The hundred club

[Guest]

[article=link]7917[/article]

[Alex Anderson]

The hundred club

How many of the clubs to have ever played in any of the three European finals have you seen in the flesh?


GOT:
--------
Real Madrid
Fiorentina
Milan
Barcelona
Birmingham City
Benfica
Rangers
Atletico Madrid
Valencia
Tottenham Hotspur
Dinamo Zagreb
Internazionale
Sporting Clube de Portugal
West Ham
Ferencváros
Juventus
Partizan Belgrade
Borussia Dortmund
Liverpool
Celtic
Bayern Munich
Leeds United
Manchester United
Ajax
Newcastle United
Feyenoord
Manchester City
Arsenal
Anderlecht
Panathinaikos
Chelsea
Dynamo Moscow
Wolverhampton Wanderers
Borussia Mönchengladbach
Dynamo Kiev
PSV Eindhoven
Nottingham Forest
Malmö FF
Fortuna Düsseldorf
Red Star Belgrade (Crvena zvezda Beograd)
Carl Zeiss Jena
Aston Villa
IFK Gothenburg
Aberdeen
Porto
Everton
Steaua Bucharest
1.FC Cologne
Dundee United
Bayer Leverkusen
Espanyol
Sampdoria
VfB Stuttgart
Olympique de Marseille
Werder Bremen
AS Monaco
Parma
Paris Saint-Germain
Schalke 04
SS Lazio
Real Mallorca
Galatasaray
CSKA Moscow
Seville
Middlesbrough
Zenit St Petersburg
Fulham
Bordeaux (FC Girondins de Bordeaux)
Rapid Vienna
Ipswich Town
Braga
Villarreal
Napoli

(73)

[Alex Anderson]

The hundred club

NOT GOT :
-------------
Stade de Reims
London XI*
Eintracht Frankfurt
AS Roma
MTK Budapest
Real Zaragoza
TSV 1860 Munich
HSV (Hamburg)
Slovan Bratislava
Újpesti Dózsa
Górnik Zabrze
1.FC Magdeburg
Twente Enschede (FC Twente)
Saint-Étienne
Club Brugge
Athletic Bilbao
Austria Vienna
SC Bastia (Bastia Corsica)
Dinamo Tbilisi
AZ 67 Alkmaar (AZ)
Standard Liège
Videoton
Lokomotive Leipzig
KV Mechelen
Torino
Royal Antwerp
Casino Salzburg (SV Austria Salzburg, now Red Bull Salzburg)
Alavés
Shakhtar Donetsk
Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk

(30)

*Okay, so, right - the London XI were the only one of the representative/select sides ever to reach the actual final of the Inter City Fairs Cup (the first edition, in 1958). So, while Braga in 2011 became the 100th club to reach a European final, Fulham, the previous season, became the 100th different finalist. This ties up nicely with the fact Craven Cottage legend Johnny Haynes played in that 1958 final, and indeed captained London on 4th June 1955 when they thrashed Basle away in the first ever match in European competition as we currently know it.

However, as mentioned in the article, London is a particularly difficult finalist to bag. For a while I scanned the web, looking for upcoming charity games or testimonials being played in the capital by any kind of London Select but, in a desperate bid to avoid attending any kind of pro-celebrity football, I soon found myself investigating the London XI Selects run to the first ever Fairs Cup final (Barcelona the club were held 2-2 at Stamford Bridge in the first leg but won the Nou Camp return 6-0) and quickly came up with a more authentic solution: It transpires all 11 London clubs provided players for the select side during the campaign. Best I can do, I reckon, is bag all of them:

So far Ive seen Arsenal, Tottenham, Chelsea, West Ham, Crystal Palace, Leyton Orient, Fulham and Brentford but Ill only move the London XI into the got pile when Ive also seen Milwall, QPR and Charlton.

I hope you can sleep easier knowing this; Yes, I do go about saying to myself Ive bagged 73 and EIGHT ELEVENTHS of all the sides to reach a European final and, yes, Im fully aware its a barely subconsciously created excuse to attend more football matches.

Oh, dearie me what am I like! ... These crazy football fans loveable eccentrics you dont HAVE to be mad to work here

[Alex Anderson]

The hundred club

Apologies. At the time of writing the piece I thought I’d seen Górnik Zabrze. Don’t know why. I’d been working off the same old biro and felt tip list since the 1980s – and, for some reason, I’d run a line through one club too many on that A5, lined page of jotter.

Exactly when and why I did this I just can’t tell you – when drunk I pretend I’m an interesting person and only put scratches in DVDs, CDs and eyeballs needing to be divested of contact lenses. The Euro finalists list was only ever a cocoa and cookies, school night read.

Obviously, my maniacal bagging lust blinded me to the details of my internal audits. Clearly, I was just smugly indulging in the final tally every time I gave that list a gander. Ach well, never mind - why would you want to double-check your info before it was published in a magazine read all over the UK and the rest of the world.

Yes, Górnik lost to Rangers in the second round of the 87/88 European Cup and I was at the ties before and after but if that magazine piece proves anything it’s that I don’t do forgetfulness or confusion when it comes to who I have and haven’t seen in Europe.

For reasons even I find too boring to share (and there was you thinking there was no such thing), I didn’t make Górnik’s 87/88 visit to Ibrox. To date I have still to see the team Man City defeated in the 1970 Cup Winners’ Cup final. Yet I must've, at some retrospective point, confused Górnik Zabrze with fellow Poles Katowice, who Rangers met the following season. Katowice haven’t reached any European finals. So, straight off, I’m an unreliable narrator.

But it gets worse. Well, worse for me anyway:

“I support Rangers – we always qualify for Europe.”

"... always ...".

Always.

Always.

That’s the thing with fate-tempting – it can never be deliberate. You can't do it on purpose, with a mind to creating a positive result for yourself. Had I ever declaimed, for example, “Rangers will lose today”, in a knowing attempt to schmooze the gods into bringing us victory, Rangers would indeed lose the game (and, because Rangers-loving friends and family know the jinx I carry, my mouth its teeth).

But it doesn't work the other way. Deliberately avoiding cockiness is a must. If you think the million occasions on which I’ve deliberately stubbed my toe, bit my tongue and shoved a fork in my retina solely to avoid talking too positively about Rangers, Scotland, Ardrossan Winton Rovers – whichever team du jour - were a complete waste of time ... well, just look at what I said in the article above and just look at the cataclysmic results it had for Rangers.

If you’re thinking rank superstition is as futile an exercise as religion, I present the evidence atop this finely woven, inter-netted thread:

“ Rangers … always qualify for Europe”.

“My club’s regular access to Europe ...”.

Had to go and say it, didn’t I. Had to put it in fu**ing print too.

This piece hits the mag in November 2010; July 2011 I’m bagging the last foreign European finalist Rangers played – FF Malmo became my number 66 (and 7/11ths) out of 101 – and, August 2011, I’m seeing Maribor at Ibrox for the second time, punting us out of the Europa League qualifiers for the first time, completely unaware it’ll be the LAST TIME Rangers 1872 ever play in European competition:

This piece hits the mag in November 2010. Fifteen months later Rangers are liquidated. Mea culpa, Culpa me. Unconscious arrogance rewarded with a new company “re-starting” Rangers in the Scottish Third Division.

And, just to rub it in, I sit these post-liquidation days watching the European league tables revolving round Sky Sports News’ Formula 1, Ryder Cup, Super League and horseracing updates and all I see in 2012/13 season is a perfect storm of unbagged former European finalists gathering round the peripheries of UEFA competition. It’s like a KFC opening in your street the day after your doctor tells you your cholesterol’s through the roof:

The biggest insult is Reims. Reims are back. THIRTY BL**DY YEARS without any chance of me seeing Reims in Scotland, the buggers who played in two of the first four European Cup finals are under their zillionth owner but in a smashing new stadium and playing in Ligue 1, Le Championnat in the season immediately after Rangers go bust and get banned from Europe for three years. If the Old Firm was indeed all about religion then god’s obviously a Parkhead season ticket holder, coz this is just too much for this Bear to bare.

At this early stage of the French season, Reims have already met Bastia – of Corsica – of the 1978 UEFA Cup final. St Etienne (1976 European Cup final) are up there too, with Bordeaux of the 1996 UEFA Cup final.

Athletic Bilbao – fresh from having topped up their 1977 UEFA Cup final with last season’s Europa League silver medals – will play Zaragoza this season. Real Zaragoza who helped Spain divvy up the Fairs Cup finals in the early–mid sixties, Real Zaragoza of Nayim making a divvy of Seaman in Paris in 95.

