European Cup Trivia

[Pérou Flaquettes]

Giants Stadium in the Meadowlands was unique in the NASL for its size, modernity and the size of its crowds, and it was very common for visiting teams to essentially give up before they entered the pitch. It was the only ground in the league that looked like the best European grounds of the time



The Whitecaps, on the other hand, played at the Empire Stadium, which would have felt as familiar to British First Division players as the city did, especially as local supporter culture was entirely British in inspiration (as was the pint and pie-centric menu on offer).



In the 70s and early 80s, before the economic boom and the influx of wealthy Asians, Vancouver was almost certainly the most British major city in North America, the kind of place where high tea was served regularly, provincial UK newspapers were available within two days and one could buy Shoot! the week it came out.

This Empire Stadium is indeed reminiscent of old British stadiums, reminds me of the old Wembley or the old Hampden Park (below), except the last two were much bigger of course and the Empire Stadium had more roof than the old Hampden Park from an earlier time (the result of a lack of investment from the resident club - Queens Park A.F.C - and the SFA? Highly understandable in the case of Queens Park of course, they've always been proud amateurs, in the noble acception of the term; those massive roofs would have been much costlier to build too than the much smaller stadiums used in North-American soccer), they had an official capacity of 130-140,000+ in the 1920s and 1930s (well, from 1923 for the old Wembley), except of course many more would regularly get in (cf the White Horse final at Wembley).

Some pics and footage of the terraces of the old Hampden Park are incredible, looks like the terraces behind the good were a 200 ft high wall, especially when the terraces were left roofless, which lasted up until the 1960's I think (but I could well be wrong).

[ursus arctos]

They were still roofless when I saw Scotland play England there in 1984, and this is from the 1989 Scottish Cup Semi-Final



Hampden at that time was very reminiscent to me of old school American university "bowl" stadia, such as the Yale Bowl

[Pérou Flaquettes]

They were still roofless when I saw Scotland play England there in 1984, and this is from the 1989 Scottish Cup Semi-Final

Yes, of course. Well, I did write "I could well be wrong" on this one...

OK, I'll sign off now, must urgently do some light shopping at Sainsbury's, sort out some bits and bobs and check the car as we're off on holiday tomorrow (driving to Scotland and then off to the Continent) and I've been gloriously procrastinating since last week, so cheerio.

[shackleford]

They were still roofless when I saw Scotland play England there in 1984, and this is from the 1989 Scottish Cup Semi-Final

That's the East terrace which, along with the North terrace, did remain roofless right up until around 1993/94 when they put seats and a roof on both. But the West terrace had a roof for years before that.



This pic is from the SFA website. I reckon it's from the 80s. Can't make out who the teams are, but you can see the roof over the West terrace. By this time, the "extension" at the back of the East terrace, which you can see at the front of Kev7's picture, had been removed. I can only imagine what the view was like from up there - you would have been about a football pitch length away from the nearest goalposts!

[Satchmo Distel]

This is Hampden 1937: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com...cd46884b07.jpg

[Lang Spoon]

Yes, very good point, I had forgotten about this overlooked category.

(in passing, a journalist acquaintance of mine, who knows past NUFC players and current staff very well, really cannot stand one of the two players mentioned above. I can't unfortunately repeat his exact words here but let's say that he finds all past NUFC players at least OK and generally speaking has a lot of time for them -bar the odd one or two of course- except for this one cockwomble, the only one who really triggers his ire whenever his name is mentioned...).

Ach no, say it ain't so Kev. Beardsley was always one of my favourite players. He didn't look an obvious prick like Souness. But there you go.

[Satchmo Distel]

Hampden Park: West terracing roof was added in 1968: http://www.qpfc.com/hampden/hampden04.htm

[Jorge Porbillas]

Some cracking posts in this thread, but I forget now which one inspired my reply!
The rebrand saw some countries denied a place in the Champions League. After Cwmbran Town became Wales' first ever European Cup representatives in 1993-94 following the formation of the (then) League of Wales in 1992-93, the league's second ever champions, Bangor City, were forced into the UEFA Cup rather than the European Cup.
Bangor City missed out the following season too as did Barry Town in 1996-97 and it wasn't until 1997-98 that Welsh Clubs were allowed into the Champions League.

[Alex Anderson]

Yes. Hungarian Romanians had their names Romanianised by the regime. But only their given names. So my father in law - László - became Ladislau. This was also true of Bölöni László.

Bloody hell. That's horrendous, ad hoc.

