the Champions League knock-out stages dropping into the Europa League, which as Scragg acknowledges gives the impression of it being a second-rate competition. As he so brilliantly puts it, “essentially the Europa League is the MK Dons of European club football tournaments. There is a sad sense of franchise about it.”

Goodness knows then what is to be made of the Europa Conference League scheduled to begin in 2021/22. That will take UEFA back up to three European club competitions; this reader for one would prefer a return to the three we used to have along with all their individual character, warts and all. Nostalgic days indeed.

There is an old football adage that goes, ‘never change a winning side’, and given the success and praise for Scragg’s Cup Winners’ Cup book, he has stuck to the winning formula once again and doesn’t disappoint. With the Cup Winners’ Cup and UEFA Cup books completed, will Scragg go for the hat-trick and complete a majestic Trinity with a look at the glory years of the European Cup? It will be a treat indeed if this comes to pass.

 

(Pitch Publishing Ltd. October 2020. Hardback 255pp)

 

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1972/73 European Cup Winners’ Cup Final

Matchday programme cover

Wednesday 16 May 1973

Leeds United v AC Milan

In a humongous footballing travesty, Leeds United were cheated out of the trophy by a referee who was later banned for life due to match fixing. So, first, the bare facts and then all the gory details. As for the Leeds fans who had to follow it at all at home, we were not amused.

The facts:

Venue – Kaftanzoglio Stadium in Thessaloniki

Referee – Christos Michas (Greece)

Official score – 1-0 to AC Milan, goal-scorer Luciano Chiarugi. 5 minutes.

AC Milan: Villiam Vecchi, Giuseppe Sabadini, Giulio Zignoli, Angelo Anquilletti, Maurizio Turone, Roberto Rosato (Dario Dolci 59’), Riccardo Sogliano, Romeo Benetti, Alberto Bigon, Gianni Rivera (c), Luciano Chiarugi

Leeds United: David Harvey, Paul Reaney (c), Trevor Cherry, Mick Bates, Paul Madeley, Norman Hunter, Peter Lorimer, Joe Jordan, Mick Jones, Frank Gray (Gordon McQueen 54’), Terry Yorath

Coming after Leeds had lost the FA Cup Final to Sunderland on 05 May and finished third in the League, it was yet another season which ended in bitter disappointment.

According to my team of researchers, ‘In spite of an English club making it to the final, highlights could not be shown on the night of the match because ITV were showing highlights of Scotland v Northern Ireland. BBC1 showed highlights of the ECWC final the following night (Thursday 17 May) at 10.40 – 11.30pm in black and white (Greek TV were responsible for the pictures). ‘

Floodlit robbery!

Pre-match parade

It was just as well it wasn’t shown live, it was bad enough listening to it on the radio. There had been so many disappointments for Leeds United, falling at the final hurdle, that I already feared the worst before kick-off. And the worst happened.  But the context needs setting about why Leeds fans had come to expect things to go wrong at the end of a season;

Previous Disappointment 1 – Wembley allowed the Horse of the Year Show to precede, by just a week, the 1970 FA Cup Final between Leeds and Chelsea. You might say that the horrendously pitted and sanded surface ‘levelled the playing field’ as an inferior Chelsea somehow sneaked a replay. Chelsea won that replay after Ron ‘Chopper’ Harris had taken Eddie Gray out of the game early on, giving him a thigh injury so serious that he never fully recovered from it. Even more sadly, it stopped Gray from ever becoming truly world class, as his talent had suggested. One thing you must check out about that match was how Eddie McCreadie kung-fu kicked Billy Bremner in the head when challenging for the ball in the penalty area. It was a little bit frightening. Penalty and sending off? No, just play on!!

Previous Disappointment 2 – There was the ‘Ray Tinkler’ affair when, ignoring a clear offside, referee Tinkler waved play to continue in a Leeds match against West Brom in 1971. The resultant West Brom goal arguably cost Leeds not just one but two championship titles since a pitch invasion by angry fans led to the club having to play the first 4 matches of the following season away from Elland Road.