Serie A has Torino of the 1992 UEFA Cup final now – to join Napoli who won the thing three years earlier and Roma, who lost it in-between: The Eredivisie has Twente v Alkmaar, the Bundesliga’s first HSV-Eintracht clash was a couple of weeks ago and Braga hang around the big three in Portugal as I sit here checking my passport and bank balance and keep hoping for that Fulham-Ipswich Cup draw.

This - THIS is what I get for saying Rangers always qualify for Europe. No wonder Scots are fatalistic.

So please forgive me if I’ve spelled some of those names wrong, please understand I get more pedantic about some club monikers than others, and don’t ask me why I’m avoiding the Bayern Muenchen thing yet shoving the “1FC” in front of Cologne rather than “Köln”. Like a gambler, wired on Red Bull, manically recounting his pennies after a hollowing night at a Salzburg casino, I just had to turn out my pockets and see what I'd got. I need to take stock – quickly enough to avoid looking up the initials which go before Napoli (is it SS??), not so anally that I could leave everyone with a mere “HSV”, and not so lazily that I’d ever stoop as low as an “SV Hamburg” (Jeezus! I’m boring and self-involved - not an animal).

The good news? If you continue down this thread I'll post individual personal histories of each club I bagged. Even better news: I’m going to update you when I put any new, more accurate scores through names on that old A5 jotter page … be it number 67 or 66 and eight elevenths …

[colchestersid]

The hundred club

Keep up

Not quite the same list but I've been to 76 of the grounds of the clubs on your list, not always to see them play, could have just been for an international game etc

Good thing I've put this sort of thing on hold otherwise I would be on the next flight to Videoton...

[Alex Anderson]

The hundred club

Like it, Colchestersid. Like that list of yours. I take it you mean there was a game going on at all these stadia when you were in them? I only ask coz, see, between official tours, sneaking in and out open gates and just tipping the groundsman a Rangers pin badge, I've been inside the home grounds of Athletic Bilbao, Rapid Vienna and Austria Vienna. And I've seen games of other teams at the homes of Slovan Bratislava and TSV 1860. That would take me up to 71 (and 7/11ths).

And then, of course, I could chuck in the fact I've been to a few games at Wembley, where the London XI played their first home match and maybe, at a stretch (a stretch entirely in keeping with this tenuous attempt to reduce my Not Got list), I could use my visit to Rome's Stadio Flaminio to cover AS Roma (they had to play there when the Olympic stadium was being refurbed for Italia 90). That would be me at 73 (and 7/11ths).

Furthermore, there's the small matter of Fenrbahce and Basle and their varying chances of becoming the 102nd European club finalist this Thursday evening. I’ve never seen Basle before (never even been in Switzerland) but did see Fener holding Rangers at Ibrox in a 2001 Champs League qualifier. That would mean the Turks, if they can overcome Benfica, are a retrospective bagging for me the moment the final whistle goes in Lisbon this week - which is the least the buggers can do for me after winning that second leg in 2001 - and I'd be on 74 and 7/11ths and catching you quick and ...

Nah. I can't change the parameters. Even if I wanted to, mate. I'll be cheering on Dirk Kuyt and co on Thursday in the hope they can provide me with number 68 (Yeah, I’d rather the total number of finalists was increased simply so I could score another one off the list – sorry, but it’s been a brutal season for Rangers fans and this would make me feel like at least one of our number was enjoying some European glamour!) and, well, maybe I'll bump into you in Szekesfehervar one day.

[colchestersid]

The hundred club

Yes, seen games at 76 of your list, quite a few were England away games over the years eg Georgia v England in 1996 and others were tournament games eg Holland v Slovenia in Braga...

As I said I don't really do this sort of thing any more, partly because I got married a couple of years ago and partly because my aim of getting to every country in Europe (and every "sort of" country like Kosovo, Nagorno Karabakh, Transnistr etc) had got to the point where I had only Iceland left. There is nothing so disappointing as reaching a long term goal so Iceland will just have to stay in my imagination.

I realised things were getting out of hand when I started "ticking off" Asia as well; much as I enjoyed places like Bangladesh, Bhutan, Tajikistan and (especially) North Korea, when you start making serious plans for holidays in Afghanistan & Iraq it's probably time to stop..

So, I've gone cold turkey on collecting football grounds and countries and just stick to reading guide book to places I won't now ever visit...

[colchestersid]

The hundred club

Aaaahhh, Szekesfehervar

I always wondered!!!

[Alex Anderson]

The hundred club

Hat doffed. You're putting me to shame there, Colchestersid. Different level altogether. Okay, you're not seeing the actual clubs in question but in physical terms I've completed most of my GOT list by going to one single ground, one I can easily walk to from my house. I've got a similar thing going on with UEFA nations - seen 41 of the current 53 member countries - and while it takes me a bit longer to walk to Hampden from my house, again I'm not exactly stretching myself in the way I choose to "see the world".

I remind me of the moment the Major tells Basil he once took a woman to see India “… at the Oval.”

Did ten games at Euro 96, was at the opening match of World Cup 2006, and had to go all the way to Aberdeen (that’s a 3-hour drive!) to score a couple of other names off the international list but - yeah – kudos. You've more than earned your stripes, sir ... and your retirement. Saw my first European finalist in 1977, my first international in 1980. I’d like to think the fact that, over three decades later I have still to complete either list, is evidence of me pacing myself – of knowing the slow-burn is the only way to enjoy and complete the task. But, really, it’s just what happens when you sit on yer fat arse in Glasgow all your life and wait for the planet to visit you.

You’re going to North Korea and Bangladesh. I’m reneging on Israel U-21s or U-19s at Hamilton or Falkirk or wherever it was. Ye know – just in case someone decided to “target” it.

Even my self-imposed restrictions are embarrassing compared to your own. I'd already made the decision to limit myself to one nation from each of the other confederations (and I still don't know how to assign the Olympic teams I saw in Mount Florida last summer) so seeing South Africa at Pittodrie a few years back was CAF taken care of and Argentina at Hampden did for CONMEBOL. Just so happened Germany were hosting Costa Rica when I went to that game in Munich in 2006 – BINGO! – CONCACAF taken care of.

I saw Australia in the first leg of their 86 World Cup play-off with Scotland. Their subsequent defection from Oceania to Asia should mean I was busting a gut to see New Zealand at Tynecastle in a friendly years later – but, come on, that was Edinburgh … on a Wednesday night. Or I should be going out my way to see a nation which has always belonged to the Asia confederation, just in case. But nah. I know I’m going to end up letting one night in my teens at Hampden cover both continents. I hate myself.

And as for provisional and wannabe nations (two of those you listed I haven’t even heard of so you’ll know I had to look up Videoton’s home town on Wiki),I just kinda hoped the Viva World Cup would end up in Arran or Mull some day soon – Shetlands is too far - and that the SFA would depart from their lifetime arch conservatism just long enough to invite Palestine, Catalunya or the Basques to a friendly ... at Firhill, obviously (god forbid I have to actually get on a plane).

Yup. You deserve to put the feet up, Colchestersid. You can rest easy – especially after that result at Brunton Park on Saturday (Been there. When Carlisle or Southend reach the Champions League final that 4-hour round trip will finally begin paying dividends).

[Alex Anderson]

The hundred club

Fenerbahce and Basle fall at the semis so the list remains at 100 clubs, 101 teams. Braga remain the last "new" European finalist.

Incidentally, Chelsea might not be overly keen to "boast" about being the first club to win a lesser continental tournament the season after becoming champions of Europe but they are on the cusp of joining Juventus, Barcelona, Ajax and Bayern in the elite group of clubs to have won all three of the main European club tournaments.

That is worth boasting about. Its also curious - to the likes of me - that overcoming Benfica in Amsterdam would let Chelsea achieve this historic collection of cups before Manchester United. Or is it just a sign of not playing often enough in the biggest tournament of them all?

Liverpool can't ever manage the complete set because an extra time loss to Dortmund at Hampden in the 1966 final is the closest they ever came to winning the Cup-Winners Cup. Similarly, Real Madrid can't ever do it (losing to Chelsea in the 1971 CWC final after a replay was again painfully close but the tournament no longer exists)but Barca have, despite Real having a far superior record in the European Cup/Champions League.

But then Juventus were the last of all these clubs, including Chelsea, to win a European trophy of any kind - the 1977 UEFA Cup - and were the first to complete the full set (1984 CWC, 1985 European Cup). Aye, it's a curious thing.

