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Men’s football 50th anniversary of 1970 European Cup semi-final

“ENTERING the stadium in subdued light, you have a steep climb up almost vertical steps and, as you see over the rim of the terracing, the floodlights light up a bowl of green and white. I remember that image more than any other. You would blink in amazement. Awesome.”

50 years ago today, as the fate of the Apollo 13 space mission hung in the balance, 24-year-old Celtic fan Martin Brayford from Stevenston, Ayrshire, made his way to Hampden Park. 

Having missed the chance to watch his team win the European Cup in 1967, he wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to see them reach another final. That night in Glasgow, the Scottish and English champions faced off in a European Cup semi-final, the second leg of the competition’s first-ever “battle of Britain.” 

The Wednesday-night game would be played in front of a record attendance for a European club competition match, a figure unlikely to ever be surpassed.

The previous season Leeds United had won their first league title and had been chasing an unprecedented treble in England. However, the need to finish the domestic season before May to assist the national team’s preparations for the defence of the World Cup in Mexico had compressed the calendar and stretched manager Don Revie’s team to their limits. 

Everton had taken their First Division title, and compelled by the Football League to play a match at West Ham the day after the first leg against Celtic, right-back Paul Reaney broke his leg. The decisive second-leg match with Celtic would be Leeds’ 60th of the season.

Britain’s first European Cup winners in 1967, Celtic had already secured their fifth successive Scottish league title under Jock Stein. They had won the first leg at Elland Road after holding on to a lead given to them by George Connelly’s deflected strike after 40 seconds. 

On the Saturday four days before the second leg, they had surprisingly lost the Scottish Cup Final 3-1 to Aberdeen in front of 108,434 spectators at Hampden. The same day, in front of 100,000 people on a heavy Wembley pitch ploughed up by the Horse of the Year Show, Leeds added to their own fixture backlog by drawing the FA Cup Final 2-2 with Chelsea.

No team had ever recovered to win a European Cup semi-final after losing the home leg, a fact that did not concern Revie. “We won’t let that worry us because we are history-makers, we are record-breakers. And if ever a record can go, then this one can.” 

He declared that he “would give a year’s wages to beat Celtic,” promising to add the sum to the players’ pool if they progressed to the final.

To maximise their home advantage, Celtic manager Stein had switched the tie from their 80,000 Parkhead ground to the Scottish national stadium. According to Brayford, “Jock Stein knew that he could fill Parkhead twice over, and he was right. Given the chance to take the tie to Hampden he believed it would intimidate Leeds. Interest in the game grew beyond Celtic fans because of the England v Scotland factor, very significant then for Scots fans.”

Leeds had failed to shift their allocation of 10,000 tickets for the match, returning more than half — 4,000 Celtic fans queued up at Parkhead on the Monday to buy the unsold tickets only to be told they had not been returned. They eventually went on sale at 7pm the day before the game.

The Yorkshire Post reported that “Leeds United supporters were besieged in Glasgow yesterday by Celtic fans wanting tickets for the match.” Cars queued for up to three miles around the stadium and outside the ground 12-shilling (60p) terrace tickets were being sold by touts for £1. 

In contrast to the international matches and cup finals normally staged at Hampden, it was a totally different experience for “home” fans like Brayford. “It was more relaxed and enjoyable. Usually you are in a very controlled environment marshalled by police and Glasgow by-laws where you park and walk: here the atmosphere outside was of Celtic ‘might’.”

The 4,500 Leeds fans were part of a staggering attendance of 136,505, surpassing the Uefa club-competition record of 127,621 set a decade earlier at the same stadium for the 1960 European Cup Final between Real Madrid and Eintracht Frankfurt. 

Inside, the Glasgow Herald reported that hundreds “were unable to find a vantage point from which they could see the play.” Watching the game was not the only concern for fans, as Brayford recalls: “Toilets did exist but most fans didn’t choose to stand in six inches of urine and rainwater, so they rather stood against the back wall of the terracing to relieve themselves.” 

In spite of all this, only seven people were detained by police within the stadium out of a total of 60 arrests on the night.

