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    European Cup Trivia

    Rather than continue to divert the Netherlands/Holland thread, I figured that I would start a new one.

    To start with, we have Velibor Vasović as the first man to score in a European Cup Final for two different clubs (Partizan and Ajax) and the only man to have appeared in a Final and led an attempt to take over his national FA by force.

    How about European Cup Final scorers who played in the original NASL?

    Enrique Matos (Real Madrid 59 / Cleveland Stokers)
    Eusébio (Benfica 63 / Boston Minutemen, Toronto Metros-Croatia and Las Vegas Quicksilvers)
    Tommy Gemmell (Celtic 67 and 70 / Miami Toros (though he may not have played a league game))
    George Best (Manchester United 68 / Los Angeles Aztecs, Fort Lauderdale Strikers, San Jose Earthquakes)
    Brian Kidd (Manchester United 68 / Atlanta Chiefs, Fort Lauderdale Strikers)
    Pierino Prati (Milan 69 / Rochester Lancers)
    Johan Cruijff (Ajax 72 / Los Angeles Aztecs, Washington Diplomats (his appearances for Cosmos were in friendlies))
    Gerd Müller (Bayern 74, 75 / Fort Lauderdale Strikers)
    Tommy Smith (Liverpool 77 / Tampa Bay Rowdies, Los Angeles Aztecs)
    Trevor Francis (Nottingham Forest 79 / Detroit Express)
    Peter Withe (Aston Villa 82 / Portland Timbers)
    Graeme Souness (Liverpool 84 (shootout) / Montreal Olympique)

    Somewhat interestingly, the last four players on this list played in the NASL before scoring in the European Cup Final.

    #2
    It's almost as if the NASL had more success attracting overseas players than the MLS... sorry, than MLS does.

    Would Cruyff be the only European Cup winning player who also won it as a coach?

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      #3
      The financing of the two leagues was very different. There was no salary cap in the NASL. Cubs could pay silly money — that they often didn't have — for overseas players and field six at a time. MSL has a tight salary cap and allows only three designated players per club outside it. You can bet your life if MLS clubs operated under NASL rules there'd more than half of them spending more than they could afford on high-priced imports.

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        #4
        Miguel Munoz and Giovanni Trapattoni did it before Cruijff.

        And if you count the Champions League, you get Ancelotti, Rijkaard, Pep and Zidane.

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          #5
          Oh OK then.

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            #6
            Father and son winners - Maldini...?

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              #7
              Busquets for one, his father was also a keeper.

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                #8
                There's a very debatable Cruyff one. If you allow Champions League. And if you don't require playing in the final itself, but just for the winning team during that season... Jordi played in the group stages for Man Utd in 1999.

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                  #9
                  No, you have to have played in the final.

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                    #10
                    Under that criterion, Busquets doesn't qualify either

                    Without including the Champions League, the Maldinis are the only answer.

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                      #11
                      Nothing against Jordi Cruyff, but I'm not letting people claim Roy Keane won one.

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                        #12
                        I see Noel Edmonds has a new programme on Channel 4 called Cheap, Cheap, Cheap. It's apparently completely different from Deal or No Deal, but does involve people guessing about amounts. I won't be watching Cheap Cheap Cheap, just as I would rather have gouged out my eyes with a rusty spoon than watch Deal or No Deal. To my untrained, partially-gouged retina they're both just a horrible little Nazi in a sinister beard preying on the same "I'm mad me - but in a deep way" characteristics of a certain section of the British public.

                        And to people not as invested in European club competition as the sad collection of anal retentives and social misfits of whom I'm absolutely not a part on this thread (I mean, for Christ's sake, GET. A. LIFE. people), the European Champion Clubs' Cup and UEFA Champions League are also the same old thing. I don't differentiate.

                        Much.

                        Real have won it 12 times, Milan have won it seven; Rangers have never won it, Leeds should've and Ajax were as young and exciting in the way they won it in the seventies as when they won it in 1995, etc. We all know what we mean by "it": Europe's premier club competition; the competition which decides the champion of Europe (incorporating Israel, the Asian bits of Kazakhstan and Douglas, Isle of Man). The trophy, the format, the credibility, the quality of football - all have fluctuated, evolved, decayed and/or been deliberately altered over the course of the last 62 years. Yet while the move from European Champion Clubs' Cup to UEFA Champions League was absolutely the most memorable "re-imagining", I can never bring myself to see it as a "different competition". This is borne out by the less interesting trivia (and that'll be where I come in ...).