[colchestersid]

The hundred club

101 teams but the idiots at UEFA would have you believe the number is rather less

According to UEFA the Inter Cities Fairs Cup does not register as an official competition because it wasn't organised by them. They assert that the Europa League/UEFA Cup actually started in 1971. Probably not worth arguing the point with Dynamo Zagreb, NewcastleUnited, Birmingham City, Ujpest Dozsa & poor old London...

[Alex Anderson]

The hundred club

Very true mate - very true. I've had this argument with Rangers fans who insist we're the first British club to play in a European final, because of the 61 Cup-Winners Cup run. The London XI of course can be discounted on a technicality but I can't ignore Birmingham. And - yup - it's my own fault for continually lazily grouping anything which has happened in Club Europe since 1955 as "UEFA competition", but when bringing the Fairs Cup under their aegis UEFA were in fact retrospectively validating its worth.

Not, of course, that UEFA's blessing is regarded as a stamp of validity by many of us ...

I see it as a kinda bookend for the Super Cup argument. Invented by Rangers because we were requiring a glamour game in our centenary season but were banned from Europe following the previous season's Nou Camp "celebrations", UEFA got on board that one a lot quicker than the Fairs Cup yet it remains little more than a ceremonial trophy, a continental curio.

[David Agnew]

The hundred club

Alex Anderson wrote: Serie A has Torino of the 1992 UEFA Cup final now – to join Napoli who won the thing three years earlier and Roma, who lost it in-between: The Eredivisie has Twente v Alkmaar, the Bundesliga’s first HSV-Eintracht clash was a couple of weeks ago and Braga hang around the big three in Portugal as I sit here checking my passport and bank balance and keep hoping for that Fulham-Ipswich Cup draw.

Ipswich are playing a pre-season friendly at St. Mirren, if that counts.

[Alex Anderson]

The hundred club

David Agnew ... I love you. Thanks for that, sir.

I also see Eintracht Frankfurt are back in Europe, Videoton finished second in Hungary, Dynamo Tbilisi and Slovan won their titles ... Hoping Hibs, St Johnstone or Motherwell can draw someone on my Not Got list.

[Alex Anderson]

The hundred club

Rangers FC (Glasgow, Scotland):
-----------------------------
Cup-Winners Cup: Winners 1972, runners-up 1961, 1967;
UEFA Cup: Runners-up 2008.

First European finalist I ever saw, bagged – breathed the same air as – was the one I’ll always have seen more than any other. On April 2, 1977, less than five years after our last European final, my aunt and uncle took seven year old me to watch Rangers host Hibernian in the old Scottish Premier Division. Celtic had already wrapped up the title and would beat us in the Scottish Cup final. This was the dog-end of a dud season between two domestic trebles under Jock Wallace, a member of the backroom staff for 1972’s Nou Camp win over Moscow Dynamo.

Wallace was ex-military, a truly hard man. And in 1977 Rangers was a name with hard associations. We’d rioted at St James’ while losing the 1969 Fairs Cup semi-final to Newcastle. Sixty six of our fans died in a horrific accident while exiting Ibrox after an Old Firm game in January 1971. And then, the following year, the Spanish police didn’t react well to the pitch invasion which followed the final whistle in Barcelona. And the Rangers fans didn’t react particularly well to the Spanish police. We battled there, we challenged Manchester United fans at Old Trafford during a friendly in 1974 and caused the abandonment of a 1976 friendly at Villa Park. We weren’t asked back to England for a while. We wouldn’t sign any Catholics until 1989.

Ibrox in 1977 was about to undergo the architectural transformation instigated as a response to the 1971 disaster. The rebuild was powered by Willie Waddell, the team manager for that singular European triumph. We’d never have won the Cup-Winners Cup if Celtic hadn’t lifted the European Cup five years earlier. Waddell, a playing legend, knew how to ignore the Rangers’ fans bleating wants and give us what we really needed. His forensic understanding of our club’s role in the world saw him move upstairs to become general manager. He’d got us our European trophy, next he got our two year European ban commuted to one.

When scoring Rangers off a list I hadn’t yet composed, the old Ibrox bowl was near-empty for a 3pm Saturday kick-off. The sun shone over the roof of the two-tier Archibald Leitch Main Stand. I only got off my bench in the Centenary Stand opposite when we took the lead. Mere equalisers weren’t good enough for this natural glory hunter. I thought it’d be funny to call Hibs onions because everyone around me seemed to be abusing everything on show and, obviously, that’s what the visitors’ strips most closely resembled.

The first European final I can remember watching took place the following month. Even though Liverpool turned them over, the first strip I ever pestered my mum to buy me was the all-white with green trim in which Borussia Moenchengladbach played the 1977 European Cup final in Rome. Green and white, Rome - this seemed a seriously un-Rangers request.

Yet perhaps Rangers’ continental ennui, this sense of never having celebrated winning a final in an unadulterated, undiluted fashion, is what seeped into my skin. Maybe this was why I wanted a slick, German shirt on that skin. Them foreigners – especially the English and Germans - seemed to reach lots of European finals with no questions asked.

In 1977 Rangers were steeped in European nous unfulfilled: I was two when we won a European trophy inferior to our derby rivals’; three when we couldn’t defend it and so inadvertently created the Super Cup – playing reigning European champions Ajax over two legs – in order to celebrate our centenary at a time when everyone still thought Rangers were formed in 1873; I was four when Moenchengladbach truncated our first season back in Europe after “Barcelona 72”.

Sat beside me in the Centenary Stand that day, not wanting to miss a family trip, was my Celtic-daft younger cousin. I remember the green and white pennant on his bedroom wall, showing some big-eared trophy Rangers had never won. Scotland’s domestic scene screamed European heritage.

Hibs are Britain’s first ever representatives in the European Cup, reaching the semis of the inaugural tournament. Their Easter Road ground hosted the continent’s premier competition before Anfield, Old Trafford or Highbury, far less Parkhead or Ibrox. And in 1961 Ibrox hosted the first ever Cup-Winners Cup final. For that first season only UEFA made it a two-legged affair and Rangers lost the first leg, at home to Fiorentina. For years lazy publishers would see the replays of the 1962 and 64 Cup-Winners Cup finals and assume either those finals too were played over two legs or that Rangers-Fiorentina had also gone to a replay.

Why there’d be a replay when Rangers lost the first game 2-0 is anyone’s guess but, then again, this is the club whose fans rioted after two European finals out of the four they’ve played. This is the club which put a centre-half up front against Bayern Munich, in Bavaria, in their second European final, and only lost by one extra time goal. In 1967 Rangers lost another Cup-Winners Cup final just to compound Celtic’s greatest ever season. I grew up with this shit. It affected me. Xenophilia, my arse - Europe was just another Old Firm battleground.

Five members of the Barcelona 72 team took part in this 2-1 win over Hibs. One of them was legendary captain John Greig, denied the chance to raise Rangers only European trophy to the fans in Barcelona because those fans were fighting Franco’s police at the time.

The only European Cup-Winners Cup match I ever attended was the last one ever played. The 1999 final at Villa Park was my first ever European club final. Again I sat opposite an Archibald Leitch masterpiece – this time I was in the Doug Ellis stand – and pre-match, commemorating the winding-up of a great competition, a member of each winning team going back to 1961 was presented on the pitch. Amid Real Mallorca and Lazio fans I gave John Greig a cheer he was 27 years overdue.

It would be another nine years before, at another top English ground, I personally saw Rangers in a European final, in what remains the biggest game of my puff. By 2008 I’d made like Willie Waddell and whittled my dream down to a need. Rangers must continue trying to win the European Cup – if those hoopy bastards from the east of Glasgow can do it then so can we - but what I couldn’t die without seeing was my team walking down a tunnel, past a European trophy, onto the pitch where that trophy would be contested. We’d played in three such finals before, had a UEFA Five Star stadium and constant access to continental football. The desire to see Rangers in a European final wasn’t just greed – it was a bare minimum of genuine fulfilment for a life spent supporting a big fish in a small pond.

Against another Russian club, again five years after Celtic had made a European final, the omens for Manchester were good. But no – Rangers obviously need to lose two finals of any competition before we win it.

Our subsequent liquidation should have put everything into perspective. It has: Watching your team succeed in continental club competitions is utterly thrilling and I’m glad we spent as much as we did trying to win the biggest prize in Europe. And that 36-year craving to see Rangers in a UEFA final has shaped the nicest sporting obsession of my life.

[Alex Anderson]

The hundred club

Aberdeen (Scotland):
-----------------------------
Cup-Winners Cup: Winners, 1983.

