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Overview
The 1967 World Club Championship decider between Celtic and Racing Club of Buenos Aires was one of the most violent and controversial matches of all time. Three Celtic players and two from Racing Club were sent off in total. The game descended into farce, with the Uruguayan police forced to take to the pitch with batons to separate brawling players. Pictures released of the match met with shock worldwide, but while an embarrassed Jock Stein fined his players, those from Racing Club were rewarded with a new car each! This book tells the story of a real clash of two very different footballing cultures.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780750956765 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The History Press |
| Publication date: | 04/23/2008 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 160 |
| File size: | 11 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Battle Of Montevideo
Celtic Under Siege
By Brian Belton
The History Press
Copyright © 2013 Brian BeltonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7509-5676-5
CHAPTER 1
CONTINENTAL CHAMPIONS
'We can find common qualities and common values that have made Britain the country it is. Our belief in tolerance and liberty which shines through British history. Our commitment to fairness, fair play and civic duty' – Gordon Brown MP, born Govan, Glasgow
In the Estadio Nacional in Lisbon, on 25 May 1967, Celtic became the first British team (and the first outside Spain, Italy or Portugal) to win the European Cup, beating favourites Internazionale 2-1. Ronnie Simpson was an inspirational part of this Celtic side that had won the domestic league title in 1966 and would hold on to it for the rest of his time at the club. There was also success in the Scottish Cup and League Cup, but the crowning glory was the defeat of the ultra-defensive Italian side. The Lisbon Lions, as Simpson and his teammates would forever be known, had posted an historical landmark for Scottish and British football, but Simpson seemed to see it as just another day at the office: 'When we got to the European Cup final in 1967, it was just something that happened. The games we played in the run-up to the match with Internazionale were just regular games for us. When we got to the final, it was just another match.'
The match was a contest of two styles: Scottish attack v. Italian catenaccio resistance. For almost an hour, Inter's massed ranks held Celtic off and protected their one-goal lead, until Tommy Gemmell scored from distance. With seven minutes left, Steve Chalmers hit the winner through a crowded penalty box. It was his team's 200th goal in their 64th game of the season. Seven thousand travelling Celts celebrated, acclaiming the victory of a homegrown side, all born within a thirty-mile radius of Glasgow city centre.
However, Simpson had little to do during the match. The Italian penalty that was converted early in the game was a goal no keeper could have reasonably hoped to prevent. He was to recall: 'Mazzola put the ball to my right and there was nothing I could do about it.'
So, Simpson spent much of what remained of the event watching as his teammates hunted for the equalising goal. He was asked to make just a couple of saves and one of his most vivid memories of that afternoon was the moment, as the final whistle blew, Bobby Lennox came running towards him. Simpson had his arms open for what he took to be the coming embrace but the Celtic forward tore by the keeper. He was running to retrieve Simpson's cap from the back of the net as that was where he, Simpson and other players stored their dentures during matches. Simpson was to recount that he kept them there in case he had to meet someone important after the game. Bobby's first thought was that he would lose his teeth to souvenir hunters as fans had poured onto the pitch. However, Lennox was later to insist that he only had one or two whereas Simpson had a full set. According to Jim Craig, Ronnie's false gnashers had been knocked down his throat while at Newcastle, causing his air passages to be blocked. In reaction to this nasty incident, Simpson had sworn he would never again keep his teeth in while involved in a game. However, in 1999 Jimmy Johnstone shared a theory about Simpson and his molars. He claimed he was exceptionally good on his right side because: 'He kept his teeth in his bunnet there! Nothing ever got by him there!'