Previous Disappointment 3 – Leeds won the FA Cup in 1972 (I went there to make sure they did, it never seemed to work on telly.) Great but then they were made to play a mere 2 days later away at Wolves, needing just a draw to do the prestigious double. Expectant Leeds fans provided two thirds of the crowd of 50,000 plus. As with the Bayern match (see below) 2 penalties – later admitted to – were denied and Leeds lost 2-1.

Future Disappointment – All of this sob story is necessary to understand the mentality of Leeds fans as the horror unfolded in Thessaloniki in 1973 and goes some way to explaining what happened at the Parc des Princes in 1975 after Leeds were cheated out of the European Cup by Bayern Munich. You question ‘cheated’? Two clear penalties were denied by the ref (admitted to later by Bayern) and a Lorimer goal disallowed, not by the referee or linesman but by Franz Beckenbauer!

Current Disappointment – So, after Leeds had underperformed a fortnight earlier against Sunderland in the FA Cup Final – dispiriting but no complaints at least about officialdom – we all had to make do with radio commentary. Jack Charlton and John Giles were out injured, Billy Bremner and Allan Clarke were suspended. Even so, the team that did play deserved so much better than what befell them.

And so the scene of the crime…

The referee at the centre of the scandal – Christos Michas

As I listened, I grew increasingly appalled as it all unfolded before my ears. But the diligent reader can become a watcher, too, and check out for themselves how the match went with highlights of around 48 minutes on YouTube.

You will see; a sequence of early free kicks given against Leeds, especially for fouls committed by Paul Madeley. He never needed to foul as he was virtually immaculate in his tackling technique; he was booked only twice in a 724-match club career. But here he was, seen by referee ‘Bendy’ Michas as the hatchet man. (He’d yet to see Hunter or Yorath showing how it was really done.)

The referee’s persecution of Madeley allowed an early Milan free kick on the edge of the box which they scored from. After that, it was a 12-man job to hold on.

There was a clear penalty for a series of fouls on Mick Jones (actually about 4 penalties in a bunch, take your pick). As it was turned down, loud booing can clearly be heard from the spectators. It is worth remembering there were only a few hundred Leeds fans in a crowd of over 40,000 and the response of the Greeks became more and more significant. They could tell something about the referee’s performance was very dodgy. A crude 2-footed tackle by Terry Yorath, let Michas know Terry was not best pleased.

Early in the second half Joe Jordan (pronounced in Leeds as George Auden) was booked for the serious ‘offence’ of jumping to head the ball at a corner.

A second claim for a penalty for handball by a Milan defender was waved away. The ball definitely struck his hand, which was in a raised position. By this time, the penny had dropped for the AC Milan team as everyone began to realise what was going on. They knew Michas had developed a pathological hatred for pointing to the spot.

A third penalty claim was turned down after Jones was flattened again.

Another handball just outside the box was not given.

As the game drew towards its inevitable conclusion, appeals for a fourth penalty were ignored. This time Jones was held back and pulled to the ground. But Milan’s sleights of hand here were subtle. Jones was a very fair player who never dived and he did not in this instance.

Norman Hunter tries to escape an AC Milan ‘tackle’

Hunter was sent off near the end. He didn’t appreciate the way he’d been fouled and simply wanted to murder the perpetrator. As Michas knew he was never going to visit Horsforth, he felt safe in sending Hunter off but made sure he also sent off the Milan player, too.

Not quite done, there was a fifth penalty at the very end. Yes, Lorimer’s fall was a bit theatrical but it was still a penalty. Peter probably felt the ref needed a bit of a hint by this time.

Other than that, the ref had a decent game, according to the ‘highlights’. The mind boggles, though, at what he got up to in the ‘lowlights’ that we never saw.

An incensed crowd at the end reacted to his bias in favour of Milan by booing the winners as they went to collect the trophy and by throwing missiles at them during the victors’ attempted lap of ‘honour’. Milan soon packed that in. The biggest boos were reserved for their fellow Greek, Christos Michas, as he went up to collect his medal. Leeds were treated like conquering heroes and the team were given a rapturous reception as they did their lap of honour. Justice had not been done but the crowd had made their own judgement.