                        Barcelona have won the "European Cup" but never when it was straight knockout all the way. When they won it for the first time, in 1991-92, it was the first season to include group stages. But that was only as a dry run, before UEFA officially rebranded as "the Champions League" (Carlsberg Ident earworm) the following season having properly sold it - syndicated and franchised it - to advertisers and TV stations. And in 1992-93 the top team in each "quarter-final" group of four went straight into the final; in 93-94 the top side in each group hosted the second-placed side from the other group in a one-leg semi and the following season, 94-95, we had four groups followed by two-legged quarters and semis.

                        THEN, in 95-96, we had three points for a win introduced in the group stages and - in the first mega betrayal of the spirit of the comp - minnow nation champs kicked into the UEFA Cup. 1996-97 was the first season since the 1990-91 European Champion Clubs Cup that the format remained the same ... except that Dortmund ultimately winning that edition meant the following season's change (for me, the most truly seismic in the entire history of a competition that began with a 3-3 draw in Lisbon between Sporting and Partizan Belgrade on 4th September 1955 - Belgrade's always at the heart of the best trivia), TWO TEAMS FROM CERTAIN COUNTRIES BEING ALLOWED TO PARTICIPATE, would be exposed for what it was at the first chance: Dortmund had finished well below Bayern and Leverkusen in the 96-97 Bundesliga so, in 1997-98 we instantly had our first ever three-teams-from-one-country scenario. The svelte Teutonic end of an obese G14 wedge.

                        So it's been in flux for forever. It's constantly changing. Since Hibs entered instead of reigning Scottish champs Aberdeen - and Chelsea were banned from taking part by the FA - in the first ever edition of the old European Cup, the format has never been fixed. Preliminaries, away goals, penalties, play-offs, drawing of lots; Warsaw Pact and NATO clubs being kept apart - even the fekin trophy changed way back in 1966, when we were deep in the hallowed haze of what most of us would call "the European Cup". So we can't even invoke "the cup with the big ears" as a unifying term (the one Real got to keep for good when they won it for the sixth time had comparatively small lobes - more Elvish than Vulcan). And then the "new" cup design is duplicated every time a team wins it three-in-a-row or four times overall and is allowed to keep the trophy permanently. And then we always had two teams from one country when the holders hadn't won their domestic league at the same time. And then, as I've been wittering on about, the most massive changes happened deep into the years of "the Champions League" - we haven't even begun discussing the years of two group stages and five teams from one country - so neither "rebranding" or "format change" covers it.

                        The only constant is that its the hardest competition in European football ... oh, nope - wait a minute - that was the UEFA Cup for a decade or two: When we only had one team per country in the ECC, and one cup-winner or runner-up per country in the CWC, the UEFA Cup had three and four La Liga, Football League, Bundesliga and Serie A teams in it ... as well as all the Eastern Bloc teams at a time when they could keep their best players (In 79-80 we had four German sides in the semis but, with Borussia Moenchengladbach the holders, there were five Bundesliga sides in the competition altogether ... Bayern beat Kaiserslautern in the quarters). In the 85-86 European Cup, Steaua beat a Danish side (Viejle) in the first round and a Finnish side in the quarters between two reasonably competent wins over Honved and Anderlecht, all en route to winning the trophy by beating Barcelona with two converted shoot-out penalties.

                        So the only constant is that it's the most famous, glamorous and prestigious competition in European football. And this is proved by its other great constant: Real Madrid.

                        Let's look at the rebrand: Real Madrid were the first to retain both the European Champion Clubs' Cup and the UEFA Champions League. They were the first to win BOTH the ECCC and UCL two, three, four, five and six times. They were (along with their opponents, obvs) the first to play teams from their own country in the knock-out rounds of the ECCC and the first to play in a one-country final of either brand and then the first to play in a one-city final. They have won each "brand" more times than any other club won it.

                        Then you ignore the rebrand and just look at it all as one big competition: There have only been four hat-tricks scored in the final - three of them were by Real players. Puskas, who got three in the first half as they lost the 1962 final, is also the only man to get four in a final ... the same final in which Di Stefano grabbed a hat-trick, versus Eintracht at Hampden in 1960. Incredible. The only other man to get three in the final is, as per the beautiful pic posted by ursus in the hijacked Holland/Netherlands thread, Pierino Prati for Milan v Ajax in 1969 - but even then that final was in the Bernabeu.