And here was me thinking Franco and Mussolini's nomenclature edicts on Barca, Milan and so many other Spanish and Italian clubs was as sickening as things got with dictatorial football re-naming. Horrible. Obviously, as with the fascists even ignoramuses like myself know about, this was just the tip of a horrifically malevolent social iceberg. But, with the exception of Uli Hesse's brilliant chapter on DDR club football in Tor! (which I read only as part of a wider fixation with the DFB) and Wiki-standard knowledge of what and who Sherfiff Tiraspol and Qarabag FK represent, there's definitely been a huge western bias in my reading.

Ursus points out the Belodedić /Belodedici difference. I thought that was just an occasional typo. I was never sure of how to spell or pronounce his name (apart from his European Cup First, he was bloody brilliant during the 94 World Cup so would be a conversation piece) but blamed the various spellings I'd seen on ignorant Brit journos, in much the same way it only became British mainstream knowledge that some Turkish "Gs" are pronounced "w" when Clive Tyldesley (who once went on a brilliantly contemptuous rant about British commentators pronouncing Milan as "Meelan") commentated on İlkay Gündoğan's penalty at Wembley in the 2013 Champions League final.

Up until I read a few brilliant pieces and posts by James Baxter - jamesWBA of this parish - I was ignorant of how much more ethnically involved things were in large swathes of Eastern European football. For example, I used to think Silesia was just about Poland.

The name order thing gets really confusing when both names are possible given names. I still haven't actually worked out whether former Hearts manager (and also Hungarian Romanian) Csaba László is Csaba László or László Csaba, since both those names are very common given names.

Yup. And before I'd read any of James's stuff, Laszlo's arrival in Scotland was my only other clue to the background info I was missing out on when reading English language stuff about Eastern European football.

Once fancied myself a bit of a xenophile - "Oh look at me, I know lots about European finals even when British team's aren't involved! Yeah. No-one in Milan calls them Inter Milan or AC. Did you know that? Well, I do. Coz I'm cosmopolitan like that - urbane, if you will. No silicone polymer on my elbow patches and, yes, this is indeed real Tweed ...".

But Csaba László, as the Daily Record knew him, was one of my classic OWIMBY moments. Only When In My Back Yard - only when he arrived at Hearts did I truly engage with the fact that what went on in Yugoslavia after Tito's death, and why, could be the rule rather than the exception to life after the collapse of the Iron curtain, Warsaw Pact, break-up of the old Soviet Union, etc. This was one of those moments I realised it all went a bit beyond me getting used to the new names in the pot during UEFA World Cup/Euros qualification draws.

A team in the Scottish top flight had a manager who was Hungarian - then he was Romanian - then he was Hungarian again and then he was something else a bit less clear and far too complicated for a mainstream pack of hacks who felt they were doing well not just to call him "Eastern European" or "a foreigner". And I had no idea what a Székely was until I read about this former Hearts manager on Wiki.

And then forgot what it was until I read you talking about your father-in-law, and it got me reading that page again:

László is of Székely origin. He is married with two children and studied in the Public Secondary School in Odorheiu Secuiesc, Romania and in the University extension in Hoghia, Romania. He speaks four languages; English, German, Hungarian and Romanian. As an ethnic minority growing up in Communist Romania he was forced to listen to Hungarian football matches on the radio in secret as foreign radio broadcasts were banned. He said, about this: "Life under the regime was brutal. It was especially hard on us Hungarians living there. We used to secretly listen to Ferencváros matches on the radio". He fled to West Germany on a tourist's visa in 1984 to live with his uncle and start a new life in the West.

In Scotland we have 50,000 Gaelic people in a corner somewhere and big Asian communities in or near the cities. White folk with Irish-sounding names are more likely to be Roman Catholic and, as Billy Connolly says, people with another surname for a Christian name - like the late Partick Thistle chairman Brown McMaster - will definitely be some sort of Protestant. For so long I thought that was as complicated and diverse as things got.

Okay, I was one of the few people screeching "do you know exactly who he is - do you know what he's achieved" when the Jambos took on Eduard Malofeyev as caretaker. But that was just scratch-the-surface-of-World-Soccer-level knowledge. We all knew Dinamo Minsk were the Belorussians, Dynamo Kiev the Ukranians and Tbilisi the Georgians. I'd had an idea about the big, well-known countries within the Soviet Union. But I think it takes a lesser-known Eastern European manager being appointed in your country or a draw against a Sheriff Tiraspol or a Banik Ostrava before we get the broadsheet background pieces or sufficient level of interest to educate ourselves on the greater complexities across lesser-known borders. Coz education for education's sake obviously just doesn't happen.