Despite all the protests, the result was not overturned and even though UEFA later gave Michas his life ban due to match fixing, his role in this one was not investigated. Leeds petitioned to have a replay, a request denied by UEFA. The governing body presumably didn’t want to open a can of worms and the game not being shown live and in full probably suited them well. By the time it was seen the next evening, even though Leeds fans were enraged and plenty of neutrals were disgusted, too, it was already ‘a past event’.

But, there is always a counter-view. Four months ago, some pundit on YouTube called Felice Marco (who?) said, “So happy, Leeds was merely unable to score after a sterile domination…go home, whites, all blating and no upshot.” The critics who suggest that Felice must be the love child of referee Michas are very unfair.

 

Graeme Garvey

Category: European Cup Winners Cup | 1 Comment on 1972/73 European Cup Winners’ Cup Final

European Cup Winners’ Cup Memories

For those young ‘uns brought up on the misleading title ‘Champions’ League’, it might come as a surprise to learn that the European Cup Winners’ Cup actually was a cup competition between European teams who had won their own domestic cup finals, not just another chance for the top clubs to keep on playing each other and guarantee income streams.

All matches except the final were played on a two-legged basis and if you lost, that was it, lads, no safety net like there is nowadays of group stages with the additional safety net of yet another competition (the Europa League) to gently fall into if you do, somehow, manage to get knocked out.

As we shall see in due course with what happened to Leeds in 1973, the global-scale corruption of the Blatter era was unimaginable then. But favourable results could be bought relatively cheaply. The soft target was the referee. Being in the days before euros, you just needed a wad of lira, francs… or drachmas.

Britain enjoyed much more success in the early years of the Cup Winners Cup than in the European Cup itself. The former competition started in 1960/61 and featured English teams or Glasgow Rangers in 9 of the first 13 finals. Although most of those finals were closely-fought affairs, the tournament lacked the glamour of the European Cup and so tended to not live long in the memory for neutral spectators. A few do still stand out, though, mainly for how they connected to England’s World Cup Win in 1966.

The most memorable of the early finals was Tottenham’s 5-1 thumping in 1963 of Atletico Madrid, winners the previous year. Two of the goals for Spurs were scored by the peerless Jimmy Greaves whose injury in the World Cup group stages probably cost him his place in the Final. No substitutes in those days, so a suited Greaves had to watch England’s historic win from the bench as a supporter. Spurs were the first British winners in Europe, and it was a fitting reward, and swansong, for a team who had done the domestic ‘double’ in 1961 – the first time by any club in 64 years.

A curious note about the match highlights you can watch via ESPN Classic. They seem to have been coronavirusised! The commentary has a contemporary voice; too young, the soundtrack too clear to be the original and the crowd noise is fake, lacking the ebbs and flows of a real crowd who are, quite often, almost totally silent as they watch. Crowd noise is an anticipation or a reaction, not the insane, continuous hubbub we are given. There is one, truly ‘classic’ moment when the commentator, even with the supposed benefit of hindsight, describes when a Spurs player on the line paws away a goal bound shot, the ‘keeper Bill Brown beaten, “It’s a decent-looking save but unfortunately it’s handball.”

And an even more curious note is that Wikipedia’s page on Bill Brown has him born in Arbroath and it has him playing one World Cup match for Scotland in 1958 but lists two of his best sellers; The Bureau: My Thirty Years in Hoover’s FBI and Reagan, the Political Chameleon. I didn’t know that!

West Ham’s win in 1965 stands out for involving players who would go on to achieve great fame; Bobby Moore, Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters. With the game being played at Wembley, it meant that Moore had the unique experience, as captain, of lifting three different trophies there in successive years; the FA Cup, the Cup Winners’ Cup and the World Cup. And even if he didn’t lift the Cup again in 1970, at least he was arrested on suspicion of ‘lifting’ a diamond and emerald bracelet in Bogota.

And Bobby liked a drink. Greavsie like a drink. They liked celebrating. They particularly liked celebrating in Blackpool. They had a lot of reasons to celebrate in those days.

