A Tournament Frozen in Time

Steven Scragg

Description

The Wonderful Randomness of the European Cup Winners'' Cup is a homage to the awkward sibling of the European Champions'' Cup (for high achievers) and the UEFA Cup (where the cool kids hung out). Domestic cup success was what gained entry to this hipster tournament, attracting a richer diversity of competitor than its more celebrated counterparts.

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing
• Date de parution: 23 septembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785316104
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2019
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Steven Scragg, 2019
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 978-1-78531-538-1
eBook ISBN 978-1-78531-610-4
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Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. 1980/81
2. Bloc Party
3. Full of Eastern Promise
4. A Catalan Love Affair and Other Iberian Adventures
5. Pre-Nouveau Riche Glories and a Very British Domination
6. Forza Italia
7. Robbie and the Purple and Whites, Plus Other Adventures Through the Low Countries
8. Everton 1985
9. West Germanic Tendencies and French Fancies
10. Welsh Endeavours
11. Ferguson at the Double
12. The Last Stretch, a Speculative Effort and the Final Final
Afterword
Dedication
For my lovely mum, whom we lost on 5 October 2018. Had it not been for you allowing me to misspend so much of my youth on football, I d never have become the unashamed football hipster I am today. Also, for my dad, who gifted me my team of choice, for Alison and David who had to put up with the constantly obstructive Subbuteo pitch throughout childhood, and for Bev, Sam, Elsie and Florence who are my world.
Acknowledgements
THIS BOOK was born from a podcast. Around a year ago, for These Football Times , we put together a series of podcasts on the glory days of the European Cup, the UEFA Cup and the European Cup Winners Cup.
The Cup Winners Cup podcast particularly hit the spot for listeners and as a throwaway remark my These Football Times comrade, Will Sharp, implored me to put a Cup Winners Cup book on my to-do list. Well Will, here it is. You really do have a lot to answer for.
These Football Times has been an unmitigated joy to be a part of. A collection of like-minded souls who embrace the history of the game, finding untold stories or offering a different angle on well-known topics. This book wouldn t have been possible without me being a part of this wonderful environment, provided to us by its creator, the brilliant Omar Saleem.
Being encouraged and cheered on by the likes of Stuart Horsfield, Gary Thacker, Dan Williamson, Chris Weir, Jon Townsend, Andrew Flint and Matt Evans has been invaluable in seeing me get this book over the finish line. Another motivation was to fulfil a prophesy of one of our collective that we sadly lost in 2018: the legendary Jim Hart. Jim believed in his team of writers and offered nothing but positivity. All he ever wanted to do was absorb your passion for football. He remains much missed.
In putting this book together, I have been overwhelmed by the support and help of Hyder Jaw d. Those endless evenings of talking the football of the past has stirred the mind and the soul, while nobody has shouted the concept of this book as long and loudly as the fantastic Graham Denton and Jeff Goulding.
I have also been supported in every single word I ve ever written by Hayley Coleman, my most spectacular of friends, plus Andy and Carrie Knott. Each of these are people I am a better person for knowing.
Mostly, however, I must thank my wife, Bev, for insisting I start writing again in late 2013, after what was an almost decade-long hiatus, and our children, Sam, Elsie and Florence for accepting they couldn t play on the laptop, because I was on a roll with Dinamo Tbilisi.
I could not have done this without the presence of each one of you. Many thanks.
Introduction
FOR ANYBODY aged above 40 (although it could as easily be a sensory experience that belongs to me alone, I suppose), the European Cup Winners Cup can t fail to evoke, from the misty ether of your mind, the theme tune to Sportsnight - the BBC s long-running, but generation-since defunct, midweek sports televisual digest.
If that has struck a nerve, then I dare imagine that very theme tune will be circulating in your head right now?
Glorious, isn t it?