And the shit so many people have been through in "the east" could give some much-needed perspective to - oh, let me think of a wildly random example - fan groups issuing statements because the Hibs manager told them to "get it right up yese". Ye know, during a football match, where everyone is swearing...

Hard times. Hard times in the West of Scotland.

[Alex Anderson]

...the guys who stood out if you watched Cosmos regularly were the "lesser" overseas stars, players like ... Andranik Eskandarian (Ararat Tehran, Taj, and Iran).

I reserve the right to brutally hack and decontextualize an excerpt from a very informative and entertaining post if it mentions anyone who scored for Scotland in a major finals.

On the When Sábado Comes forum they do the same whenever Tom Boyd's mentioned ...

[Gangster Octopus]

European Cup Winners who have scored goals for Rotherham United:

Emlyn Hughes

[Alex Anderson]

... Sporting Club de Bastia days, a modest club with uncanny parallels with the West Brom of the time, all French kids like myself were very familiar the team as they’d acquired the country’s favourite second team tag the same way the Baggies did with Atkinson in the late 1970’s – AS Saint-Étienne fulfilled that role too but Sainté were seen as much bigger ...

And I'm abusing another great post here but this time to callously introduce another truly trivial piece of European Cup trivia (but it is related to the later posts re Hampden):

Scotland v France friendly in March 2000, marking the official opening of the renovated, fully-roofed, totally-seated version of the same old bowl I love so bloody much. The World Champs win 2-0 with goals by Wiltord and Henry. But what I remember most is turning at the end of the game to walk back up to the exit and seeing a couple of young women stood at their seats holding a big home-made bed sheet banner. They were a few rows behind my seat, in what was then the new North Stand (when terraced it was the North Enclosure,"North Stand" formerly meaning the long, shallow, add-on stand-on-stilts which stood above and behind the North Enclosure until 1982-83). But it was green spray paint on a white sheet and even my "bonjour monsieur" level of French told me it said "Thank You, Hampden. 24 years since our greatest moment, here. Allez les Verts".

Yeah. No need to translate the last bit. It was magical. Felt I had to do something. Engage. I knew the game they were talking about and why. I was thrilled. like I'd been presented with incontrovertible evidence that I wasn't just a conspiracy nut - that the European Cup final was really a thing, not just a random list of stats I had been memorising since age 12!

I pointed the banner out to the people I was with and they were mostly just scared I was gonnae start talking about ... well, they were scared of the verbal version of this post. They'd already heard so many.

Lucky if the girls holding the banner were even 20 years old and, even though I was with my wife that night and still just 30 years old as opposed to the pervy-looking 30 stone I am now, what am I supposed to do? Go up to them and say "yeah, I was six when that game took place but have always held a grudge against my dad for not taking me anyway so I could say I'd at least been to one final of the competition I'm obsessed with"?

If they couldn't spray-paint in English, there'd be even less point than normal in me saying to them, "And do you know - funnily enough - St Etienne lost that final to a Bayern in all-white, as the Hampden crowd largely supported St Etienne, who had knocked Rangers out earlier in the competition, just as Eintracht Frankfurt, who knocked Rangers out in the semis, were largely supported by the Hampden crowd who saw them losing to all-white Real Madrid in the same final 16 years earlier ... both Bayern and Real winning the last of their longest consecutive wins of the two different trophy designs to grace the European Cup ..."

With patter like that, it's just as well I was already married. But I should just have gave them a passing thumbs up and shouted "Robert Herbin! Dominique Rocheteau! Sorry about the posts! ... but it's rarely reported that Gerd Muller had a perfectly good goal ruled out in the game too ... just as he did a second in the 74 World Cup final because he was so good at reading the line he was often incorrectly ruled offside ..."

Yeah. I didn't talk to them.

Anyway the refurb being celebrated that night led to me getting to a Hampden European Cup/Champions League final of my own just over two years later. Bayer Leverkusen, like St Etienne and Eintracht, lost their only ever appearance in the final to date (All-white Real again). But Rangers lost in the last qualifying round in 2001-02 to Fenerbahce. Celtic went out in the group stage without having played Leverkusen ... who Rangers put out the UEFA Cup three years earlier. No coincidence - but those French girls with that flag, and the buzz it gave me, proved again that the European cup is far from trivial.

Which is why Les verts are another of the teams I have to see in the flesh before I die. Fuck you, Old Trafford for suddenly being very difficult for one-off Glaswegian visitors to get into last season.