The last match with strong links to the World Cup Final was, understandably enough, the Final in May 1966 where Liverpool lost 2-1 after extra time to Borussia Dortmund, a kind of England v West Germany rehearsal. Kind of. Roger Hunt would go on two months later to turn the tables on the three Dortmund players selected for their nation in the Final; Tilkowski, Emmerich and Held. Hunt is famous for doing absolutely nothing in the World Cup Final except turn away to celebrate Hurst’s ‘was it over the line’ goal.

That was it for Brits as the Sixties swung to a close, except for Rangers losing their second final of the decade. The early ‘70s proved much more fruitful with Manchester City winning in 1970 (in front of fewer than 8,000 spectators), Chelsea in 1971, then Rangers in 1972 before the hugely controversial 1973 Final between Leeds United and AC Milan…

 

Graeme Garvey

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1986/87 European Cup Winners’ Cup Final

Final programme cover

Wednesday 13 May 1987

Venue: Olympic Stadium, Athens, Greece.

Attendance: 35,017

Ajax (1) 1 – 0 (0) 1. FC Lokomotive Leipzig

[Ajax scorer: Van Basten 21’]

Ajax: Stanley Menzo, Sonny Silooy, Frank Verlaat Frank Rijkaard, Peter Boeve, Aron Winter, John van ‘t Schip, Jan Wouters, Marco van Basten (c), Arnold Muhren (Arnold Scholten 83’), Rob Witschge (Dennis Bergkamp 65’)                           

Unused Substitutes: Netherlands Erik de Haan (GK), Ronald Spelbos, Petri Tiainen

Manager: Johan Cruyff

I. FC Lokomotive Leipzig: René Müller, Ronald Kreer, Frank Baum (c), Matthias Lindner, Uwe Zötzsche, Uwe Bredow, Heiko Scholz, Matthias Liebers (Dieter Kühn 76′), Frank Edmond (Hans-Jörg Leitzke 55’), Hans Richter, Olaf Marschall

Unused Substitutes: Torsten Kracht, Wolfgang Altmann, Maik Kischko (GK).

Manager: Hans-Ulrich Thomale

Referee: Luigi Agnolin (Italy)

 

This was the 27th Final of the Cup Winners Cup and the third final (and last) to be played in Greece. The Karaiskakis Stadium in Piraeus hosted the 1970/71 contest and replay between Real Madrid and winners Chelsea, with the Kaftanzoglio Stadium in Thessaloniki the venue for the controversial game between AC Milan, who lifted the trophy, and Leeds United in 1972/73.

The game was settled by a single first-half goal from Marco Van Basten after twenty-one minutes. It came from a move which started in their own half, with Frank Rijkaard carrying the ball forward. It was then whipped down the line after some short inter-play, with a cross that Van Basten met just on the edge to the six yard box to head across the despairing dive of Müller in the Leipzig goal. Overall, the game was not considered to be a classic.

The programme from the last Final in 1999 summarised the game under the following headline:

Ajax revive their traditions

The final is remembered because Marco van Basten took centre stage for the first time by scoring the winning goal. It was his sixth of the campaign and fellow striker Johnny Bosman, who missed the final contributed eight. Along with Frank Rijkaard, Jan Wouters, Aron Winter, Arnold Muhren, Johnny van’t Schip and Rob Witschge, they formed a team which coached by Johann Cruyff who was making his debut on the bench, lived up to the finest AFC Ajax traditions. A certain Dennis Bergkamp came on as a sixty-fifth minute substitute in the Athens final.

Their opponents were 1. FC Lokomotive Leipzig, a solid if unimaginative team from the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) with an excellent goalkeeper in René Müller. They made unspectacular but solid progress, beating Glentoran FC of Northern Ireland 3-1 and, in the Second Round, raised a few eyebrows by eliminating SK Rapid Wien after extra-time. The draw gave them FC Sion in the quarter-finals, and they beat the Swiss 2-0. A curious semi-final against Girondins de Bordeaux produced two 1-0 away wins and victory for Lokomotiv in a penalty shoot-out.

The final in Athens was disappointing. Marco van Basten’s twenty-first minute header led the 35,000 fans to believe that the match would burst into life. But the East Germans spent the rest of the match confirming that they were durable and obstinate opposition capable of barring Ajax’s path to their goal but lacking the technical resources required for a come-back.