The first time I saw Aberdeen was on Saturday November 22, 1980. A 1-1 draw with Kilmarnock at Rugby Park, Ayrshire, in front of next to no-one. That no-one included my Rangers-supporting uncle. He’d taken me to my first Rangers match in 1977 and a couple of others since. But at 11 years old I still wasn’t a regular. Despite a growing desire to get inside football grounds in general and wherever Rangers were playing in particular, Airfix soldiers, “heedie fitba” out the back and TV highlights were still my lot. But my uncle was a Rangers regular. So I don’t know why we were there, watching the reigning Scottish champions being held by our local team.

Yup; local team. Refer to your Hornby, his chapter on Reading and Elm Park and, right down to the blue and white hoops of the deserted local team, you get the picture. Kilmarnock were the club so many of North Ayrshire’s football fraternity thought we were betraying. To me they were Methadone. Your team picks you? Not vice versa? Bang on. I had absolutely no choice when I first saw those red and black socks mismatching with the Rangers jersey. I had even less desire to stay local my entire life. I wanted to see the world. When I fell for Rangers I was also falling for Glasgow because, from Ardrossan, Glasgow looked like New York.

I was still too young to travel to Glasgow’s Liberty Island on my own. But a big double decker, four-wheeled vessel left the end of my Ardrossan Street for Kilmarnock every twenty minutes. It was a one-hour corporation bus ride to a proper football experience, at an age where I didn’t care that it wasn’t the proper team I was going to watch.

Rangers were at Tynecastle that day. Perhaps my uncle had something local to do that Saturday night - didn’t have the time to be going to Edinburgh – or maybe he just needed a break from all that was going wrong at Ibrox in those days. While Aberdeen were being destroyed by Liverpool in the European Cup the previous month, Rangers were being destroyed by Chesterfield in the Anglo-Scottish Cup. Whatever the reason, he opted to travel the much shorter distance to Kilmarnock and take me with him.

It was a season in which Alex Ferguson would guide his Dons to second place, relinquish the league to Celtic with Rangers in third. All I remember about the game is being stood on Killie’s huge, beautiful, half-roofed Johnny Walker terrace as Aberdeen fans ran round it after their equaliser, happy to be threatened by the clumps of wizened home punters they were taunting. I remember that and the pipe smoke.

So I bagged my second European finalist before they’d ever played in a European final. The next time I saw Aberdeen they were hammering Rangers, after extra-time, in the 1982 Scottish Cup final. This qualified them for the 1982/83 European Cup-Winners Cup. The third time I saw Aberdeen was in the 1983 Scottish Cup final, in which they narrowly beat Rangers after extra time, just three days after winning that European Cup Winners Cup.

The 83 Scottish Cup final is remembered for a post-match rant by Alex Ferguson, claiming his central defence of Miller and McLeish had won the game on their own, that their team-mates had fallen way below the standards he expected. On the previous Wednesday evening Aberdeen had beaten Real Madrid after extra-time on a quagmire Ullevi Stadium pitch in Gothenburg. They’d again crushed the Old Firm beast in Glasgow, immediately after slaying the biggest club in the world in its natural habitat of showpiece continental finals. Ferguson later apologised to his players, realising they’d maybe had easier weeks.

What’s less remembered about that long, granite grey Hampden day, in front of what must surely remain the biggest travelling Dons support since the 1950s, is it was only the second and last time the Gothenburg 83 line-up started a game.

The phenomenal success Aberdeen enjoyed under Alex Ferguson in the 1980s is supposed to be at the root of why Rangers and Aberdeen despise each other. Initially standing up to years of on- and off-field bullying the Dons punters then fetishized the enmity with Rangers as compensation for their on-field demise of the last twenty years. Despite the “taste of your own medicine” justification, years of encountering their fans at Hampden, Ibrox and Pittodrie make it difficult for me to actively support Aberdeen in Europe these days. But while I was a devastated schoolboy on that 1983 day, I’m retrospectively proud to have seen in action the exact personnel who won Scotland’s third and last European club trophy.

My second European finalist, re-bagged in the game immediately after their only European final.

Aberdonians rightly take great pride in their subsequent European Super Cup triumph, the only time it’s been won by a Scottish club. But that was merely the coffee and biscuits after a three-course dinner even young West Coasters like me knew was years in the preparing. STV and BBC Scotland’s football coverage chronicled Fergie, the former Rangers player with the Celtic-supporting father, slowly bringing to the boil something which the Old Firm could barely catch a whiff of.

I remember Bob Paisley’s Liverpool, en route to their third European Cup, teach Ferguson a salient lesson. I remember Beckenbauer playing for Hamburg at Pittodrie on HSV’s way to the following season’s UEFA Cup final, during the same campaign in which Aberdeen eliminated holders Ipswich. I remember Aberdeen and Ferguson’s turning point the following year, scoring two goals in a minute to recover the lead against Bayern in the Cup-Winners Cup quarter-final at Pittodrie.

In the 1982-83 semi-final they blew away Waterschei of Belgium with a display of pace, power and incisiveness no German club of the day could match. I remember the black bin-bags over the advertising hoardings paid for by sponsors who’d clearly only signed up for Scottish domestic games. And I remember an aesthetic – a Scottish club playing midweek without first half floodlighting - which I’d never seen before and, unfortunately, haven’t seen too often since.

I was on a school trip to Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow the day of the 83 Cup-Winners Cup final. I sat drawing a medieval suit of armour in a glass box inside a huge red sandstone building. I’m a Rangers fan, we were in the middle of a nine year streak without winning the title, Ibrox has an ornate red brick frontage, all we had was our history; You’ve just read my best attempt at a metaphor.

My young sister sat on the couch saying “Peter Weir should give it to Mark McGhee and he should cross it into the box for someone to head it in”. My Dad and I smiled benevolently as an 11-year-old school girl got shouting instructions at the telly so wrong.

And then that’s exactly what Aberdeen did. John Hewitt scored the only European final winner I’ve ever been contemporaneously aware of a Scottish club scoring. His silly, stunned, floppy-handed celebration was matched all across Scotland by equally incredulous dances of delight. Eric Black, one of the greatest headers of a ball I’ve ever seen, had scored the opener with his feet and won the Scottish Cup with his head four days later.

Across the 1970s and 80s, Rangers won once at Pittodrie in twelve years. I started following Rangers home and away in the middle of this run, when the New Firm seemed miles ahead, in their compact, atmospheric stadiums and their trendy streamlined strips. Aberdeen, of course, also brought the nouveau riche hooliganism called “casuals” to Scotland. Songs celebrating the Ibrox disaster weren’t any less horrific for being sung by idiots dressed like sleazy tennis coaches. But they were no longer scared of our idiots. In every way Aberdeen were inverting the old order.

Aberdeen stank of fish and oil, the granite city epithet was in no way metaphorical. They always humped you and their nutters could ambush you. When Rangers broke that nine year gap without a league title, they clinched it at Pittodrie – with a draw, mind. Ferguson hadn’t been gone long. When, in 2009, Sigma Olomouc scored five at Aberdeen in an 8-1 aggregate win, Ferguson was between his third and fourth European Cup/Champions League finals with Manchester United. He’d never seemed more gone, even if the Olomouc debacle was overseen by Mark McGhee, the man who put in that winning cross in Gothenburg.

In the 83-84 Cup-Winners Cup, because Aberdeen were the holders, Rangers also qualified - the only time Scotland ever had two representatives in this competition. We should, of course, have had two clubs in the 1972-73 tournament but, with Rangers banned from defending Scotland’s only other Cup-Winners Cup triumph, Hibs had to go solo. Porto put Rangers out in the second round in 83-84 then eliminated Aberdeen in the semis. I was disappointed on both occasions. But the bigger disappointment was the fact it would be quarter of a century before I’d see Ibrox host a European night so late in the season no floodlighting was required.

[dalliance]

The hundred club

I saw Gornik Zabrze at Ibrox in the 87-88 European Cup. Were you not at that one?

Also from your list, Bordeaux played at Ibrox in 87 for Davie Cooper's testimonial.

[Alex Anderson]

The hundred club

Yup, dalliance. I fessed up above ...

"Yes, Górnik lost to Rangers in the second round of the 87/88 European Cup and I was at the ties before and after but ... For reasons even I find too boring to share, I didn’t make Górnik’s 87/88 visit to Ibrox. To date I have still to see the team Man City defeated in the 1970 Cup Winners’ Cup final."