                        This is why I was almost as sad as Ronaldo was for himself when he didn't manage a third in Cardiff in June. Everything Real Madrid do in the UCL is an echo of what they did in the ECCC and, for me, unifies the two brands beyond all doubt. I'm painfully aware it's a cartel. But it always was, really. And the fact the UCL is harder to retain than the old ECCC hasn't made anyone bemoan the days Ajax and Bayern were winning it three in a row. In fact, Real winning the first five editions is what sealed the competition's glamour and mystique rather than cheapening it.

                        Ronaldo's total of four has at least moved him into third in terms of goals scored in the final, behind Puskas and Di Stefano (joint-first on seven each). Add Cardiff to his opener for Man United in Moscow in 2008 and the late extra time pen for Real in Lisbon in 2014 and he has moved into second behind Di Stefano (five straight from 1956 to 60 inclusive) in terms of scoring finals. Paco Gento and Di Stefano himself slightly ruin the run of "R" Real players to score in more than one final - Ronaldo and Ramos are cool but (Hector) Rial and Raul are downright eye-rhymes for "Real" itself. And there was even more poetry in all four scorers from the 4-1 win over Atletico in the 2014 final converting pens in the shoot-out win over Atletico in 2016, in the San Siro, where Real have never won over 90 minutes.

                        Real are just providing grander versions of Dudek mimicking Grobbelaar's shoot-out antics of 21 years earlier to win the same cup for two different generations of the same club, against Italians in all-white who enjoyed a distinct advantage earlier in the evening. Every great competition needs mythos to override the rank commercialism and politics which inevitably underpins them (and, for me, made football so doggedly working class - posh people don't talk about money, they want us to think it's vulgar so we won't bother them about it).

                        Even though Real have also won it in all-black and all-violet, I don't think it's any coincidence that Bayern (twice), Aston Villa, Milan (six times), Steaua, Benfica and Marseille have also won the final in all-white (making it, at 22 times, the winningest "colour" combo in the European Cup/Champions League final. The all-red of Liverpool, Forest, Bayern, HSV in 1983 and Ajax in 1973 coming in a distant second on 12). It's saintly, it's pure - the opposite of what Real and UEFA truly are; but it's dazzling, other-worldly and glamorous - all the things Europe's premier club competition should be to the fans.

                        But, then again, maybe I've just got too much of my inner life invested in this competition for me to denounce it as ruined or significantly different since it became the Champions League. What do you reckon? Deal or no deal?
                        Last edited by Alex Anderson; 11-08-2017, 00:32. Reason: Fuck. Just realised I wrote an article a year or two ago, almost exactly the same as this post. I'm just cheap, cheap, CHEAP.

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                          Under that criterion, Busquets doesn't qualify either

                          Without including the Champions League, the Maldinis are the only answer.
                          Aye, for me, they have to have played in the final. Otherwise Jimmy Rimmer - unused Man U sub in 68 and very quickly subbed for Villa in 82 - would be the first man to win the trophy with two different sides.

                          The constantly changing criteria for qualifying for a medal also allows, apparently, Gerard Pique - not even a named sub for Man U in Moscow in 2008 - to join Marcel Desailly, Paulo Sousa and Sammy Eto'o on the list of guys to win it with two different clubs in successive seasons.

                          Not having that.
                          Last edited by Alex Anderson; 10-08-2017, 13:31. Reason: But I was apparently having a third "r" and a random "t" in Pique's name. Mind you, his REAL last name is actually Bernabéu.

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                            #14
                            Ursus - you've blown my mind with the fact Enrique Mateos played for Cleveland Stokers. I'd never even heard of them til I read Imp's book on the NASL and only really knew Mateos's name from that goal in Stuttgart in 59 which was the fastest in a final til Maldini's v Liverpool in 2005.

                            So I just looked him up - he played for a mob in South Africa called East London Celtic and also scored one of his three international goals against Scotland.

                            As Macbeth said, trivia will beget trivia.

                            But I'm not having Souness counting as a final scorer - if we start including shoot-out penalties then, well, I'll have to start memorising all of them too. And I'm too old to catch up now ...

