Sixty years on from a floodlit Wednesday night at Paradise, we look back at the tie that started it all – Celtic’s first ever European Cup match, against FC Zurich.
It was Wednesday, 28 September 1966, and Celtic Park had never hosted anything quite like it. Under the floodlights, with 50,000 supporters packed into every corner of the ground, Jock Stein’s side played their first ever European Cup tie. Swiss champions FC Zurich were the visitors for the first round, first leg, and nobody inside Paradise that night could have known just how far this particular road would eventually run.
THE NIGHT AT PARADISE
Zurich didn’t come to make up the numbers. They set about trying to disrupt the attacking rhythm Celtic had built up so well in the early weeks of the 1966/67 season. The first half finished goalless, a stern physical examination for a Celtic side used to imposing itself on Scottish opposition.
The breakthrough, when it came, was worth the wait. Tommy Gemmell picked up a pass from John Clark, drove forward from fully 30 yards, and let fly with a shot that crashed in off the underside of the crossbar past Otmar Iten – the first goal Celtic ever scored in the European Cup. Within five minutes it was two. Joe McBride, who’d been off target with a couple of earlier chances, finished from the edge of the box after Bertie Auld teed him up with an impudent back-heel that left the Zurich defence flat-footed.
Celtic almost had a third in the dying seconds when McBride headed home from close range, only for the Danish referee to disallow it – he’d already blown for full-time, he explained, even though the ball was still in flight toward the Zurich goal. A curious way to end the night, but nobody inside Celtic Park was complaining too loudly about a 2-0 lead. That side – Simpson, Gemmell, O’Neill, Murdoch, McNeill, Clark, Johnstone, McBride, Chalmers, Auld, Hughes – carried a foundation that had been years in the building, one traced in detail in David Potter’s account of the Celtic side that emerged in 1965.
THE ROAD AHEAD
A 2-0 cushion was exactly what Stein wanted heading to Switzerland for the second leg on 5 October, a tie that would determine whether this European adventure lasted a single round or continued. It did continue – all the way through to the final in Lisbon the following May, a historic conclusion. For further reading, see David Potter’s second instalment on Celtic’s rise.
Sixty years is a long time, but that Wednesday night against Zurich still matters. It was the first step, nothing more, nothing less – but every road has to start somewhere, and this one started at Celtic Park in front of 50,000 supporters who had no idea what they were about to witness unfold over the months that followed.
Mon The Hoops.