Wasn't at Coop's testimonial either. Part-timer, mate - total part-timer :-)Knowing me I'd probably've been skint at the time but, of course, had Bordeaux made a European final before his testimonial I'd have most likely have found the dough.

[Alex Anderson]

The hundred club

It’s Not Just Ticking Names Off A List, You Know (yes, it really is), Part 1:

Cup-Winners Cup Final Zombies

The scorers who just won’t die.

In the 1969 European Cup-Winners Cup final, at the St. Jakob Stadium in Basel, Barcelona lost 3-2 to Slovan Bratislava. Barca had been 3-1 down. The man who made it 3-2 on the night was 22-year-old Carles “Charly” Rexach.

Nine years and 360 days later, in the 1979 European Cup-Winners Cup final, again at the St. Jakob Stadium in Basel, Barcelona beat Fortuna Dusseldorf 4-3 after extra time. Barca’s first scorer in extra time - the man who made it 3-2 on the night - was Carles “Charly” Rexach.

Another ten years later and Barcelona are back in Switzerland for the 1989 European Cup-Winners Cup final, eventually beating Sampdoria 2-0. Who’s sat on the bench, assistant to Barca manager Johann Cruyff? Carles “Charly” Rex … ach, you get the picture.

That 1989 final was in Berne rather than Basel but – hey – Cruyff and Rexach wore the same matching raincoats for this game as they did for the 1991 European Cup-Winners Cup final, which they lost to Man U.

Two scoring Basle finals as a player – one won and one lost – and two beige coat-wearing finals as an assistant to Cruyff - one won and one lost. Charly Rexach liked the Cup-Winners Cup final.

Or did it like him? Or, rather, did the stadium in Basel like and reward Cup-Winners Cup final scorers in much the same way that Basil Hallward painting rewarded Dorian Gray?

I only ask because ... because ... well, let me explain:

Scoring in finals ten years apart is quite a boast for Rexach but he’s been outdone. And he’s been outdone by another player blessed by a St Jakob Stadium final.

The 1975 Cup-Winners Cup final was also held in Basel. And Dynamo Kiev pasted Ferencvaros 3-0. Kiev’s last was scored by the 22-year-old on his way to becoming the 1975 European Footballer of the Year - Oleg Blohin.

Eleven years later, Kiev are back. Their second Cup-Winners Cup final. It’s in a different ground, different country this time and Blohin gets the second rather than the third. But, against Atletico Madrid in Lyon, in 1986, Kiev again win 3-0.

So you would think that would be that. Argument settled. Oleg Blohin is the man who scored in two European finals eleven years apart. Must be a record. Must be. It isn't.

We have to go back to the miraculous longevity-imparting powers of the St Jakob Stadium Cup-Winners Cup Finals – and that 4-3 thriller between Barca and Fortuna Dusseldorf. Yes, Hans Krankl gets one for Barca that night and he will later score one for Rapid Vienna against Everton in another edition of the same final. But that’s only six years later.

We have to look closer. Much closer, in fact, because many a reference book and many a naked eye cannot tell if it’s Klaus Allofs or his brother Tommy getting the final, decisive touch on Fortuna Dusseldorf’s first goal in that 1979 final. Most sources give it to 22-year-old Klaus.

Klaus is sold to Cologne (for whom he also manages one in a European final but it's the UEFA Cup, in the Bernabeu - it really doesn't scan here), goes to Marseille for a few years and, in 1990 returns to Germany with Werder Bremen. He later scores their winner, in a cup final, against Arsene Wenger's AS Monaco, in Lisbon’s Stadium of Light. Guess what cup final?

That’s 1992 “later”. That’s thirteen years later.

So we have a winner. Another Cup-Winners Cup winner who washed his face in the imported dewdrops of the St. Jakob Stadium pitch every day and became the man who scored in a European final the longest time after scoring in his first. It's an awkwardly-worded record for Klaus Allofs to hold. But I suppose he does hold it in the most awkwardly-worded of European competitions.

[Alex Anderson]

The hundred club

Celtic FC (Glasgow, Scotland):
-----------------------------
European Cup: Winners 1967, runners-up 1970;
UEFA Cup: Runners-up 2003.

My left leg is a traitor. Oh yes. Sad to report but my south pin is distinctly lacking in, erm, backbone. When those Loyalist paramilitaries known as the Rangers Trust finally decide to punish me for flagrantly not physically hating Neil Lennon, they shouldn’t stop with the left knee-cap – they should just lop off the entire left leg. From the thigh down - get the whole Popish, hairy, porcine length of it. When dissident Republican terrorists finally get a hold of me for flagrantly not liking Neil Lennon they can take the right leg – it was probably the left leg that grassed me up anyway.

My left leg is a turncoat. Afraid so. Undeniable. And the date upon which this limb’s deep-seated treachery was finally revealed to me is painfully easy to remember: 20/03/2003. There I was, sat on my sofa, innocently watching a Scottish club doing painfully well in a live European quarter-final second, erm, leg, against the greatest European side of my childhood – Liverpool. And when that Scottish side, already 2-1 up on aggregate thanks to a first half penalty into the Kop end, rattled an 82nd minute long-ranger into the Anfield Road end net, it happened: My left leg twitched. Distinctly.

It didn’t jolt. It didn’t lift the foot off the floor. It didn’t even create enough purchase to put air between the denim enshrouding my left bum cheek and the strange carpety pile of the sofa. But there was a definite and noticeable spasm. Not of anger, annoyance, hate or even plain old fright. No. This was a twitch of … a twitch of … look, this was undeniably a twitch of excitement.

I didn’t see John Hartson’s subsequent celebrations. I barely saw the remaining ten minutes or so of the game. I just sat there, alone, in my living room, staring with shocked disgust at the area between my groin and my left foot, wondering how much of it I could get through with the bread knife. Traitor.

All those times it had helped me put in a decent pass at the fives, those two times I actually nut-megged someone. As generally shit as I always was at playing football, my right leg was the power, the solidity – the hammer. But my left leg was the artist, the free spirit – the bohemian. That time back in the black and white days of the Largs Sunday League where my left leg, knee, ankle foot and toes all found enough unity and poise to actually curl home a direct free kick from outside the box in an eleven-a-side game with strips, nets, a referee and everything. We got pumped 4-1 by The Fiddlers, their goalie kind of helped it in and my far more skilful mate was raging because he’d been intending to hit it but – hey – I got so drunk that night celebrating my only ever moment of being Brazilian that I could not have possibly staggered home if it hadn’t been for that big, fat left leg on whom I’d placed so much trust.

And the trips to Ibrox. All the trips we’d made together to see Rangers – wherever they played. That leg had kept me stood upright on the terraces of Ibrox, Hampden and Parkhead while I sang about how much I hated Celtic. It had helped me stay upright behind some Protestant pensioners when being ambushed by a crowd of Celtic casuals along the Gallowgate. I reciprocated, took some of the weight off old Lefty, by leaning heavily on a Section H crush barrier when Gary Stevens’ only ever mistake in a Rangers jersey let Celtic deny us the treble in the 1989 Scottish Cup final.

And as for my sex life – well, yeah – my left leg had indeed been with me when, well into my 20th year on earth (god, how embarrassing to admit how long it took me to experience it), that thing I’d fixated about from age 11 finally happened for the first time in my life: We won at Parkhead, for the first time since April 1980, and I was there. It was sweaty, tense, cramped and as soon as it was over - it was over so quickly after Chris Woods saved Andy Walker’s penalty - I realised exactly how horrible a place I was in and that, really, it wasn’t a loving experience.

But it got it out the way, got that desperation out my system, and my left leg was there with me. We’d shared some deep shit, man. Me and that limb were tight. Yet here it was, after 33 and a half years of embedding itself in my life, revealing itself as nothing more than a dirty Fenian leg.

I always knew it was shorter than my right.

I experienced no spasms when Larsson scored a similarly late and dramatic clincher in the second leg of their semi-final. But that was against Boavista (the second club I saw Rangers playing live in European competition. We’d beaten them in Oporto too but at a less illustrious stage of the same competition). Liverpool, like Blackburn before them in the earlier rounds of Celtic’s 2002/03 UEFA Cup campaign, are an English club. And while the Old Firm dynamic has been taken to ridiculous lengths these days so that supporting Scotland is seen as a betrayal of your neo-English/proto-Irish pretensions, and while I have never in my life actively “cheered on” Celtic, there is no denying I’m of a generation which will appreciate any Scottish team going down south and showing any football bigots in their media what we’re made of.

