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    Originally posted by seand View Post
    When I’m at home I’ll put up scans of the programme and ticket and who knows given a suitable amount of time and boredom I may raid the archive for some vintage EC programmes.
    No. Stop what you're doing. Go home immediately. Start raiding and scanning. Now. Do it NOW!

    "... suitable amount of time and boredom ..."? Boredom?

    No - no, Sean. This isn't boredom. Other than the wife, drink, Morrison's own brand chicken wings and spotting all the moments De Niro is clearly reading off an idiot board in Heat, this is what it's all about. Real life is boredom. Posts like your last couple about Red Star and now Honved, is proof of the kinda stuff I live for. Those European nights.

    Love it. Great reads. Always discover more stuff about my own fitba experiences when I hear about those of others. Plus a bit of proper insight and proof of real emotional investment, like yours with Dundalk, slows the mass takeover by the Dominos-Budweiser-Gazprom-Playstation fuckwits wh reduce European football to sitting on a gaming chair wearing a Messi shirt - in Basildon - and switching off at half-time because they couldn't take the fact there was only four goals in the first twenty minutes and none of them involved a shot from the half-way line. In the final.



    You're talking about the pre-season friendlies drawing more punters than a proper European night. I missed seeing Kaka scoring - at my home ground - in a mid-season friendly, because some tourist stood up in front of me to leave the second their hero David Beckham was subbed by Milan. I need to hear from more people who get it.

    E.g., you're absolutely spot on about the years champions of smaller nations went straight into the UEFA Cup. Had Parma or Bayer Leverkusen won the thing outright and we had a European champion who'd never been domestic champion, it would have been hilariously exposing. But that, at the other end of the competition, was just fucking disgusting.

    E.g., you've prompted me to realise that Rangers v Red Star game at Ibrox was the last ever European Cup game I attended. Always boring folk about the fact I was there on the first night of the Champions League - Marseille in Govan. But I never realised I went out on a bit of a high with the old Champion Clubs Cup. Didn't attend Sparta Prague eliminating us at Ibrox the following season (saving rabidly so I could return to full-time education) - so Crvena Zvezda, en route to winning it, is the last game I saw live in the European Cup proper. That it was also the last UEFA fixture during which I stood on terracing is suddenly extra resonant.

    Though, as you're noticing, everything UEFA resonates for me.

    Originally posted by seand View Post
    Seeing as nobody’s engaging Alex in his rambling reverie, and seeing as we’re on page 90 here’s another year related trivia challenge ...
    Originally posted by seand View Post
    ... but for Alex’s sake if nothing else I’m gonna backtrack to 91-2, and my last live memory of the European Cup ...
    If you need to blame it on me I'm fine with that - but don't fight it, brother. Dive right in. You're a natural (and if that scares you straight - makes you run for the hills - well, I'm still repaying you for those lovely Oriel Park reminiscences).

    I've never seen Honved. Jealous. And yer damn right they're the real deal. Glamour incarnate. They're up there with Spartak Moscow, Olympiacos, Real Betis and Besiktas as one of the few clubs never to have made a European final who I'd still travel a long way to see (Hungary even).



    Christ, I used to write magazine articles and books about European football - just so I could chat to folk about their experiences of European nights. The moment WSC stopped the feedback threads under their web pieces I subconsciously felt less impetus to get pieces up there. (conversely, the reason I never previously got involved on the forums was because I knew I'd end up like this ... unable to let it go and write something more "formal") I miss geobra's patter so much it's painful. That man knows his European football.

    Get raiding those bloody archives, Sean and get scanning - you might just save an old man's life ...
    Last edited by Alex Anderson; 13-03-2018, 10:51. Reason: I need to see MTK and Ujpest first though. Saw Ferencvaros at Murrayfield.

