COATBRIDGE erupted. Airdrie pretended not to notice…

They probably felt the tremor in Sydney the night Celtic beat Boavista to book their place in the UEFA cup final in Seville but that didn’t mean Rangers had to acknowledge it.

Visitors are hard pushed to spot where Coatbridge stops and Airdrie begins but there’s a clear divide. Broadly speaking, Coatbridge is Celtic, Airdrie is Rangers. This is despite the fact that you’ve got to pass the Albion Rovers ground (average attendance 360) to cross the border and that Airdrie has its own team, Airdrie United (average attendance 789).

In Coatbridge, though, elderly women skipped. Grandfathers tap-danced. Under 40s bawled their elation.

Celtic were going to Europe and the world was going to know about it.

Strathclyde Police were forced into shutting Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street at 3am after the match. With such revelry in full flight, vehicles were an unnecessary hazard for the celebrating Faithful.

The Bhoys were back in Europe and that’s all that mattered.

It was a generational thing. Celtic had last been successful in Europe in 1967, when the Lisbon Lions won the European Cup. Since then a whole new generation had grown up used to defeat. In fact, during the early 90s, when Rangers equalled Celtic’s astonishing record of winning nine league championships in a row, it was hard work being a Hoops fan.

Rangers’ 10th attempt at the title was driven by passion. Not to beat Motherwell or Kilmarnock, but to wipe the smug grin aff the faces of the Celtic supporters they’d been routinely whipping at home and away for the best part of a decade.

Let’s face it, Dundee and Aberdeen might occasionally get a game they had to take an aeroplane to but Scotland only has two football teams you’d put a fiver on if they were up against Real Madrid’s Under-15 reserves. Winning the league isn’t a measure of Scottish football ascendancy. All it proves is you’re better than the other mob across the river.

When The Faithful chanted: “Hullo, Hullo, it’ll never be 10 in a row”, there was always something desperate in the air. In the event, the Bhoys put a stop to an era of Rangers triumphalism. Celtic took the league under their new manager’s guidance and set their caps in new directions.

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The Bhoys may have been the first British side to win the European Cup – a fact often forgotten by Manchester United fans and anyone south of Gretna – but Rangers had taken the European Cup Winners’ Cup in 1972, a cup lifted in 1983 by Aberdeen, steered there by Alex (now Sir) Ferguson. Celtic were a team in need of a good long drink after too long in the desert.

Boavista gave them a passport to a Spanish oasis. The second the whistle blew on Boavista at Parkhead, The Faithful knew something remarkable was happening. They had thought they were onto something the previous year when they made it into the Champions’ League, only to watch their side get thoroughly humped every time they played away. This time, they’d beaten some low-quality little Lithuanian side called Suduva before winning against Celta Vigo, Blackburn Rovers, VBU Stuttgart and, in the Battle of Britain, Liverpool before putting Porto’s groundsharers to the sword, courtesy of vital away goals.

Now they were on the verge of glory. And they had the ‘V’ factor. Someone in a green anorak had spotted that the letter ‘V’ had featured in each of Celtic’s European opponents’ names. What’s more the final was in SeVille. Destiny perhaps? Except there’s no ‘V’ in Porto.

There was no way the team was going on their own. No way.

It’s not just about football, you see. As Bill Shankly famously said, football’s not a matter of life and death. It’s more important than that. For the Celts nothing could be more important.

It was almost forgotten that four days after tackling Porto, Celtic faced Kilmarnock away at exactly the same time as Rangers entertained Dunfermline in the showdown for the Scottish Premiership. There was not a point in it. In the tightest finish to a league in years, Rangers were ahead by virtue of the fact that they had scored a single goal more than Celtic with a fortnight to go.

And the Bhoys? Beating Rangers to the League paled into insignificance, given the prospect of a European trophy.