Two players from Ajax that night will be familiar to fans in England in Arnold Muhren and Dennis Bergkamp with both at very different stages of their career path. Muhren in this final was very much the senior-pro of the side. He had started his career at Dutch side FC Volendam in 1970/71, before signing on for Ajax where he won domestic honours as well as a European Cup in 1972/73. He stayed at the Amsterdam club until 1974, before transferring to FC Twente. After four years at the club, he moved to England to sign for Ipswich Town and became part of the side that won the UEFA Cup in 1980/81 beating ironically the Dutch side AZ Alkmaar 5-4 on aggregate. In 1982 he moved on again, this time to Manchester United and enjoyed success in picking up a FA Cup winners medal in the 1982/83 replay as United beat Brighton 4-0 in the replay. At the beginning of the 1985/86 season Muhren returned to Ajax and was instrumental in the club winning the KNVB (Dutch) Cup that season and the next and retiring from the game in 1989. On the international front he was part of the Netherlands side that won the 1988 European Championship In West Germany.

Whilst Muhren was in the back-end of his career, Dennis Bergkamp was only just starting. The 1986/97 campaign saw him made his senior debut for the club, culminating in a substitutes appearance in the Cup Winners Cup Final in Athens. Bergkamp became a legend at the club picking up domestic and European honours along the way and at by the time he left in 1993 for Inter Milan he had scored 122 goals in 239 matches for his hometown club. He had two season in Italy, securing a UEFA Cup winners medal in 1993/94 in a 2-0 aggregate win over Austria Salzburg. Bergkamp then became a Gunner in 1995 signing for Bruce Rioch’s Arsenal in a then record £2.5 million deal. The Dutchman was to stay at the club until he retired at the end of the 2005/06 season. During his time in London he won three Premier League titles, and three FA Cup triumphs (including a league and cup ‘double’ in 2001/02). As at Ajax he became a legend at Highbury and when the club moved to the Emirates Stadium, the first match played there was a testimonial for the Dutchman on 22 July 2006 between Arsenal and Ajax. Bergkamp played 79 times for the Netherland scoring 39 goals in an international career that spanned 1990 through to 2000.

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1992/93 European Cup Winners’ Cup Final

Wednesday 12 May 1993

Venue: Wembley Stadium, London, England.

Attendance: 37,393

PARMA (2) 3 – 1 (1) ROYAL ANTWERP

[Parma scorers: Minotti  9′, Melli  30′, Cuoghi  84′]

[Royal Antwerp: Severeyns  11′]

Parma: Marco Ballotta, Georges Grün, Lorenzo Minotti (c), Luigi Apolloni, Antonio Benarrivo, Alberto Di Chiara, Marco Osio (Fausto Pizzi 75’), Daniele Zoratto (Gabriele Pin 26’), Stefano Cuoghi, Tomas Brolin, Alessandro Melli.

Unused Substitutes: Marco Ferrari (GK), Salvatore Matrecano, Faustino Asprilla.

Royal Antwerp: Stevan Stojanovic, Rudi Taeymans, Nico Broeckaert, Rudi Smidts (c), Wim Kiekens, Didier Segers (Noureddine Moukrim 82’), Ronny Van Rethy, Dragan Jakovljevic (Patrick Van Veirdeghem 51’), Hans-Peter Lehnhoff, Francis Severeyns, Alexandre Czerniatynski. 

Unused Substitutes: Wim De Coninck (GK), Geert Emmerechts, Garry De Graef.

Referee: Karl-Josef Assenmacher (Germany)

 

This was the 33rd Final of the Cup Winners Cup and the first at Wembley since West Ham United played in the 1964/65 Final against 1860 Munich.