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      Originally posted by ad hoc View Post
      (But please let's just stick to European competitions or this thread, already spiralling out of orbit, will start heading for the far reaches of our solar system)
      I'd never want to go back to the days when we had barely three live games on the telly each season and you'd be lucky if one was a European club fixture. But there's definitely a near complete lack of "mystery" around continental football now. Our continent, that is (though Brexit still means Brexit).

      These days I get a kinda Proustian flashback to the exoticism of seeing Iron Curtain clubs on my telly - Christ, even French and Spanish clubs - only when flicking through the channels and occasionally glimpsing a bit of A-League - even some MLS - or reading about African or Asian clubs. The other-worldliness of it is intriguing, if not perhaps the standard of football.

      Don't want to go back to the bad old days - Berlin Wall, smoking in pubs and Morecombe and Wise getting 30M viewers. And I do want this thread to be all about Europe's prmier club tournament. But it's sobering to think that St Etienne at Hampden used to genuinely feel like something had landed from a different Solar System. Now it would have landed from BT Sport's Ligue 1 coverage.
      Last edited by Alex Anderson; 09-03-2018, 13:48. Reason: I'll stop now.

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        Originally posted by Alex Anderson View Post
        I'd never want to go back to the days when we had barely three live games on the telly each season and you'd be lucky if one was a European club fixture. But there's definitely a near complete lack of "mystery" around continental football now. Our continent, that is (though Brexit still means Brexit).

        These days I get a kinda Proustian flashback to the exoticism of seeing Iron Curtain clubs on my telly - Christ, even French and Spanish clubs - only when flicking through the channels and occasionally glimpsing a bit of A-League - even some MLS - or reading about African or Asian clubs. The other-worldliness of it is intriguing, if not perhaps the standard of football.

        Don't want to go back to the bad old days - Berlin Wall, smoking in pubs and Morecombe and Wise getting 30M viewers. And I do want this thread to be all about Europe's prmier club tournament. But it's sobering to think that St Etienne at Hampden used to genuinely feel like something had landed from a different Solar System. Now it would have landed from BT Sport's Ligue 1 coverage.
        Ah the days when eastern European teams were termed 'crack' and viewed with suspicion - they may be the Army team but the Army just let them play football all week, dontcha know! And any yellow card given to a player in a team from south of the Alps was an example of 'fiery Latin temperament'. Commentators being afraid to tackle 'Moenchengladbach' and settling for calling them 'Borussia'. Teams being 'the part timers of...' Being allowed to stay up to watch Sportsnight during half term. Having to stay up even later because boxing from York Hall, Bethnal Green was on first. Seeing the goals from Wednesday night games for the first time on Football Focus because the comms weren't good enough to have them available in time for Sportsnight. Wondering why there was never any correlation between the places names in football and those you saw on Jeux Sans Frontieries. Crackly audio. Athletics tracks round football pitches. Balls being sucked into nets. Any loss by an English club being explainable only by the ref being corrupt. Simpler times.

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          Ah Alex, yer right, I’ve used you as a crutch for my desire to wax nonsensical about Eurofoot. I’m gonna have to throw off the shackles and embrace it. Perhaps I’ll dig out my recent 3,000 word epic on a trip to Iceland. The country that is- 3,000 words on a trip to the frozen food store would be a touch arcane even for this thread. (BB&F could probably carry it off though.) You want glamour? How about Fimleikafélag Hafnarfjarđar at the Kaplakriki?

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            Should be too early in the day for porn, Seand but - my god - that sounds bloody irresistible to me.

            3,000 words? That's an intro, surely ...

            BRING. IT. ON.