Saturday 21 April 1984 at Ibrox. Bobby Williamson scoring the only goal of the game with a kick which was overhead in denotation rather than connotation, in a pin-striped jersey for a Rangers side “modern” only in impersonation. And I fucking loved it - that goal, that strip and that day.

Rangers won my first Old Firm game. It was Rangers’ first victory over Celtic in the league that season at our 4th and final attempt, but we’d beaten them in the League Cup final the previous month, Ally McCoist scoring a Hampden hat-trick. It was a great spectacle and it was so safe that I really couldn’t understand why I’d had to wait to age 14 before I was allowed to go to one. Aberdeen won the league that season – and the next. Dundee United had won the league the previous season.

I did, prior to 1984, see a Celtic XI playing against an Ardrossan Winton Rovers-Saltcoats Victoria select. I do support my local team – I had a season ticket for Winton Rovers, my home town Junior club, before I had one for Ibrox. And the statutory antipathy I feel towards Celtic is dwarfed by the psychotic hatred I feel for Saltcoats fu*ing Vics. They’ve won the Scottish Junior Cup - just once – but Winton have never even made the final. And, of course, Scotland have never made the World Cup final but England ...

First time I ever saw Celtic it was in a charity game, and they fielded a team featuring ten kids and one first-team player. And he only played because he lived in Saltcoats. His name was Bobby Lennox. And he was a Lisbon Lion. And he was playing in my home town – drawing 1-1 with a Juniors select side but scoring the Celtic goal and just generally ramming it down my throat. From Lisbon to Ardrossan.

On the day of the 2003 UEFA Cup final I took my Porto pennant to work. I produced it when my gaffer said I could go home early if I supported Celtic during the final. When he saw the pennant he let me away before anyone else in the office. As I waded through Glasgow’s mercantile centre, already awash in green and white hoops headed for pubs and clubs, and arrived at my house to see a clover crest flying from my next door neighbour’s front window, the comedy had been thoroughly removed from my Porto supporting.

While watching Aberdeen and Dundee United in their European finals I got right behind them from the first minute. Watching Celtic on course to what was, after all, only my third time seeing a Scottish club in a European final, was like seeing an estranged sibling doing increasingly well on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. There was a lot of resentment and, after everything that’s gone between you, it would be impossible to enjoy their success. But as a bigger and bigger audience watched them do better and better, you didn’t want them embarrassing the family name.

Porto’s thoroughly latin antics in Seville, as spectacular as their thoroughly latin skills, saw them booed as they lifted the UEFA Cup. Their play-acting had rightly offended the utterly Northern European – dare I say, British sensibilities of the Celtic support. I wasn’t cheering Porto up that rostrum. The following Sunday Rangers clinched the treble by beating Dunfermline by five while Celtic only beat Kilmarnock by four. My god, I cheered that trophy lift.

As I returned from Ibrox that day my next door neighbour was waiting for me with a cold one. Four years later I went to see Seville at Hampden with a mate who’d been in Seville – a mate who was at his second UEFA Cup final. It was my first. After being at Villa Park for the 1999 Cup-Winners Cup final and Hampden for the 2002 Champions League final, I’d completed the set. Another year later, as if I’d finally paid my dues to the gods of continental showpieces, I got to see my second UEFA Cup final:

When Rangers defeated Fiorentina in the 2008 UEFA Cup semi-final, that same mate was the first to congratulate me, came to the pub with me the following night, and that same next door neighbour waved me off as I drove the car away from my home and towards the M6 on the morning of Wednesday 14th May.

This is what happens with obsessions – they end up making you like the thing you hate. My obsession is with European football, so a tiny part of me liked Celtic doing what they did to Liverpool (the part which knew what Liverpool did to Celtic in the 66 Cup-Winners Cup semis). My club's support became like the very thing it hated because our loudmouths obsessed with Celtic. But we aren’t Celtic so when we bitched and moaned we picked the wrong target, were sold by him and got liquidated by his successor. Just four years after our UEFA Cup final Rangers ended up cutting off more than a left leg, a right arm and our nose to spite our face.

And I reckon the seeds of all that were sewn in Lisbon, on 25 May, 1967 by eleven Scotsmen managed by a childhood Rangers fan called Jock Stein. They lost another European Cup final, against Feyenoord in Milan, in 1970. They will never win the Cup-Winners Cup and they will never be my cup of tea. So what. The fourth European finalist I saw in the flesh was the first European Cup-winning club I ever saw in the flesh. I think they’re called Celtic.

[Alex Anderson]

The hundred club

It’s Not Just Ticking Names Off A List, You Know (yes, it really is), Part 2:


The Unretainable Cup-Winners Cup

The too-cold-to-hold cup

The European Cup was won by Real Madrid for its first five seasons. By the time it was ten years old, Benfica and Inter had also won and retained the thing. Barcelona triumphed in the first two editions of the Fairs Cup, Valencia won it in 1962 and 63. Even when it became the UEFA Cup, both Real Madrid and Seville lifted it two years on the bounce. But no-one ever retained the Cup-Winners Cup.

The first and last Cup-Winners Cup finals were won by Italians, reffed by Austrians and took place under the gaze of Archibald Leitch stands in famous British “second cities”. All a bit tenuous. Apart from anything you might think about Fiorentina, Lazio, Glasgow or Birmingham, the second leg of the first final was actually refereed by a Hungarian. But you will get desperate if you’re looking for striking statistical patterns in the final of the shortest-lived continental tournament.

Four early 1980’s years in a row the Cup-Winners Cup final ended 2-1. That’s about it for sequences. Only once did it go to penalties – Valencia winning as Graham Rix misses for Arsenal at the Heysel in 1980 – and that was after the only 0-0 draw in any of its 39 finals ... which consisted of 43 matches. There were a few great games but while Real Madrid’s 7-3 win over Eintracht Frankfurt sealed the legend of the European Cup, the best goal-fest the Cup-Winners Cup final could manage was 4-3 (Barcelona beating Fortuna Dusseldorf in Basle in 1979), and that was after extra time.

The European Cup’s curtain-closer only ever once went to a replay while the Cup-Winners Cup final got off to a clunking, half-arsed start. The first edition - Fiorentina beating Rangers in 1961 – was played over two legs. But then, having instantly scrapped the two-legged option for a one-off final, there were two replays in the next three years. No one club took a grip of the final to give it that early injection of lustre and exclusivity so beneficial to its rival continental showpieces. And neither was there any consistency of format.

Casual observers of the tournament’s early history couldn’t decide if the final was home and away or a one-off decider. Confusingly, the first two replays were held in different stadiums from the first game. In 1962 it was held in an entirely different country when Atletico Madrid also had to wait four whole months before doing to Fiorentina in Stuttgart’s Neckar Stadium what they couldn’t quite manage at Hampden Park, Glasgow. Atletico were exempt from the first round of the 1962-63 tournament - of which they again reached the final – probably because it started the same night as they were winning the trophy for 1961-62. How do fans get excited about a tournament when they don’t know who the holders are, where the final will be held, if it’s over two legs, or when it ever bloody ends?

It was apt that the last of the Cup-Winners Cup’s three replayed finals involved Real Madrid, losing to Chelsea after their second tussle in Piraeus in 1971. Appearing for Real in both games was Francisco “Paco” Gento, to date the only man with six European Cup/Champions League winners medals. Gento played in all of the first five European Cup finals, all won at the first attempt by Real. That particular tournament wouldn’t require a replayed final until 1974, by that point a freakish break in an established pattern (it’s jarring effect further diluted when Bayern Munich won that replay and the next two European Cups). In his programme notes for the last ever Cup-Winners Cup final, even UEFA President Lennart Johannson can’t tell if its earliest editions were replayed or home-and-away jobs .

So it’s especially apt that the only truly startling statistical pattern in Cup-Winners Cup finals is that eight times the reigning champion became the following season’s runner-up. Fiorentina won it in 1960-61, lost the next season's final to Atletico Madrid who, in turn, lost to Spurs in the 1962-63 final. This set the “non-retainability” habit. The moment a club's captain lifted the thing, the best fans could hope for was to lose the following season’s final.

Unless, of course, you won your domestic league title in the same season. Milan and Juventus both followed their respective 1968 and 1984 Cup-Winners Cups with the European Cup. They remain the only Cup-Winners Cup champions to win a European trophy the following season.

Milan weren’t exempt from the curse, however. Having defeated Leeds in the 1973 Cup-Winners Cup final they then lost to Magdeburg in the 1974 decider. Ajax defeated Lokomotive Leipzig in the 1987 Athens final but then lost to Belgian unknowns KV Mechelen in Strasbourg in 88.