With Norman Hunter returning from injury, Revie believed he could quell the threat of Celtic winger Jimmy “Jinky” Johnstone, who he thought was no longer willing to take on more than one defender. “Every time he gets it then I want you, Norman, tucked in at the back behind Terry Cooper so [Johnstone] knocks it off square, then we can pick the people up with less ability.”

Stein told his players: “Revie’s shitting himself, I’ve never seen that man as nervous in all my life. He’s as white as a sheet. If he’s like that, what do you think his players are like? They are there for the taking, believe you me.” 

Remembering how John “Yogi” Hughes had unsettled Leeds centre-back Jack Charlton in a match between the Scottish and English leagues, scoring two goals, Stein recalled him in favour of forward Willie Wallace. Dropped from the 1967 final, Hughes was now promised by Stein that if he helped them win now, he would definitely play this time in the final, to be held at the San Siro in Milan.

Celtic roared into attack from the outset, forcing a succession of corners, but were stunned after 14 minutes when, out of nothing, Leeds levelled the tie. 

Picking up an interception from Hunter, Leeds midfielder and boyhood Celtic fan Billy Bremner strode forward and struck a blistering swerving shot into the top right angle of Evan Williams’s goal. 

“The ground was enveloped in silence,” recalls Brayford, “not a sound.”

The crowd froze. Then, moments later as the game restarted, there were deafening defiant roars of “CELTIC, CELTIC” building to a spine-tingling crescendo. Bremner later said that “it was the type of noise that made many an Englishman freeze in internationals.”

In the last season before the introduction of the penalty shoot-out, the match was heading for a possible replay at Hillsborough but Celtic continued to dominate the game. Leeds goalkeeper Gary Sprake was beaten twice but saved each time by his defenders as first Paul Madeley cleared a shot off the line from Bobby Lennox before Terry Cooper blocked a shot from Tommy Gemmell as Leeds clung on until the break.

The English champions’ resistance was finally broken in the 47th minute. Bertie Auld collected a short corner from David Hay and crossed, Hughes beat Jack Charlton to the ball to head Celtic level in the game and ahead in the tie. 

Brayford remembers “jumping up and down, hugging and kissing strangers, just conscious of the ball being in the net but not knowing how it got there. We had been singing ‘feed the bear, feed the bear,’ and [Yogi] scored!”

A minute later, Sprake was carried off after a collision with Hughes and his replacement, David Harvey, was soon picking the ball out of his own net. Released down the right wing with Hunter caught upfield, Johnstone turned England left-back Cooper inside out and laid the ball off for Bobby Murdoch to rifle home the winning goal.

Celtic full-back Gemmell recounted: “We heard Norman Hunter, Leeds’ infamous hard man, shouting blatantly to Cooper to chop [Johnstone] down, and Cooper shouting back at him to come and try it himself if he wanted. He did. They swapped positions, and Jimmy just did the same to him and ran him ragged.”

Cooper later admitted: “I would love to have kicked Jinky, but I couldn’t get near him! I still have nightmares. I reckon I had good anticipation, but I could do nothing to take the ball off Johnstone.” 

In his autobiography, Hunter described that Celtic team as “probably the best I played against.”

Celtic became the first British side to reach two European Cup finals. The players went on a lap of honour and the fans continued to cheer for 20 minutes after they had left the pitch. 

Midfielder Auld described the night as “incredibly emotional. We seemed to grow by the minute after they had taken the lead and to prove, home and away, that we were better than a much-vaunted Leeds was a lovely feeling.”

Two weeks later, Leeds lost the FA Cup final replay to Chelsea in extra time and finished the season without a major trophy. 

On May 6, with Johnstone often double-marked, Celtic also lost the European Cup final after extra time to Dutch side Feyenoord at the San Siro despite taking a first-half lead through Gemmell. 

“The players had a dispute before the game about bonuses in the event of winning,” says Brayford. “I feel on that occasion the fans and players took winning for granted and paid the price.” 

Leeds eventually reached the final in 1975, losing to Bayern Munich, Celtic have never been as close again.

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