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              Originally posted by Walt Flanagans Dog View Post
              Ah the days when eastern European teams were termed 'crack' and viewed with suspicion - they may be the Army team but the Army just let them play football all week, dontcha know! And any yellow card given to a player in a team from south of the Alps was an example of 'fiery Latin temperament'. Commentators being afraid to tackle 'Moenchengladbach' and settling for calling them 'Borussia'. Teams being 'the part timers of...' Being allowed to stay up to watch Sportsnight during half term. Having to stay up even later because boxing from York Hall, Bethnal Green was on first. Seeing the goals from Wednesday night games for the first time on Football Focus because the comms weren't good enough to have them available in time for Sportsnight. Wondering why there was never any correlation between the places names in football and those you saw on Jeux Sans Frontieries. Crackly audio. Athletics tracks round football pitches. Balls being sucked into nets. Any loss by an English club being explainable only by the ref being corrupt. Simpler times.
              Hold that result, seand. Our ramblings are now irrelevant. This is the post ... this is the one ...

              The boxing. God, Walt - yeah. The fucking boxing. Harry Carpenter. Praying he wouldn't say the words "but first ..." coz you knew that meant IFK at HSV in the second leg of the UEFA Cup final wouldn't be on til past midnight.

              The crackly audio. God, yes. When Red Star scored that late equaliser v Bayern in the 91 European Cup semi-final I thought someone was dragging a nail down the inside of the speaker on our telly.

              But one of the greatest experiences of my life was finally getting to Prague, stepping inside The Dimple and discovering it wasn't the satellite link that made it look that small and foggy when Bohemka hosted Dundee United in the early 80s ... it looked like that in the flesh too.

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                Page 94. Oh glorious. I love it when you discover on a Friday that your work's already done and you can knock-off early ...

                Originally posted by Alex Anderson View Post
                ... (4) I'm talking most dominant performance - best win. And, of course, I mean most dominant performance in a game against top quality opposition; domination of a game which wasn't supposed to be easy in any way. The 1994 Champions Leeague final was never the most classically exciting game, ala Italy v Brazil at the Sarria in 82 (which I also watched live and still hate - I was in love with that Brazil team) or that 2005 final in Istanbul, or even the two seriously intense all-Madrid finals... but I'm focussing here on just the sheer brilliance of the display by one side. Barcelona in 2011 v Man U came close. But not really. It's Milan 94 for me.


                Originally posted by Alex Anderson View Post
                ... I've watched the BBC video of the Real v Eintracht final and it is glorious. But it's just too much before my time. It's the football equivalent of Bogey and Bergmann in Cassablanca - you can't fail to love the artistry but so much of it seems hackneyed now. You needed to be there (at Hampden or the local flicks) or watch it live on't telly for it to have really got under your skin.

                Germany's semi-final destruction of Brazil at the last World Cup was even more earth-shattering than what Milan did to Barca - and was much more of a cataclysm for the losing side's institutional idea of itself. But Brazil had as many disadvantages going into that game as Milan did going into the 94 final and, as I said above, it's the whole context - as well as the relentlessly, ruthlessly, mesmeric and artistic footballing assault of Boban, Donadoni, Massaro, Desailly, Savicevic and co - which gives that Milan battering of Barca the decisive extra lustre for me.


                Originally posted by Alex Anderson View Post
                Worth bearing in mind, finals at that time were largely shite. What Milan did to Barca in Athens had two or three "out of the blue" factors going for it. As well as those I've already mentioned, the final poetic brilliance was them winning that season's Serie A by scoring barely more than one goal per game before losing their central defensive pillars for a European final against a team with Romario and Stoichkov up front and the living embodiment of Total Football in the technical area ... and then playing them off the fucking park. Lots of clubs have assembled great teams. But this showed a depth and an adaptability of epic proportions. This was the Milan apotheosis - this was their 7-3 v Eintracht at Hampden.


                Originally posted by Alex Anderson View Post
                When Savicevic makes it 3-0, Barca know the game is up and start trying to kick the shit out Milan. This is partly why the Newspeak, post-Tiki-taka appointing of Barca as purer-than-pure martyred purists is such a hysterically malevolent insult to our intelligence it makes you less able to enjoy their Messi-inspired genius. Barca sides from at least the 70s, up to Guardiola becoming manager, were as physically vicious as they were skilful. Koeman liked giving an elbow to the face and in 94 he is on the pitch, with Guardiola - key components of the side which kops four bookings from shitbag ref Philip Don immediately after they go 3-0 down.