Two weeks before the showdown in Seville, the Jungle Jims travelled to Ibrox in what was then thought to be a potential Premiership decider. The match was delayed as hundreds of The Faithful bombarded the pitch with Li-Los, beachballs, straw donkeys and sombreros. “Tape The Bill, We’ll be in Seville” was the banner.

Not content with mercilessly taunting the Forces of Darkness at Castle Greyskull, The Faithful waited until the Monday morning before hitting the Ibrox switchboard with calls to report lost property. “I think I’ve lost my beachball,” ran the line.

Ever courteous, the Ibrox customer-care staff fielded each call professionally. All 3,000 of them. “What colour did you say your Li-Lo was?”

Winding up the Teddy Berrs was only part of the sheer joy, the delight in pinning your hopes of glory onto a bunch of guys paid fortunes to wear a historic football shirt. When Celtic won the European Cup in 1967 every player was born within 50 miles of Parkhead.

Earlier in the 2002/3 season, when The Old Firm clashed, there was a single Scotsman on the park, Rab Douglas, Celtic’s ‘keeper. Mjalby, Balde, Petrov, Valgaeren, Agathe and Larsson all had their names on the team sheet as Boavista bowed out. Hartson, Celtic’s Boavista hero a Welshman was out with a back problem.

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But team selection was the last thing on The Faithful’s minds. Travel plans were paramount. Even a ticket for the game took second place. Travel agents were swamped. Internet sites crashed. Airlines simply buckled under the pressure. The Mayor of Seville pledged that not a single Celtic fan would go without a bed when the great game arrived. They’d be found somewhere to sleep. Fool. The man had simply no conception of what happens when the Bhoys go backing their team.

Two weeks before the match every bed within 200km of Seville had sold out. Estimates were that up to 80,000 fans were heading for the Andalusian capital. But that only accounted for those that could be counted. It didn’t take into account those who had booked a week’s holiday on the Costa del Sol or the Algarve, determined to make their way to Seville overland, having found air travel to Seville impossible. It didn’t account for those whose only option was to drive: it was a 3,000 mile round trip from Parkhead but with four driving it was still possible to get there for kick-off, even if they didn’t have a ticket between them.

It didn’t account for the five guys who hired a camper van at Calais and drove it south. It didn’t account for the six guys on a building site who couldn’t hire a minibus and ended up with a coach. Result? The other 15 guys on the site got on it.

“Tell them they’re all fired if they close this site down,” said the agent. “I did,” said the ganger. “They know and they’re going.”

It certainly didn’t account for the guy who went there dead: he’d thrown a heart attack in the middle of the Boavista game and his pals took his ashes on the bus to sprinkle on the park.

The Bhoys from Barra in the Outer Hebrides went in a minibus. Tickets? “Och nooo. But we’ve plenty of drink,” lilted their organiser, who declined to say whether he’d be sharing the driving.

An Australian Bhoy bought a round-the-world ticket from Sydney, spending 68 hours in the air and covering 10,000 miles to get there. It was the cheapest and most sensible option, he said. Intercontinental and transatlantic travel bookings rocketed. Estimates suggested that 1% of the planet’s airline capacity would be carrying a Celt to Seville, by whatever tortuous route, the day before the match.

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In Coatbridge the talk was of nothing else. Whole families were leaving the country, ticketless. The trip from Texas was a breeze compared to that from Coatbridge. You couldn’t get a flight to anywhere even near Spain, never mind Seville, from Glasgow.

The Faithful resorted to desperate measures. Routing through Liverpool and Charles de Gaulle could get them to Barcelona where they could always catch a train. Except the trains had sold out weeks beforehand and car hire just got pricey as Spain woke up to the fact that this was the trip of a lifetime for travelling Celts and they were quite willing to be ripped off if it got them on site. Pity the Bhoy who made it to Barcelona on the Wednesday and got stranded with a ticket in his pocket.