Parma started brightly and went ahead within the opening ten minutes. Alessandro Melli had a diving header brilliantly saved by Antwerp ‘keeper Stevan Stojanovic, however from the resulting corner, Stojanovic flapped at the ball allowing Parma skipper Lorenzo Minotti to acrobatically hook home into the net. The lead only lasted two minutes, as the Parma defence was put under pressure with Alexandre Czerniatynski putting through a clever ball to Francis Severeyns who ran onto it and clinically finished past Marco Ballotta. On the half-hour mark, Parma went back in front and again the Antwerp ‘keeper didn’t cover himself in glory. Marco Osio crossed into the box and Stojanovic came out only to be well beaten to the ball by Alessandro Melli, who headed home into an unguarded goal. Melli had the ball in the net once more before the break but was aggrieved to see the flag up for off-side, leaving the Italian side 2-1 up at the break. Parma dominated proceedings in the second-half, but only sealed victory six minutes from time, when a ball over the top found Stefano Cuoghi clear of the Antwerp defence, he took a single touch in the box before curling over the advancing Stojanovic for I Gialloblu (The Yellow and Blues) first European trophy.

The low attendance on the night is said to have contributed to the thinking that the competition had a limited future. Indeed just six years on from that Wembley game, in 1999, the last ever Final in the tournament was played out at Villa Park.

The programme from the last Final in 1999 summarised the game under the following headline:

Parma outgun brave Antwerp

The Wembley final was a glittering occasion but both clubs took a tortuous route to London. Parma AC squeezed past Ujpesti TC 2-1, then drew 0-0 at home to Boavista FC before winning 2-0 in Portugal. After beating Sparta Praha (conquerers of defending champions SV Werder Bremen), they won the away leg of their semi-final against Club Atletico de Madrid 2-1, only to lose 1-0 at home.

Royal Antwerp FC needed a penalty shoot-out to beat the Irisj part-timers of Glenavon FC in the first round. Then, having beaten FC Admira Wacker 4-2 in Austria, they contrived to lose 4-3 at home. IN the quarter-final against Steaua Bucuresti an 82nd minute goal by Alex Czerniatynski let them through on the away-goals rule and, in the semi-finals a controversial penalty allowed them to beat Spartak Moscow 3-2 on aggregate.

Walter Meeuws’ side showed similar resilience in the Wembley final. Parma AC opened the scoring in the 10th minute when goalkeeper Steven Stojanovic misjudges a corner and allowed Parma’s captain, Lorenzo Minotti to hook home the ball. But the Belgians replied within two minutes, Czerniatynski playing a lovely through ball to Francis Severeyns. The Italians began to dominate an end-to-end game and Alessandro Melli headed them 2-1 ahead after half an hour. Antwerp offered sterling resistance in the second half, but the game was put beyond their reach six minutes from time when Stefan Cuoghi curled in the third. Parma had become the eighth Italian team to win a Europen trophy.

Two players from Parma that night will be familiar to fans in England from the 1990s, are Tomas Brolin and Faustino Asprilla. Their pen-pics in the programme for the Final were as follows:

Tomas Brolin: Striker. Age 23 (born November 29, 1969) with 22 caps for Sweden (12 goals). Brolin was the hero of Sweden when he led the European Championship hosts to the semi-finals last summer – scoring a brilliant goal against England along the way. Sweden’s current top player, Brolin began with Leksands IF, then GIF Sundsvall and played for Sweden at youth, under-21, and Olympic level before exploding into the senior national team as a 20-year-old in the spring of 1990. His debut was a World Cup warm-up friendly against Wales and Brolin scored twice in a 4-2 win. The next time out he scored two in the 6-0 thrashing of Finland. Those goals took him from nowhere to the 1990 World Cup in four months. Brolin was outstanding at Italia ’90 and Parma surprised bigger rivals by snapping him up. The £900, 000 deal has proved excellent value; Brolin led Parma to a UEFA place in his first season, to the Italian Cup in his second and now – despite knee injury problems last summer – to the club’s first European club final.

Faustino Asprilla: Attack. Aged 23 (born November 6, 1969) with 12 caps for Columbia. One of the most exciting players to have been seen in any of the three European club competitions this season. Parma took a major gamble when they signed Asprilla from the former South American champions Atletico Nacional of Medellin, last summer. But they have been rewarded with some spectacular performances and equally spectacular goals – including the goal which helped end Milan’s 58-game unbeaten run. Asprilla scored both Parma’s goals in the first-leg victory over Atletico Madrid in the semi-final in Spain. But he missed the return after gashing a leg in a bizarre domestic accident whilst visiting his family back in Columbia on between the ties.