                But instead of kicking back, instead of retaliating with fouls, Milan up the football a gear. Their play immediately preceding and during Desailly making it 4-0 in the 58th minute isn't so much creatively beautiful as monstrously driven and wholly unstoppable. They're everywhere and they're rabid. They will go through walls for that ball and when they get it you will have to kill them to get it off them. It's so collectively focussed it's more frightening than any elbow to the mandible or boot to the scrotum. It's the apex - not of a football lesson but a sporting slaughter.


                Originally posted by Alex Anderson View Post
                The last Barca booking is in the 58th minute. They've realised all they can do is make things worse. Koeman, Guardiola, Stoichkov, Romario, Bakero ... they have to give in, for their own good. They need to keep playing the football which will always be inferior to this opponent's, lest they concede double figures. If they kick these guys they'll just score more on them.

                Never seen anything like it.
                Last edited by Alex Anderson; 09-03-2018, 16:28. Reason: Saw them at the San Siro that November. Close as I'll ever get to a pilgrimage.

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                  Seán's Dundalk contributions here feeling very real for me as I'm typing this from the press box at Oriel Park ahead of Dundalk v Cork City.

                  Had a nice browse of the historical pics earlier, including the 1988 double team with goalkeeper Alan O'Neill wearing a Sweden shirt.

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                    Hi Denis, well did you enjoy the 1-0 thrashing? ;-) That’s the thing about European football, in Ireland and similar countries. It’s easy to get cynical about the money making machine of the Champions League but European football is utterly treasured all round Europe for the opportunity and excitement it brings. Over the years a small club (by European standards) like Dundalk has played Liverpool, Ajax, PSV, Celtic, Rangers, Red Star, Spurs, etc, not to mention the glorious novelty and glamour of Honved, Hajduk, Zenit, Vasas, AZ, Levski, Utrecht and Legia and good old toe-to-toe battles with Fram, Linfield, Hibs Malta, Jeunesse, BATE, Maccabi and Wettingen.

                    And trust you to spot Alan O’Neill playing for Dundalk wearing in a Sweden national in the early 90s! If memory serves me it was a souvenir from the 88 Olympics qualifiers (where a League of Ireland XI represented Ireland), I’m not sure if he initially wore it because there was a clash, but I think it became a ‘lucky’ jersey which he then wore regularly in matches for Dundalk. Obviously back in the day we weren’t too worried about sponsors etc, but I reckon keepers were more likely to wear plain, generic tops even up to that time, so nobody took much notice.

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                      I looked from other side of Iron Curtain. November 2nd, 1983 was first but not last time football broke my heart - Villa Park, lights, sound, no athletic track, Villa scores in the very beginning, but Cherenkov scores at first and last minute of second half.

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                        Alex, another feature of that Milan-Barca 94 final is how every Milan player reaches the peak of his game. How often in the history of football do you get half a dozen or so world-class players all peaking harmoniously on the same team in a final? Probably fewer than five or six times ever.

                        Spain's demolition of Italy in Euro 2012 might come close but it's a false comparison because international finals are the end of a grueling 7 games in a month. Barcelona had ages to prepare for Milan with just that one objective, but lost all the head to head match-ups on the pitch, IIRC.

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                          Aye, Satchmo - agreed. I also thought Spain's demolition of Italy in the Ukraine was as close as I'd seen anyone come to matching Milan's 1994 peaking in a major final. And Milan absolutely won all the individual battles in Athens. But it was the fact some of those battles were also being won by players who were out of position, experience or match fitness. Milan's defence consisted of an ageing reserve who'd hardly played all season - Filippo Galli - a left back at centre-half in Paolo Maldini and a young right-back, Cristian Panucci, at the end of his first season at the San Siro, moved over to left-back.