Even the great Anderlecht side of 1976 to 78, who reinvigorated the tournament with their three consecutive sexy appearances in finals in or near Brussells, managed to lose the middle one. HSV beat them in the 1977 Amsterdam final in front of almost 60,000 - Felix Magath upsetting the Belgians almost as much as he would Juventus with his winner in the European Cup final in Athens six years later.

In the Fairs/UEFA Cup/Europa League it’s just Valencia (1964), Borussia Moenchengladbach (1980) and good old Anderlecht (1984) who’ve gone into the final as reigning champions and lost. The old format of the European Cup had only Benfica in 1963 and Liverpool in 1985 doing likewise.

But who ever imagined the Champions League would begin to echo the very tournament it put paid to. Milan won the re-vamped, extended European Cup in 1994, lost the 1995 final to Ajax and the Amsterdam giants then lost to Juventus in 1996 who, of course, were done by Dortmund in the 1997 final. To date, the Champions League has never been retained. Add Manchester United’s last-stage failure to defend their title against Barcelona in Rome in 2009 and it seems world’s biggest club tournament is hexed by the little Cup it killed off.

Barcelona, with four tournament wins (1979, 82, 89, 97) and two losing finals (1969, 91) have the best record of any club in the Cup-Winners Cup so it’s a surprise they never fell victim to this particular curse - if we can call reaching a European final a "curse". They did benefit from it, however, when defeating reigning champions PSG in the 1997 final.

In the closing years of the tournament the point was rammed home. Parma won it in 1993, lost the subsequent season's final to Arsenal, who then lost to Nayim and Real Zaragoza in the Parc des Princes in 1995.

On the evening of 22nd April 1999 I stood in a Glasgow bar watching Chelsea’s semi-final second leg against Real Mallorca, knowing my chance of a ticket for the Villa Park final would be up in smoke if Chelsea were there. An English club in a Birmingham final would kill my last ever chance to see my first ever Cup-Winners Cup match. And while I rarely cheer against British sides in Europe I felt no guilt when Gianluca Vialli's side couldn't cancel out Biagini's 14th minute strike. Chelsea were the reigning champions; they were never going to win that final anyway.

But, of course, Gianluca Vialli did score both Sampdoria's goals in the 1990 final. As well as ensuring Italy became the first and only country to win all three of the European club trophies in one season, Vialli also let Sampdoria join Anderlecht as the only side to win the Cup Winners cup after losing the previous season's final. Who did Vialli’s extra-time brace defeat in Gothenburg that night? Anderlecht of course. If there’s a pattern or an incredibly anal trend, curse, jinx or hex involving European finals you can be sure RSC Anderlecht of Brussels are close by.

And so I got to my first ever Cup-Winners Cup match, my first ever European final. I derived the full ambulance-chasing thrill from the fact it was the last ever match in this tournament, despite the fact it had served my own particular club and country better than any other European competition. I’d even willed Chelsea to lose the semi-final. Not just so that I could get a ticket for the 1999 final - and so that they couldn’t jump ahead of Rangers in UEFA’s all-time rankings for the Cup-Winners Cup (amazingly, despite the fact they’ve won the thing twice and Rangers just once, Chelsea finished fifth, Rangers third). I also wanted to be sure no-one would ever retain this un-retainable cup.

But, as Pavel Nedved smacked his lovely 81st minute volley past Mallorca’s Carlos Roa I needed something different, something to mark out this final as the last in line. And I had it. Nedved’s goal won it for Lazio. Lazio had lost the 1998 UEFA Cup final to Internazionale. Lazio had become the only club to win the Cup-Winners Cup the season after losing a different European final.

That’s as close as we’ll ever get to a pattern-breaker in what was the closest the Cup-Winners Cup ever got to a pattern.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

The hundred club

I was quite taken with the factoid of Anderlecht playing three consecutive finals all in or near Brussels and starting looking at CWC final venues on Wikipedia (rock n roll Friday night).

Presumably they set the final venues long before the finalists were known (as they do now, obviously), therefore it's surprising how many games were either literally or virtually a home game for one of the finalists, or a complete pain in the arse for both.

Greece in particular isn't handy for many teams and particularly not for Chelsea/Real Madrid and Ajax/Leipzig. Dragging Dinamo Tblisi and Carl Zeiss Jena into deepest BRD was rewarded with a crowd of less than 5,000 and there would have been more suitable places for Kiev and Ferencvaros to play than Basle.

Speaking of which what was UEFA's obsession with Basle as the CWC final venue?

The most surprising crowd figures are less than 8,000 in Vienna for Man City's win in Vienna in 1970 - this in a time when British fans were starting to travel in large numbers to European finals - and another sub 5,000 for Magdeburg v Milan in Rotterdam in 1974. The former wouldn't have contributed much to the crowd but you'd have though travelling Milan fans and curious neutrals would have produced a bigger crowd than that.

I'm rambling now but this reminds me of the commentary for the Villa v Bayern European Cup final as shown on ESPN Classic, when Brian Moore commented that the stadium was 'far from sold out, due to the decision by Dutch TV to show the game live'. How times change.

[Alex Anderson]

The hundred club

Sorry, Walt. I had no idea anyone had been all the way down here. And you can be sure if I’d known someone else liked to spend their Friday’s trawling through Cup-Winners Cup final attendances I’d have got back to you a lot sooner (Sundays are for the Fairs/UEFA Cup stats and, well, of course, no-one was happier than me when the Champions League final was switched to the Saturday evening I’d long been reserving for studying it). You think you’re rambling? I’ll show you rambling.

My personal favourite is the Sporting Lisbon v MTK Budapest final of 1964. Wikipedia only details the replay but the first game attracted a whopping 3,208 to the Heysel . It then proceeds to produce a classic 3-3 draw after extra time, the lead changing hands twice and the final equaliser coming just nine minutes from the end of the 90.

Granted, travel wasn’t as easy and affordable then as most fans find it now – and was basically a criminal offence if you were unlucky enough to live in a Warsaw Pact country … or an Iberian dictatorship – but that doesn’t excuse the Brussels public. In fact that doesn’t excuse any Belgian punter who could get to Brussels and back the same night.

It’s a bloody European final and it’s between two sides you’ll never have seen before – and you have a cavernous stadium just waiting for you to waltz in (cash at the gate I assume), and pick your spot of terracing from which to engage with history being played out. I dunno – maybe it was pissing down … or perhaps there was a particularly good penguins documentary on Belgian telly that night, but – really. Come on. Three thousand? Jeezus.

I don’t know how long it took to get from Antwerp to Brussels in the spring of 1964. But when the replay was held at the Bosuil two days later (instigating the “Friday night is Cup-Winners Cup final night” tradition) a whopping 14,000 turned up, obviously hoping for a repeat: Only goal of the game scored after 20 minutes. Ha-ha. Hope it was a stinker. You had your chance.

So. Yes. I’m angry at people, most of whom are probably dead now, for not watching a game which took place over five years before I was born. This is because I would kill to have a European final on my doorstep, irrespective of who was playing in it. I know saying this is really just my equivalent of that person telling everyone at a party to shut up because the Mariah Carey song that’s just come on means “so much more to me than anyone else”.

But, running concurrent with the faux outrage, is faux sentimentality and genuine jealousy. Having been to all three of the European finals in British grounds in the modern saturation-TV-coverage era (Villa Park, Hampden x 2 and the Etihad, to be precise), I’m strangely taken with the notion of deserted grounds hosting such historic matches. The organisation required to get to the 2002 Champions League final at Hampden, for example – or the hysteria surrounding the Old Firm’s two UEFA Cup final appearances of the same decade – make the idea of casually attending a European final nothing short of thrilling, if that’s not completely oxymoronic.

I mean, imagine just sitting there, in your Brussels flat, Wednesday night – just finished your moules et frites and waiting for mum to bring through the waffles – flicking through the evening spaper and spying the ad for the European Cup-Winners Cup final. Sporting Lisbon versus MTK Budapest. Tonight. Just along the road. Maybe even a short tram ride away. Bloody hell. Sounds tasty. It’s only six o’clock and I haven’t heard any other bugger mentioning it so I’ll be able to stroll along there (the waltzing doesn’t start til you’re through the turnstyles)and just pick my spot on the terracing. I’ve got time to off the rest of my dinner, have a bath, polish my ceramic penguins and then – ye know – just turn up at a European final. Now, where the hell is she with my waffles …

I’m as angry at the Glasgow public about this as the Brussels mob. Everyone loves harping on about the great turn out for Real Madrid’s two Champions’ Cup finals in Glasgow (apparently) but less well-known is the fact Hampden was far from full when Bayern played St Etienne in the 1976 European Cup final or that there were 100,000 empty spaces for Dortmund v Liverpool in the 66 Cup-Winners Cup final. The less said about how us “football-mad Scots” treated the Atletico half of Madrid when they played Fiorentina in the 1962 edition in Mount Florida the better.