Simpson was the antithesis of the Internazionale players he faced in the European Cup final. The Italians were the most expensive team in the game's history and included Luis Suarez, the Spaniard who had cost £214,000 to bring to Milan from Barcelona in 1961. Despite Ronnie's modesty about his part in the game – 'the only worry I had out there was the danger of sunstroke' – when the Italians threatened in the dying minutes of the first half, Simpson produced a masterful piece of goalkeeping. But the vital save came in the third minute when a Mazzola shot hit Simpson on the leg. Lucky? Well maybe, but that leg had to be there! After that, Simpson did next to nothing. However, five minutes from the break Ronnie saved a low, hard dive by Mazzola and made it look comfortable. It was then he performed the famous 'back-heel'. As the deadly striker Capellini pursued a long ball, Simpson rushed off his line and audaciously, about thirty yards out, back-heeled a pass to John Clark with maximum flamboyance. Looking back he confessed, 'It all turned out fine, but if it had gone wrong I have no idea what would have happened.' However, his summary of the match was concise: 'We were all over them and thoroughly deserved to win 2-1.'
Ron's European Cup-winners' medal was added to a fine collection of Scottish winners' decorations. If any confirmation of Simpson's prowess was needed, it came two days before the Scottish league title decider of May 1967 when he succeeded Rangers'John Greig as the Scottish Football Writers' Association Footballer of the Year. He was only the second-ever Celtic player to be honoured in this way.
The European victory qualified the 'Lions of Lisbon' to play for what was then known as the Intercontinental Cup, the World Cup of club football, against the South American champions, Racing Club de Avellaneda.
The Argentinian side had a more protracted route to win the Copa Libertadores de América than Celtic's road to Lisbon. Unlike the European Cup at the time, the journey to victory in its South American equivalent was not one of simple knockout proportions. In all, the Argentines played 20 games to become South American club champions:
[TABLE OMITTED]
FIRST-PLACE PLAY-OFF (SANTIAGO)
18 July: Racing Club 2-1 Universitario
FINAL – FIRST LEG
Date: 15 August 1967
Venue: Mozart y Cuyo, Avellaneda
Referee: Orozco (Peru)
Attendance: 55,000
Racing Club 0-0 Nacional
Cejas 1
Domínguez
Perfumo 2
Manicera
Díaz 3
Em. Alvarez
Martín 4
Ubiña
Mori 5
Montero Castillo
Basile 6
Mujica
Martinoli 7
Espárrago
Rulli 8
Viera
Raffo 9
Celio
Rodríguez 10 Sosa
Maschio 11 Urruzmendi
FINAL – SECOND LEG
Date: 25 August
Venue: Centenario, Montevideo
Referee: Orozco (Peru)
Attendance: 60,000
Nacional 0-0 Racing Club
Domínguez 1
Cejas
Manicera 2
Perfumo
Em. Alvarez 3
Díaz
Ubiña 4
Martín
Montero Castillo 5
Mori
Mujica 6
Basile
Espárrago 7
Cardozo
Viera 8
Rulli
Celio 9
Cárdenas
Sosa 10 Raffo
Urruzmendi 11 Maschio
FINAL – PLAY-OFF
Date: 29 August
Venue: Estadio Nacional, Santiago, Chile
Referee: Pérez Osorio (Paraguay)
Attendance: 50,000
Racing Club 2-1 Nacional
Goals: Cardozo (14),
Viera (79)
Raffo (43)
Cejas 1
Domínguez
Perfumo 2
Manicera
Díaz 3
Em. Alvarez
Martín 4
Ubiña
Mori 5
Montero Castillo
Basile 6
Mujica
Cardozo (Parenti) 7
Urruzmendi
Rulli 8
Viera
Cárdenas 9
Celio
Raffo 10 Espárrago
Maschio 11 Morales (Oyarbide)
In contrast to the laborious route Racing Club had been obliged to take, Celtic played just nine games to become champions of their continent:
FIRST ROUND
First Leg: Celtic 2-0 FC Zurich
Second Leg: FC Zurich 0-3 Celtic
SECOND ROUND
First Leg: FC Nantes 1-3 Celtic
Second Leg: Celtic 3-1 FC Nantes
QUARTER-FINALS
First Leg: FK Vojvodina Novi Sad 1-0 Celtic
Second Leg: Celtic 2-0 FK Vojvodina Novi Sad
SEMI-FINALS
First Leg: Celtic 3-1 Dukla Prague
Second Leg: Dukla Prague 0-0 Celtic
FINAL
Celtic 2-1 Internazionale
(Thanks to José Luis Pierrend, John Beuker and Karel Stokkermans for the above information)
In 1967 the Intercontinental Cup was played for over two legs. The first match was played at Hampden Park on 18 October 1967, where a Billy McNeill goal won it for Celtic. The second game at El Cilindro in Avellaneda ended in a 2-1 victory for the home side. Norberto Santiago Raffo and Juan Carlos Cárdenas scored for Racing; Tommy Gemmell netted for Ceeltic. This meant that a play-off was necessary and it would take place on 4 November in Montevideo, at El Centenario stadium, where Racing Club had held Nacional to a draw in the Copa Libertadores de América final earlier that year. Conversely, Pedro Rocha had scored with sixteen minutes to play as Uruguay beat Argentina 1-0 in February 1967 – thus winning the South American nations championship by a single point from their opponents.