Brolin stayed at Parma until November 1995 and moved to England to play in the Premier League for Leeds United. His stay in Yorkshire was unsuccessful to say the least, with his cause nor helped by an ankle injury which meant he never hit the heights of his time in Italy. Brolin’s two-years at Elland Road saw his go out on short loan spells to FC Zurich in 1996 and his old club Parma in 1997. His last hurrah came with a move to Crystal Palace at the back end of the 1997/98 campaign, but with The Eagles relegated from the Premier League at the end of that season he was released, and Brolin returned to Sweden where he retired from playing.

The Columbian stayed at Parma until February 1996 when he moved into the Premier league with Newcastle United. Asprilla was at times brilliant for The Toon but in equal measures inconsistent on the pitch and never far away from incidents off of it. He returned to Parma in January 1988 collecting another European medal in the 1998/99 UEFA Cup Final win over Marseille in Moscow. Asprilla left in 1999 to then see out his career (effectively retiring in 2004), with a number of clubs in South America, including Palmeiras, Fluminense (both Brazil), Atlante (Mexico), Atletico Nacional (Columbia), Universidad de Chile (Chile), Estudiantes La Plata (Argentina) and Cortuluá (Columbia).

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Book Review: A Tournament Frozen in Time – The Wonderful Randomness of the European Cup Winners’ Cup by Steven Scragg

The European Cup Winners’ Cup (ECWC) competition came into being in the 1960/61 season, and as its title suggests qualification was attained by being the winners of a countries domestic cup. Despite its creation after the first European Cup competition in 1955/56 and the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup which also began in 1955 (before it morphed into the UEFA Cup in 1971/72) and therefore being the youngest of the three competitions, it was though seen as the next most prominent after the European Cup. It continued until the 1998/99 season with the final playing of the tournament between SS Lazio and RCD Mallorca at Villa Park, home of Aston Villa, the last of the 39 Finals.

If Willy Wonka did football tournaments, then it would undoubtedly be the ECWC, a competition that was a fabulous mix of the eccentric, the magical, the unexpected and the sometimes bizarre, which is brilliantly captured in Steven Scragg’s book, A Tournament Frozen in Time – The Wonderful Randomness of the European Cup Winners’ Cup.

Rather than take the chronological route within the book, Scragg creates chapters which look at the history of the competition in terms of the countries or regions that took part in the ECWC, so for instance, Italian clubs participation is captured within the chapter titled, Forza Italia, whilst Robbie and the Purple and Whites, Plus Other Adventures Through the Low Countries, looks at how the sides from Belgium and the Netherlands fared during the thirty-nine seasons of the tournament. The exception are those which look at the 1980/81 campaign, Everton’s triumph in 1984/85 and Sir Alex Ferguson’s two cup wins with Aberdeen (1982/83) and Manchester United (1990/91). What this allows is that the story of the ECWC is able to be told in its own right, but also intertwined to the wider footballing context, so that its relationship with both the European Cup (and later the Champions League) as well as the UEFA Cup is presented.

What the reader is also given are stories that justify part of the author’s subtitle for the book, The Wonderful Randomness. Even from its inaugural season, there was something ‘different’ about the ECWC, in that for that 1960/61 the Final between Fiorentina and Rangers, was played over two-legs and was never to be repeated with all subsequent Finals a one-off at a neutral venue. Additionally, the trophy presented to the first winners, Fiorentina, was replaced by a different design for the remainder of the tournaments existence. Unlike the other two European competitions, there was never a period during which a team came back and was able to successfully defend the trophy and indeed never had a Final in which both sides were from the same country. It was a tournament littered with teams from all corners of Europe, some unlikely due to the current UEFA formats, ever to get near a European tournament again.