Glasgow airport was under siege. Airlines joined forces to set up an exclusive Celtic check-in desk. Actually, they set up an exclusive desk for anyone not travelling in green and white. Business travellers were advised that Glasgow was not the smartest point of departure for crucial meetings of a non-footballing type.

Glasgow airport’s bar traditionally has its busiest day of the year on Fair Saturday, the beginning of Glasgow’s annual two-week holiday, when factories used to close for their yearly break. Its highest takings so far had been £10,000 for the day. In the 24 hours leading up to the exodus an astonishing £100,000 went across the bar, threatening to melt the tills.

The historians at Strathclyde University did the math: it was officially the biggest airlift since World War Two. For most, getting to Seville was enough: enough that they were there and their team was in the final. For others, the prize of a ticket was all.

Celtic had been allocated 25,000 tickets, Porto something similar. Quite how so many tickets ended up in Celtic hands remains something of a mystery. The smart move was to back your team from the start. UEFA had put tickets for the final on sale long before it was known who would be playing. It was a no-brainer. You buy the ticket at face value and if your team wins you’re at the match. If they don’t, your ticket’s worth a fortune to someone else.

The morning after Celtic won through, six seats together had attracted a bid for £2,600 on internet auction site ebay. As the game neared, prices escalated. Touts outside the ground were commanding €1,000 per seat. And getting it.

After the Liverpool game a group of 80 fans in Coatbridge forked out £300 each for a ticket and a day trip to game. By mid-May the package was worth a fortune, if it could be bought at all.

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The sheer cost probably helped Celtic turn Seville green. Sure, Porto’s fans were ardent but even the most ardent must have been sorely tempted by the riches on offer for a ticket. The sums the Celtic supporters were prepared to pay were vast amounts for people from one of Europe’s poorer nations.

One ticket was raffled at Tommy Tango’s, the newsagent and sweetie shop in Whifflet. The ticket had been bought by one Celt whose wife was so outraged at his use of their hard-earned cash she made him give it to charity. Tommy Tango’s is a busy wee shop but an extra several thousand people trod through the door in the space of a few days to part with their £1 in the hope it would buy them a foreign holiday.

Money talks, of course. The likes of Jim Kerr, Rod Stewart and Billy Connelly were always going to be in the ground. Others were saving, just in case. No-one wanted the offer of a ticket without the funds to redeem it.

As a result, North Lanarkshire Council’s Finance Committee held an emergency meeting as its budget went into freefall. Council tenants in Coatbridge had stopped paying their rent. Just in case.

Some fans got their tickets through extraordinary means. Before the game a Porto fan, devastated by the accidental death by drowning of his best friend, was so overcome by the sympathy offered by one Celtic supporter, he handed over his ticket. He couldn’t face the match without his pal, so an astonished Bhoy went instead. It was typical of the bonhomie that the two sets of fans established.

There was no need for segregation with fans so determined to enjoy themselves. Indeed, had segregation been required, it would have been virtually impossible, given that there were four buyers for every seat in the ground, no matter where it was.

For those without tickets, just being there was enough, with or without accommodation. Some had actually managed to book a bed and failed to find it, having decided they were having too much fun where they were or, more commonly, just failed the test of getting there. One fan was woken early in the morning by the persistent sound of ringing in his ears. Having eschewed the comfort of his hotel he’d slept in a handy telephone kiosk.

The event assumed such magnitude that Scottish Television decided to begin its live broadcast eight hours before kick off. The satellite pictures drew a stark contrast between Glasgow and Seville. For a start, the pictures suggested one half – at least – of Glasgow had made it to Spain. The city’s streets and squares and parks were a sea of green and white and the familiar rallying calls were echoing off the buildings as the Bhoys applied themselves to the task of attempting to drink Seville out of beer and wine.

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It was a high-risk strategy as most holidaymakers from Glasgow start their vacation pale blue, requiring a week in the sun to turn white before thinking about a tan. As the temperature soared and the alcohol poured, the prospect of heatstroke, dehydration and worse loomed high, only to be ignored. The only concern over the weather was that the Hoops were going to have to play in it. Porto, from just across the border, were acclimatised while Celtic were used to rain-lashed winter Monday nights in Aberdeen.