It hadn't taken long to decide where, if necessary, the play-off match would be staged. There was a traditional football enmity between the two adjacent nations of Argentina and Uruguay – the two countries share a boundary of nearly 360 miles – and this was seen to give both teams some solace from the venue; the South American location would provide something of an advantage for Racing Club, but support would go to Celtic. From the initial footballing encounter between these neighbouring rivals in 1902, the relationship between them had become the South American equivalent to the competitive ardour that exists between Scotland and England. The games involving Argentina and Uruguay quickly overtook the great British conflict as the most frequently played international fixture. In 1905 Sir Thomas Lipton (a native of Glasgow's Gorbals) contributed a trophy to be awarded to the winners of matches between Argentina and Uruguay saying: 'It is in competition that men are put to their best'.
Initially Argentina were seen as the more skilful and stylish of the two competitors but during the 1920s the elegancia of the Argentinians was to a certain extent compromised when they seemed to gradually adopt the more macho approach of their neighbours.
Not all of the Racing Club side that faced Celtic on 4 November 1967 were Argentines. Nelson Pedro Chabay, one of the older defenders in the team, had been recalled for the games in South America because he would be prepared to whatever it took to stop Jimmy Johnstone by any means at his disposal. An international player, who had been part of Uruguay's 1966 World Cup squad, Chabay came to Argentina from Racing Club Montevideo as one of the club's biggest investments. He could play anywhere in the defence.
The view of the physicality of Uruguayan play was very much based on an Argentine perspective of the nature of their neighbours' football, but the two countries differ both in terms of how the game took root and how it developed in the respective national contexts. In the modern era Uruguay have, at times, appeared to struggle to keep their traditional status as a planetary power in football alive. Other countries in South America, like Colombia and Peru, have threatened to supplant them in the 'big three' of that continent. Uruguay's relatively small population of under 3.5 million, when compared to its competitors – Colombia's population is around 42 million and Peru's is close to 35 million – certainly doesn't help the nation's footballing cause. But Uruguay are two-time world champions, have claimed two Olympic titles (during an era when the Games were effectively the world championships) together with success in the Copa America and eight South American club titles, which show Uruguayan football to be more than capable of punching above its weight.
When one talks about football in Uruguay the focus will inevitably fall on Montevideo, as that is where, historically, the major clubs in the country have been located. Montevideo looks across the River Plate estuary towards Buenos Aires. These cities were the heart and soul of South American football during its formative years. As was the case in Argentina, the game was introduced to Uruguay by the British. In 1886 Briton William Poole, a professor at Montevideo University, founded Albion Football Club and in 1891 British workers from the Central Uruguayan Railway formed a club that took the name of Peñarol, the district within which it was located. Two clubs, Montevideo FC and Defensa, merged under the name of Nacional in 1899, and with Peñarol they have dominated football in Uruguay in much the same way Celtic and Rangers make up the football horizon in Scotland. Out of ninety-four league championships up to the end of the twentieth century one of these two clubs had failed to finish top on just sixteen occasions. In the period from 1915 to 1975 just Rampla Juniors (1927) and Wanderers (1931) bucked the predominant trend. In the years that remained before the Millennium only Defensor (three times), Central Español, Danubio, Progreso and Bella Vista managed to wrest the title from the aforementioned giants of Uruguayan football.