                            But, seriously, I was always a bit confused about how to fit in the 84 final in my love of historical rhyming couplets:

                            Phil Neal scored the winner in the 77 final, in the Olimpico in Rome, from a penalty - then scored Liverpool's only goal when they won it again at the Olimpico in 84. But in a game which ends 1-1, as it did v Roma in 84, he can't be said to have scored "the winner" (especially when it was the opener). Can he?

                            Phil then goes and also scores in the shootout in that game, meaning he's scored pens in both ends of the Olimpico in two winning European Cup finals but, ye know, a shootout pen doesn't count in goal-scoring stats or else Ronaldo would have scored in four Champions League finals, not three.

                            So how best to sum up Neal's amazing achievement? How do you actually say what he did in a pithy one-liner? Making it more confusing, Alan Kennedy scores the winning penalty in the 84 shoot-out, having also scored the only goal of the 1981 final against Real in Paris. Has Kennedy scored "the winner" in two European Cup finals for Liverpool? Has Neal? Does anyone care?

                            YES!
                            Last edited by Alex Anderson; 10-08-2017, 14:14. Reason: Steve Nicol's miss was handy though - Boston Bulldogs didn't play in the NASL.

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Cleveland Stokers have to be one of the few clubs in the history of the sport to have played each of their two seasons in completely different leagues (the NPSL in 67 and NASL in 68) and with almost completely different rosters (as the 67 version were Stoke City on holiday).
                              Last edited by ursus arctos; 10-08-2017, 15:14.

                              Comment


                                #16
                                Epic stuff, Alex.

                                Originally posted by Alex Anderson View Post

                                Hibs entered instead of reigning Scottish champs Aberdeen ..... in the first ever edition of the old European Cup,
                                I'm still fuming about this. I say "still"... it happened 25 years before I was born, but yeah, fizzing. Pretty sure we'd have won it, too.

                                Originally posted by Alex Anderson View Post

                                Barcelona have won the "European Cup" but never when it was straight knockout all the way.
                                I never knew that the groups appeared prior to the renaming. I had it in my puny mind that it was a clean cut between "European Cup..... pure knock out", and "Champions League... groups and points and all that pish".

                                Comment


                                  #17
                                  Quality rant from Alex there, including some of that "I think I knew but forgot whether I knew" material that drifts in and out of the brain with age.

                                  For example:

                                  And then we always had two teams from one country when the holders hadn't won their domestic league at the same time.
                                  I had to check when this first happened, and it wasn't Liverpool-Forest. It was more than 2 decades before. I could tell you all who it was but I cheated, you won't need to, eh?

                                  And even before there were holders, it happened. It's a trick question, designed to start pub fights, and shouldn't be accepted, but never mind.

                                  Comment


                                    #18
                                    Athletic Club and Real Madrid contested the second edition of the competition. Athletic as Liga Champions, Madrid as holders.

                                    Lest people get too upset about Chelsea and Aberdeen not contesting the first edition, it's worth recalling that clubs from the Netherlands, Hungary and Denmark also turned down the invitation (like Aberdeen (but unlike Chelsea)), they were each replaced by another club. The replacements were not necessarily the runners up, just as the invitees were not necessarily the champions (in fact, in at least one case the replacements were the reigning champions).

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                                      #19
                                      A bit of non-trivial trivia from Alan "The Dictator" Hardaker, the infamous English football's head honcho from the 1950's to the late 1970's who banned reigning champions Chelsea from entering the newly-created European Cup in 1955: "Too many wogs and Dagoes".

                                      No prize for guessing what Hardaker would have voted in last year's ref.

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                                        #20
                                        Interesting.

                                        The American spelling omits the "e"

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                                          #21
                                          Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                                          Interesting.

                                          The American spelling omits the "e"
                                          Yes, but you lot have always been a bit shaky on the plural of those "o" words anyway.

                                          (I'm not sure what the definitive OED word on the BE plural of "dago" is but I think both forms of plural are commonly accepted in BE for this particular word).

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                                            #22
                                            Ghettos or ghettoes is one I struggle with, having lived in both countries.

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                                              #23
                                              Should be ghetti, surely.

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                                                #24
                                                The plural of borghetto is borghettI but ghetto is derived from gheto, meaning foundry, or possibly from Yiddish (there is no clear agreement among scholars) and in any case the term became detached from its Venetian origins over time.

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                                                  #25
                                                  https://blog.oup.com/2009/03/ghetto/

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