[Alex Anderson]

European Cup Winners who have scored goals for Rotherham United:

Emlyn Hughes

First one I saw was Lisbon Lion Bobby Lennox, scoring for the Celtic youths he was managing at the time against an Ardrossan Winton Rovers-Saltcoats Victoria select.

If we're gonnae extend it to something as open as "winners", we'll have to get down and dirty with the levels we've seen them at.

[Snake Plissken]

I doubt records exist to say whether Alan Kennedy scored for Colne Dynamoes, but if he did, I was there.

[Alex Anderson]

And Eusebio is, I believe, the only man to score in both a European Cup Final and a Soccer Bowl.

Yup (Roberto Bettega scored in the 1977 UEFA Cup final but - hey - the thread is European Cup, not European cups). Reminds me of the talk, before June's Champions League final, of Ronaldo also having scored at the Millennium/Principality stadium in the final and semis of the FA Cup and final of the League Cup. Quite a feat. But no-one mentioned that, in terms of FA Cup final and European Cup/Champions League final, Pedro had the chance to do the same, in reverse order, the previous Saturday. And both at new Wembley too.

Quiet something, to think that none from Best, Charlton, Kidd and Dalglish ever scored in the FA Cup final (and, of course, Eusebio scored one of his European Cup final goals and made two of his losing final appearances, at Wembley ... and neither are even his most famous Wembley appearance)

[Satchmo Distel]

European Cup winners who have scored for, and managed, Barnsley - Viv Anderson

Runners up who have done the same - Allan Clarke. Norman Hunter player-managed Barnsley but never scored.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Wish Eusebio had slotted his chance in 1968.

[Satchmo Distel]

Glan Letheran and Craig Bellamy - two Welshman who were unused subs in European Cup finals, 1975 and 2007. Those who played: Yorath, Joey Jones, Rush, Giggs, Bale.

[Alex Anderson]

I doubt records exist to say whether Alan Kennedy scored for Colne Dynamoes, but if he did, I was there.

Only one way to go now. Here's Gerd Mueller at the unintentional start of his pub league career.



Three European Cup winner's medals, three goals in the final; Der Bomber was brilliant at goals, shit at business and the drink hated him as much as he loved it: In 1982 he played for Smith Brothers Lounge - he'll have scored.

[ad hoc]

Keeping on a South Yorkshire theme
EC winning players who have played for, scored for, and managed Sheffield Wednesday: Trevor Francis
EC winning players who have played for and scored for Sheffield Wednesday: Viv Anderson
EC winning players who have played for but not scored for Sheffield Wednesday: Steve Nicol
EC Winner medallists who have played for Sheffield Wednesday but didn't actually get off the bench in the EC final: Chris Woods, Bob Bolder, Scott Carson

[ursus arctos]

European Cup-Winning Captains who played in the NASL

Johan Cruijff (Ajax 73 / Los Angeles Aztecs, Washington Diplomats (his appearances for Cosmos were in friendlies))
Franz Beckenbauer (Bayern 74, 75, 76 / New York Cosmos)
Graeme Souness (Liverpool 84 / Montreal Olympique)

[Satchmo Distel]

Souness and Hrubesch are the only European Cup winning captain who scored in the 1982 World Cup finals.

Souness is the only European Cup winining captain to have appeared in a TV drama AFAIK.

Emlyn Hughes - European Cup winning captain and QoS captain. Ally McCoist ditto but only in his Wank fantasies. Captains Gerrard, Ferdinand and Schmeichel have presumably all been on QoS at some point.

(Souness autocorrects to Sourness)

[ursus arctos]

Just about to respond that Hughes never played for Queen of the South . . .

[Alex Anderson]

Wish Eusebio had slotted his chance in 1968.

Wish Alex Stepney had been a bit quicker reciprocating his applause. I know why he didn't - trying to concentrate on biggest game of his life - but always feel a bit uneasy watching that bit.

[longeared]

Keeping on a South Yorkshire theme
EC winning players who have played for, scored for, and managed Sheffield Wednesday: Trevor Francis
EC winning players who have played for and scored for Sheffield Wednesday: Viv Anderson
EC winning players who have played for but not scored for Sheffield Wednesday: Steve Nicol
EC Winner medallists who have played for Sheffield Wednesday but didn't actually get off the bench in the EC final: Chris Woods, Bob Bolder, Scott Carson

Plus Andy Blair and Pat Heard in the final category - they were both unused subs for Villa in 82.