It was left to the Daily Telegraph’s Henry Winter to count the flags. Bizarrely, this most Glaswegian of teams had a support waving Irish flags. The green, white and gold tricolour of the Irish Republic was billowing for the Celts, as steeped in Irish Catholic history as Rangers were in that of the House of Orange. Winter counted just three Saltires, the St Andrew’s cross of Scotland. The Portuguese and Spanish could have been forgiven for thinking Celtic had flown from Dublin.
But no amount of flag waving was to bring the trophy to Glasgow. In the end it was to be Porto’s trophy. The clincher came in the second period of extra time and Celtic’s European odyssey was over. Not that the celebration was, though.
Celtic may have lost the title, but they were determined to win the party. Their team had done them proud and their heads were held high. They’d taken tens of thousands of fans to Spain, made thousands of new friends and not suffered a single arrest, a remarkable achievement for a football side.
The dream, though, was over and reality had to kick in. Celtic had to get back from Spain and out to Kilmarnock where their bogey side awaited. For many fans the trip to Kilmarnock proved even tougher than their Spanish sortie. For a start, many just couldn’t get home. Seville airport turned into a bus station as thousands scrambled to board anything that said it was going to Glasgow. It was, by all accounts, mayhem. There was also the prospect that some wouldn’t make it home at all.
Reports are still coming in of those who failed to make it back from Lisbon in 1967, earning their keep behind bars or taxi steering wheels. Having been unable to count them all out, there was little hope of counting them all back.
The team, for sure, made it back on the Thursday, with Martin O’Neill facing yet another monumental challenge, that of raising his side for one last push for silver. Having flunked out of the CIS Cup, the old League Cup, at the hands of Inverness Caledonian Thistle in an ignominious defeat, Celtic had left the way open for Rangers to lift a domestic treble of Premiership, SFA Cup and CIS Cup. It was unthinkable: Celtic could end up with nothing while Rangers could sweep the board.
Weary wayfarers trooped back into Glasgow en route, not for home, but for Kilmarnock. There’s not much glamour to be found in Kilmarnock but for the Bhoys, it was the last chance to lift a trophy. The deal was simple: Celtic had to beat Kilmarnock by a single goal more than Rangers beat Dunfermline. This was no mean feat. Celtic had been known to stumble at the hands of Kilmarnock in the past. Rangers were never not going to gub Dunfermline.
This time both Airdrie and Coatbridge were silenced. If you weren’t at Ibrox or Kilmarnock you were in front of a television. Some pubs with two screens were showing both games. Most opted for one or the other. Showtime.
Celtic’s kick-off was delayed by three minutes as police struggled to cope with latecomers held up by a road crash on the main road between Glasgow and Kilmarnock. No sooner had the ball left the centre circle than the news filtered through: Rangers had scored.
It was only to be expected but the air hung heavy in Coatbridge. Everyone knew the Bhoys were running on empty. They’d played their hearts out and done their fans proud but they were only human, despite their elevation to the status of deities. And then, the unthinkable. Never before and never again will a Dunfermline goal be so celebrated. The massed ranks of green and white threw a frenzy from Aberdeen to Zanzibar as Dunfermline equalised. The scorer was unknown. Who cared? It was all square. Game on.
Wave after wave of Rangers advances met little resistance while Celtic’s forays brought instant counterattack. Kilmarnock weren’t for making it easy. The scores crept up. Neither game was about beating the opposition. It was about hammering them. No-one doubted Celtic and Rangers would win. It was by how much that counted.
Goal for goal it went, hope and despair in equal measure. Tit for tat they tried to burst the nets, the Premiership swinging north and south of the Clyde.
And as Celtic battled for a fifth, so Rangers claimed theirs. To win the title, Celtic now needed two against opposition that didn’t look likely to yield any more than the four they had already let through. In the dying seconds, the word filtered through. Rangers had won an 89th minute penalty. “Aye,” ran the conspiracy theory, “just to make sure.”
And it was. It had taken 11 goals in two games to decide who were champions. Rangers had won 6-1, Celtic 4-0.
Celtic striker Chris Sutton immediately accused Dunfermline of “lying down” before Rangers and almost as immediately withdrew the comment for fear of the SFA’s disciplinary committee. Similar comments remain unwithdrawn in Coatbridge. It was over. Having played what many considered their finest season for decades, Celtic watched Rangers fill the trophy cabinet while they walked off with nothing.
Well…not quite. It wouldn’t be fair to equate Celtic’s performance with that of “plucky loser”. Pride in the side was unbowed. OK, Rangers might be the best team in Scotland but Celtic was the second best team in Europe. Well, the UEFA cup, anyway. Even neutrals had to acknowledge the achievement. Even Rangers did.
Pictured with his three gleaming trophies – Rangers completed the treble two weeks later by dispensing with the game-but-vain challenge of Dundee in the Scottish Cup final at Hampden – Rangers boss Alex McLeish said: “We’ll never know but, would we have won the treble if we’d had an extended run in Europe? I doubt it.”
Sitting at the bar in Coatbridge, the Bhoy looked at the photograph of McLeish and his haul staring up from the Daily Record. Sipping his pint contentedly, a wry grin on offer, he said: “Aye, keep them polished. They’re only on loan.”