You’re absolutely spot-on about the random nature of the venues, Walt. I have no idea why the St Jakob seemed to host every second final, other than imagining it was the preferred junket town for UEFA’s CWC committee boys (Was there such a committee? Did it always meet on Friday’s? I don’t know). But, like you say, when there’s no-one turning up for some of these finals there would have been absolutely NO logistical and/or commercial problems in shifting them somewhere more appropriate even if, a couple of times at least, that would have meant going behind the Iron curtain.

Tito’s Yugoslavia was a different kind of communist regime but Belgrade hosted the Champions Cup final before we had any of the all-Warsaw Pact CWC finals. And at least you’d be guaranteed a crowd and atmosphere in East Berlin, Budapest or Moscow, instead of the decadent disinterest us capitalists often showed this showpiece.

But - give it its due - the venue selection process is entirely in keeping with the quirky nature of Cup-Winners Cup final history. It sees Wembley holding over 90,000 for the final - because West Ham are in it – just one year after the 3,208 in Brussels. Barcelona, the best team in CWC history, aptly record the biggest ever final crowd, winning it on home turf (against Belgians!). Wiki’s got it down as 80,000 but it was 100,066. This huge crowd, again, only one year after that 4,750 watching Dynamo Tbilisi v Carl Zeiss Jena.

In November 2005 I saw Carl Zeiss Jena playing in Dusseldorf again. They were watched by 2,000 more people in a third division match at the tiny Paul Janes Stadion than they were in a European final at the Rheinstadion. And yet in the 1980-81 CWC semis they’d played to 80,000 at home against Benfica and the same again in Lisbon; Quarter-final they hosted West Ham in front of 90,000; and according to this wee book I’ve got they even got 50,000 in Georgia for their second round tie with Waterford. The final was the smallest crowd Dynamo Tbilisi played in front of during that entire campaign, including the leg at Kilcohan Park.

And I well remember watching that Villa-Bayern game in 1982, Walt. It didn’t click with me then but I was stunned re-watching it as an adult to see just how half-empty the place was. But that’s De Kuip for ye. Rotterdam’s big one hosted Milan in two different Cup-Winners Cup finals. 1968 they beat HSV in front of 53,276. The joint would have been jumping. And, as you say, six years on, the Rossoneri are back there, playing East Germans - this time in front of 4,641.

Someone, no doubt, would have been jumping. But if there’s no-one there to see it did it really happen? And, more to the point, why wasn’t I born in Rotterdam.

[ursus arctos]

The hundred club

The 64 CWC Final was really an outlier among European Finals at Heysel:

1958 EC (Real Madrid - Milan) 67,000
1964 CWC (MTK - Sporting) 3,208
1966 EC (Real Madrid - Partizan) 46,745
1972 Euros (W. Germany - USSR) 43,457
1974 EC (Bayern - Atleti) 49,000
1974 EC Replay 23,000
1976 CWC (West Ham - Anderlecht) 51,296
1985 EC (Juventus - Liverpool) 59,000
1996 CWC (PSG - Rapid) 37,000

Clearly, the Warsaw Pact travel restrictions hurt the MTK turnout, but I'm surprised that the Portuguese diaspora in and around Belgium didn't turn up in greater numbers. Sporting didn't reach another European final until 2006.

[Alex Anderson]

The hundred club

Right, Ursus – that’s it – you’ve decided me: I’m beginning an investigation into what the hell was happening in Brussels on the night of 13th May 1964 … apart from the Cup-Winners Cup final. Was there a public transport strike? Did the glamour of the 1958 final still resonate to the detriment of Sporting and MTK? Had there been rumours of a few loose screws in the Atomium? In light of less important events in the 1950’s, in Hungary, did the Brussels locals fear they’d be accosted at full-time by MTK players seeking asylum in their houses?

My posited poor weather excuse, however, has already been put to bed by further extensive research: I found the following on You Tube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgrYFUngpg0&list=PLz7ZcckgTSLNyPFMDvow7JK2 NRUK2V7pv

While the quality of the footage made me wonder if two old soft lenses had reappeared from behind my eyeballs, there’s no doubting the dryness of the terracing. There’s an unmistakable warm spring tint to the pictures. Clearly a perfect evening for standing on a terrace watching a European final.

And, yeah, there’s always a local Portugese diaspora isn’t there - everywhere. Where were they that night? Scared they’d be dragged back to the homeland if Salazar’s goons spotted them in the crowd? Let’s be honest, there was no hiding place at that game.

And never mind Portugal’s dictatorship - the most depressing thing of all about the YouTube footage is that the 3,208 punters who did turn up to this 60,000 capacity stadium were clearly ordered to stand down the front. The vicious Belgian regime obviously wanted to sell the game as a triumph of local interest and forced crap sightlines on all who did turn up.

Further scientific investigation (digging out my old Marshall Cavendish Encyclopedia of World Football) has found that some sources think the attendance of the replay in Antwerp was actually 19, 924. That puts an extra 6,000 on it Rothman’s Book of Football Records rounds it down to 19,000. Either way it was too little too late from Belgium. The fact the only goal came straight from a corner is more entertainment than they deserved.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIWbh0BbYEE&list=PLz7ZcckgTSLNyPFMDvow7JK2 NRUK2V7pv

Looks like a 19,000-plus crowd alright. But, as we’ve established, Belgian punters knew there’d be trouble from the authorities if they didn’t get themselves on camera.

I’ve been to Brussels. One of the strangest holidays I’ve ever had. Initially I thought it was us. We just felt lazy for the entire week. But now I don’t know. I felt really at home there – the Brussels locals are as glamorous and swarthy as the Scots – and the likes of Ian Nairn and Jonathan Meades have waxed lyrical about the beautiful idiosyncrasies of the Belgians, their love of hobbies. I look at how I feel about European finals and think I should therefore fit right in. Rangers-Celtic isn’t quite the same as Wallonia-Flanders but – hey – it gives Glasgow pubs a hint of the atmosphere I sampled while being ignored by waiters in Brussels bars. Maybe, in fact, it was all too close to the bone to be enjoyed as a holiday.

I went out to the Heysel. It was July. And like Parc Astrid and RWD Molenbeek’s place, Heysel was closed. There were no tours. We entered the Atomium, the lift taking you up it, and were accosted by an androgynous tiger demanding we pose with it for a photograph which would be sold to us at the end of our tour. We declined. Everyone else in the lift declined. Once we’d toured the Atomium we were sworn at on our way out by the photographer and her assistants. Perfect English. Kind of ruined the image I’d always had of it looming all gleamingly silver in the background of that Real Madrid-Milan classic.

Yeah, it was a strange holiday. I felt we weren’t really there. The hotel was great but instead of windows onto the street the room had an entire glazed wall looking out onto an atrium. We sat there, unable to muster the energy for a day trip to Brugge, watching Open fu**ing Golf on the telly from Troon – Ayrshire! – with the curtains closed, suddenly realising it probably wasn’t Rimbaud’s fault Verlaine shot him.
Only in Brussels could you fire twice at someone in the confines of a hotel room and fail to kill them.

MTK Budapest overcame Celtic in the semi-finals of the 1963-64 Cup-Winners Cup. The poor buggers must have wondered just how many teams in western Europe wore green and white hoops. Ferencvaros occasionally switch to hoops – just to wind them up, I’m sure.

And, yes, Sporting’s next European final didn’t arrive until 2005. Though it was the UEFA Cup this time, again the opponent was from the old Warsaw Pact heartland. While CSKA Moscow had one initial more than MTK and two goals more than Sporting on the night, at least there was 48,000 there. Even if the final was played in their home ground.

After scoring Real Madrid’s first equaliser against Milan in the 58 Champion’s Cup final, Alfredo Di Stefano was back at the Heysel in 1980. He managed Valencia’s penalties win over Arsenal in that particular edition of the Cup-Winners Cup final. And between Gooners, Los Che and a newly liberated Brussels public, the standard 40,000 turned up.

I was only ten at the time but I wish I'd been in that crowd, just to go round the locals asking, "why weren't you here 16 years and one day ago?".