Even ITV s rival version of Sportsnight , Midweek Sports Special , could boast an infectious opening musical salvo. Along with its BBC counterpart, it retrospectively speaks of a plate of cheese on toast in front of the TV as well as the bonus of being allowed to stay up late on a school night to watch Ray Clemence fumble a speculative effort from the Barcelona defender Antonio Olmo into his own goal when on duty for Tottenham Hotspur in the first leg of the 1982 semi-final. Of course, the Cup Winners Cup wasn t always as glamorous as Spurs vs Barcelona and, even when it was that glamorous, it was often tinged with a dark edge. That game at White Hart Lane in April 1982 was one which most neutrals had expected to be infused with skill and beauty. However, it turned out to be one enveloped in spite, violence and rancour, as Barcelona opted to kick their opponents almost as much as the football, panicked as they were by the prospect of not reaching a final that was to be hosted at the Camp Nou five weeks later.
No, the Cup Winners Cup was at its very best when it was being oblique. A beautiful randomness that meant Castilla, the Real Madrid reserve side, qualified for the 1980/81 contesting of the tournament having reached and lost the 1980 Copa del Rey Final, in which they had faced the recently crowned La Liga champions, Real Madrid.
The 1980/81 Cup Winners Cup offered peak randomness. Upon the front cover of this book is a photo from the 1981 final. The photo shows everything you could possibly want, visually. A huge electronic scoreboard, which was magnificently of its era, set with the scoreline at 1-0 a mere four minutes beyond Carl Zeiss Jena having opened the scoring. The game stands at 1-1, however, and Vladimir Gutsaev is wheeling away, arms raised in celebration at having plundered the equalising goal for Dinamo Tbilisi. Two of his team-mates are angling their bodies towards the direction of Gutsaev s running trajectory, intending to ambush their hero of the moment.
Add into this evocative landscape the resting ball itself, an iconic Adidas Tango, two beautifully simplistic kits, the players in those Carl Zeiss Jena colours with hands on hips in resignation at the unfolding events. And then there is the fact that it is all being played out in a sparsely populated stadium, in West Germany, where only a reputed 4,750 spectators have assembled, making it one of the smallest attendances ever for a major European final.
It all speaks to me of a beautifully desolate utopia, a million miles away from the obscene amounts of money being paid for television rights, of brand recognition, of players who are detached from the mundanities of everyday life as they disembark from a space-age coach while cocooned from the outside world by their oversized headphones that aren t even plugged in to anything. The photo on the front of this book is a million miles away from Zadok the Priest and being implored to favour Continental over all other tyre manufacturers.
The 1980/81 tournament encompasses the first chapter of this book. There is no better or more eccentric season to start with. Yet it isn t alone in its random nature and eccentricities: just as, by the traditional way in, there is no rhyme or reason behind a domestic cup success, sometimes neither was there anything particularly consistent about the Cup Winners Cup. There were no usual suspects thanks to that random-generator system of qualification.
With all of that in mind, this book is designed to be a homage to the awkward sibling of the European Cup and the UEFA Cup. This book is designed to honour a simpler time, when the playing field of European football was far more level and, in the case of the Cup Winners Cup, was sometimes a playing field which was tilted in favour of the minnows rather than the elite.
All three major European club competitions had very distinct personalities, almost like three markedly different children. While the European Cup was for the high achievers and the UEFA Cup was where the cool kids often hung out, the Cup Winners Cup threw out its own uniquely random and out-of-proportion shapes. If it were a reveller on the dance floor on a Friday night, it would have been that one you stand back from and inwardly admire, as others leave an unspoken exclusion zone around them, out of concern for getting hit by a stray arm or a saccadic kick from the oblivious dancer in question.
The Cup Winners Cup was different from the very start. Only ten teams took part in the inaugural tournament during the 1960/61 season and, despite owning the name European Cup Winners Cup , only 60 per cent of the field had won their domestic cup competition in 1960.
In the case of Ferencv ros, there hadn t even been a domestic cup competition in Hungary in 1960. They were present in that first playing of the Cup Winners Cup partially due to winning the startlingly elongated 1955-58 version of the Magyar Kupa - a tournament that would remain in stasis until it resumed once more in 1964 - and in part due to finishing runner-up to Vasas SC in the 1960/61 Nemzeti Bajnoks g I, the top division of Hungarian club football.
Even when it came to the very first game to be played in the Cup Winners Cup, a preliminary-round tie between Vorw rts Berlin of East Germany and Rud Hvezda Brno of Czechoslovakia, neither side were the holders of their respective nation s domestic cup competition. Vorw rts had been