But readers may ask, if this was such a wonderful competition, why was it ended? Scragg addresses this by detailing how the change in status of the European Cup to the Champions League, was part of the process, as was the breakup of the former Communist bloc, necessitating the introduction of a Preliminary Round to the competition, as well the fact that attendances for the Finals were invariably poor. This included just 3,208 witnessing the 1963/64 Final in Brussels, 4,641 for the 1973/74 Final in Rotterdam and in 1992/93, just 37,393 strewn around the ‘old’ Wembley in its 100,000 capacity days, as Parma beat Royal Antwerp.

As a football fan, my view is that the demise can be traced back to when the so called ‘big-clubs’ in Europe, unhappy with the European Cup knock-out format, wanted a change so that they would be not only be part of an expanded tournament but of one bringing increased TV revenues. For me, there is nothing special, season-on-season, of another Champions League tie featuring Barcelona v Real Madrid (or indeed any combination of the repeat qualifiers) and as for the farce of the 2018/19 Final in which neither of the finalists (Liverpool and Spurs) had won the League – well just don’t get me started. Unfortunately, this is the reality of the greed and money that has infested our game both at home and abroad and at the cost of the romance that the ECWC gave us, such as Italian giants Napoli up against the Welsh minnows Bangor City in 1962, in a tie which required a replay in a time before the away-goals rule was introduced. That game is though just one of the many wonderful stories to be found within the pages of Scragg’s homage to the tournament.

What more can be said? Well, to paraphrase the words of Willy Wonka, “If you want to view paradise, simply look at this book and view it.” It is without doubt a wonderfully researched and written book and is a rightful nominee in The Telegraph Sports Books Awards 2020 (within the football category), and is a must read for anybody wanting to discover about a lost treasure in the football world or for those of us of a certain age, a most magical trip down memory lane.

(Pitch Publishing Ltd. September 2019. Hardback 288pp)

 

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Book Review: Cup Football An Exploration by Neil Cotton

Author Neil Cotton is a self-confessed Cup-fanatic, which came about from the first ever football match he attended, which was a 1994 Coca-Cola League Cup at The Dell between Southampton and Huddersfield Town.

Cotton’s proof of this love affair opens his book, Cup Football An Exploration:

“Alone on Platform One of a deserted Fratton Station isn’t a place I’d ordinarily choose to be at 10pm on a weekday night. It’s cold…and salvation in the form of my train home is forty minutes away. Why am I here? The blame lies squarely at my love of cup football in all forms. This was the impulse which brought me to Portsmouth’s Fratton Park to see Gosport Borough taking on Sholing in the Final of the (2014/15) Hampshire Senior Cup, an occasion few football fans – even of the clubs concerned – would cross for.”

This authors dedication and fascination with the cup format comes across in this informative, well researched and thought provoking book. Whilst there will other books which offer definitive guides and records to cup competitions, this is an interesting view across the cup spectrum whether that be County Cups or World Cup Finals.

In the early parts of this book, Cotton talks about the significance of the early County Football Associations and the importance of the County Cups and the World’s most famous competition, the FA Cup, before the formation of the Football League. He also interestingly highlights the social importance of the numerous Hospital Cups that took place, some of which have survived to this day.

As well as detailing the introduction of the League Cup, Cotton also touches on competitions from the 70s and 80s which saw companies such as Texaco and Watney’s become early sponsors of new cups. There are also looks at formats such as the Anglo-Italian Cup (in both its professional and non-league guise), and the Anglo-Scottish Cup, which will be remembered by fans of a certain age.

The study though isn’t confined to these shores, as the author looks at the significance of a post-war Europe and the introduction of the various club competitions, the European Cup, European Cup Winners Cup and Inter-City Fairs Cup and how these have changed in the modern era.

Cotton finishes the book with a chapter titled, The End? It is an interesting conclusion to the book and this review won’t detail here his suppositions, and hope instead that readers will but the book to discover them for themselves. This is a recommended read for anyone interested in the game looking for an overview of the development of Cup Football.

Note: Self-publishing is a brave and sometimes costly enterprise. However, it can lead to some issues with respect to the amount of time attributed to things such as the area of proofreading. In the case of Cotton’s book, a more detailed proofread would have picked up on the typos and, from a personal perspective, the overuse of the semi-colon. In addition, the inclusion of a chapter index and a reference section would have been beneficial.

 

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