While club football in Uruguay has become predictable, perhaps as a consequence the international game has had a traditional importance. The foundation of a football association in 1900, on the request of Peñarol and Nacional, marked the beginning of a league championship and the formation of a national side. It was on 16 May 1901 that a team representative of the Uruguayan nation met an Argentine 'combination' in Montevideo; this was the first ever international game contested outside the British Isles and now Uruguay and Argentina have played each other more times than any other two international sides. This was initially due to their close proximity and relative isolation, but it has become an encounter that has evolved a meaning all of its own in South American and world football. The Lipton and Newton Cups were practically annual events and these trophies (donated by each country's Ministry of Education) were a strong incentive for the two rivals to come together in competition. However, the most fervent football rivalry between Argentina and Uruguay has been expressed though the South American Championships.
Although not an official championship, the 1910 contest set the pattern for events in future; Argentina and Uruguay had no trouble dismissing Chile to set up their meeting in the final. The enmity, even at that time, was massive, so much so that the inaugural match had to be postponed to the next day as animated supporters burnt down a stand in the stadium that was scheduled to stage the game. This 'unofficial' – it has never been recognised by CONMEBOL – Copa America took place in Argentina. Each team played one match against each of the other teams. Two points were awarded for a win, one point for a draw.
[TABLE OMITTED]
Six years later a second tournament took place, again in Argentina. This time four teams took part between 2 and 17 July as part of the commemorations of Argentina's independence centenary. CONMEBOL was founded during this event, on 9 July, Argentina's Independence Day. This time Uruguay took the spoils, with Isabelino Gradín taking the honours as the tournament's top goalscorer. Gradín's speed – he was a champion sprinter – and remarkable dribbling ability, together with a shot that might shame a cannonball, made him almost unstoppable.
Two of Gradín's goals came in the first match of the tournament against Chile. The losing team protested that Uruguay had Africans in their team, as Gradín and Juan Delgado were black. However, it didn't take long to establish that both were Uruguayans and thus the Chilean protests were dismissed.
This landmark, however, even in sport has slipped from the pages of history. Uruguay's social legislation was relatively advanced for the era. The country had a comparatively small black population to, say, Brazil, a country whose population included the ancestors of millions of black slaves. But black people in Brazil at that time continued to be socially disadvantaged, and this included in the football sphere. With this being the case, Gradín's performance in the following Copa America, held in Brazil, was important.
Gradín scored two goals as Uruguay finished runners-up in 1919. However, he played on the Fluminense pitch, one of the most powerful and traditional of Brazil's clubs. For Brazil's black population this was an amazing example and Gradín became something of a role model in South American football, more so than the Brazilian Friedenreich who, despite being the son of a German father and a black mother, had green-eyes and a middle- class background. The Brazilian black population identified with Gradín at a time when football in Brazil was seen very much a game for people of European ancestry. Moreover, it wasn't until the coming of professionalism in Brazilian football during the 1930s that a place for black players was secured.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Battle Of Montevideo by Brian Belton. Copyright © 2013 Brian Belton. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgements,Foreword,
Introduction,
one Continental Champions,
two Football in the Blood,
three To Avellaneda,
four On Yer Heed, Ron!,
five Football Missionaries,
six The Gathering Storm,
seven Belly of the Beast,
eight Battle Lines Drawn,
nine Under Siege,
ten So Far Away,
eleven Goodbye Ronnie,
twelve Football in Argentina Post-1967,
thirteen After Montevideo,
fourteen Conclusion,
Bibliography,