                          A makeshift defence, of a team which had relied on defence all season, up against the greatest attacking threat in Europe. So Milan just attacked Barca instead. Relentlessly. It was a display of flexibility, adaptability and no so much depth of squad as the depth of the players in that squad.
                          Last edited by Alex Anderson; 12-03-2018, 20:13. Reason: And Lentini and Van Basten were out injured too but that's stretching it. Three foreigner rule already meant Papin and Brian Laudrup were dropped. As was Michael (for Barca)

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                            Originally posted by gintsr View Post
                            I looked from other side of Iron Curtain. November 2nd, 1983 was first but not last time football broke my heart - Villa Park, lights, sound, no athletic track, Villa scores in the very beginning, but Cherenkov scores at first and last minute of second half.




                            Narodnaya komanda winning at Villa Park - a few decades after they helped get European competition up and running with their game at Molineux. Gorgeous.

                            I stood on the Holte End for a Villa League match and saw the last ever Cup-Winners' Cup final there. One of the great, beautiful stadiums - and never more sexy than on a European night, under the lights.

                            I remember the first leg. Great Villa away strip and a great goal from Mark Walters, who I had the pleasure of watching in the flesh for a few years, playing in Europe for Rangers.

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                              Have we done grounds hosting multiple clubs for home legs? Here's a contender for Most European Cup ties staged (we're not counting finals, so Wembley can shut it):

                              Windsor Park, Belfast.

                              1957: Norn Iron enters competition. Glenavon have the honour.
                              1958: Ards (Just Fontaine scored 4, having walked across the sea from Sweden)
                              1959: Linfield ("can we have our ground back please?")
                              1960: Not Glenavon (sorry, they didn't play, Karl Marx's lads got a walkover)
                              1961: Berlin Wall goes up
                              Also 1961: Linfield (didn't play, another visa row, those pesky East Germans again)
                              1962: Linfield
                              1963: Distillery (versus Eusebio)
                              1964: Glentoran ... but hold on! NOT AT WINDSOR PARK. Yes, it took them 7 years to find somewhere else.

                              Crusaders used it later, and maybe there were others, but I stopped checking once we got into the mad expansion years.

                              Any advances on five?

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                                Possibly the Ta'Qali Stadium in Malta?

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                                  Love this theme, tee rex. A few years back I did a bit on how individual teams could host European football on several different grounds - but had never thought of it in terms of the ground hosting lots of clubs.

                                  Some of the troops from this thread did though, and we concluded, like Southport Zeb above, that the national stadiums in the likes of Malta, Luxembourg, Cyprus, the Faeroes and Andorra - which already host multiple clubs domestically - would probably have hosted too many to count. (I.e., I was too lazy to go through the records and count)

                                  But no-one's tackled it in terms of the European Cup/UCL at one ground. Still think Windsor Park will get a run for its money from Malta & Co but you've got the proof so it's winning so far.

                                  Wembley, of course, has now had Spurs and Arsenal in pre-final stages. Nothing on Windsor, yes, but when Chelsea want to do their new hotel ground that might make three ... and if Davie Moyes continues taking West Ham soaring upwards and their fans continue getting them banned from the Olympic stadium ...

                                  Incidentally, Juventus and Real Madrid have now played each other at seven different stadiums in European competition. Just saying.
                                  Last edited by Alex Anderson; 13-03-2018, 11:55. Reason: Because if someone has provided an argument I can't beat I change the subject. I'm a cunt like that.

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                                    I'd say there's more than 5 at Windsor over the years, and more than 5 elsewhere. TaQali is a good call. Plenty of small countries have one or two half decent stadiums that host big games. In Ireland now the only club ground capable of hosting third qualifying round games or group games is Tallaght Stadium. Shamrock Rovers are home there, Dundalk and St Pats have had to host there too. For years it was Dalymount Park that hosted all the big games- internationals finals semis and even big league games and friendlies. It had floodlights decades before most of the rest of the league, so midweek Euro games often moved there. Dalymount has certainly hosted these in Europe : Bohemians, Shamrock Rovers, Drumcondra, Dundalk, Shelbourne, Sporting Fingal , Waterford , St Pats

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                                      I missed Drogheda in my Euro at Dalymount list. That's 9 clubs at home at Dalymount, 7 in C1

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                                        If we're just talking European competition in general then Wembley also hosted the London XI (V Frankfurt's XI) in 1955-58 Fairs Cup ... and the London XI itself played its other three games at White Hart lane, Highbury and Stamford bridge so there you have a team playing four home games in its entire existence, over the course of three years, all in Europe and each at different stadiums.

                                        But if we're concentrating on indivisual stadiums, the Prater/Ernst Happel in Vienna and the Nep Stadium/Ferenc Puskas in Budapest have also hosted half of their respective countries' clubs in Europe.

                                        But when it comes to just the European Cup/UCL, as tee rex originally cited, I still can't come up with conclusive proof of somewhere that beats Windsor Park.

                                        EDIT - but seand just has. Dalymount Park is now the place to beat.
                                        Last edited by Alex Anderson; 13-03-2018, 12:14. Reason: you've got to watch him - he's quick.

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                                          Originally posted by seand View Post
                                          I'd say there's more than 5 at Windsor over the years, and more than 5 elsewhere. TaQali is a good call. Plenty of small countries have one or two half decent stadiums that host big games.
                                          The Qemal Stafa in Tirana will be a good example of this, it's not easy to get them all in one place but can see maybe 6-7 different teams having played European home games there.

                                          Wrexham presumably could clock up a few?

                                          Not all EC/CL in either case of course.

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                                            Originally posted by tee rex View Post
                                            1958: Ards (Just Fontaine scored 4, having walked across the sea from Sweden)
                                            Love this line.

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                                              Two things that Windsor has going for it in this competition are the fact that it is still in use and that Northern Irish clubs were relatively early entrants to the European Cup.

                                              Glenavon competed in the 57-58 edition (losing to AGF of Aarhus at Windsor Park). The only real minnow that preceded them is Luxembourg, which had Spora as its representative in the previous year's edition of the tournament.

                                              Ta'Qali opened in 1981, the Rheinpark Stadium (Liechtenstein) in 1998, the current National Stadium in Andorra in 2014, the Qemal Stafa has been demolished, etc.

                                              Windsor's best rival may be the Stade Municipal/Stade Josy Barthel in Luxembourg, which hosted Spora's match against Borussia Dortmund in 1956 and is still in use (after being rebuilt in 1990), though one needs to account for the fact that teams from outside of Luxembourg City tended to use their own grounds in the years before UEFA stadium criteria were a thing (e.g., Jeunesse d'Esch played IFK Göteborg in Esch in 1958).
                                              Last edited by ursus arctos; 13-03-2018, 12:22.

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                                                The National Stadium in Bucharest has only been open since 2011 and it's already (I think) hosted European matches for 3 or 4 different teams plus the UEFA Cup final

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                                                  Nepstadion / Puskas Ferenc Stadion also hosted 7 clubs in C1 (Ferencvaros MTK Honved Vasas Ujpest Zala Debrecen )

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                                                    Just saw the Dalymount figures:

                                                    Here is Stade Municipal/Stade Josy Barthel in Luxembourg (first appearance for each club only, C1 only)

                                                    Spora Luxembourg 1956 (Borussia Dortmund)
                                                    Union Luxembourg 1962 (Milan)
                                                    Aris 1964 (Benfica)
                                                    Avenir Beggen 1969 (Milan)
                                                    Jeunesse d'Esch 1985 (Juventus)

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