Naturally, the churches managed to get in on the act. The Catholics, headed by Archbishop Mario Conti, wished the Bhoys well and warned the travellers to beware the temptations of the flesh as the party atmosphere grew in the sun. He said: “The opportunity will doubtless be there for people to live to excess, whether through alcohol or drugs or reckless sexual behaviour. But they have to remember that morality is not suspended just because Celtic are in a cup final. All Catholics should be guided by their conscience. If they are, they will think twice about their sexual and moral conduct while in Spain.”

The Archbishop clearly hadn’t thought through his warning: the Bhoys were going to get pissed and cheer on their team. Why in God’s name would they be chatting up women unless there was any chance of charming them out of their briefs (Glasgwegian slang for tickets, by the way)?

The Kirk, on the other hand, congratulated the Hoops for their achievement in getting to the final when ministers met in the run up. They stopped short of wishing them success, of course, fearing a backlash from their predominantly Rangers-supporting congregation. The Celtic fans found this just another example of petty-minded sectarianism.

But why should Rangers fans, bombarded by beach balls and Li-Los, offer their support to their arch rivals? The Celts argued they should be cheering on the only side in Europe representing Scotland. Perhaps it hadn’t occurred that Henrik Larsson, a Swedish international, or the Frenchman Didier Agathe, didn’t consider they were playing for Scotland.

In Coatbridge, the tension was palpable. As match day progressed, the traffic eased and the few footsoldiers to be spotted were sporting colours on their way to wherever they were planning to make sure their team, 1500 miles away, heard their shouts. Smart pubs had issued tickets to their regulars to avoid overcrowding. Astonishing amounts of beer were stockpiled in cellars. Off-licences reported sales of pre-Hogmanay proportions.

The travelling support was officially the largest movement of fans for one match that UEFA had ever seen – by a long way. But Glasgow wasn’t about to forget which town was home to the Celtic. Baird’s Bar in the city centre went so far as to import two tons of sand just to add to the atmosphere. Bars across the land were holding sangria and sombrero parties as those left behind refused to be left out.

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From Rangers’ point of view the best part of it all was that Celtic would return from Seville knackered with just two days’ rest before they had to play the last game of the season in a showcase match which would decide whether the Premiership trophy wore blue or green ribbons.

Indeed, so wound up were some sections of the Ibrox following, they actively supported Porto. The Grapes bar in Glasgow formed a Porto Supporters Club and displayed as much, possibly more, fervour than the genuine article.
At one Rangers’ bar the billboard outside boasted: “Tonight, 7.45pm; The Bill live.”

Backing did come from some Rangers sources. Manager Alex McLeish let it be known that he had called Celts boss Martin O’Neill personally to wish him and the team success.

Support came, too, from politicians. MSPs passed a motion of congratulations. Prime Minister Tony Blair wished them success at Question Time in the House of Commons. Labour Party Chairman and Leader of the House of Commons John Reid skipped parliamentary duties to make the trip. Challenged about Reid’s absence at a time of political turmoil, Lord Chancellor Lord “Derry” Irvine dismissed criticism, saying simply: “John’s on a pilgrimage.”

Given the level of expectation, there was always the prospect that the match itself might fail to live up to its billing. It didn’t. As the crowds went their own ways, some to the stadium, others to one of the two giant screens erected for the purpose in Seville and yet others to whichever bar they had selected, the teams knew what was expected of them. And they delivered.

When Porto first breached Celtic’s defences to put the ball past Rab Douglas, Celtic’s hordes were momentarily silenced. When The King, Larsson, equalised decimeters melted. When Porto again took the lead, Celtic’s support somehow managed to become even more vocal, urging their team to ever-greater efforts. When Larsson equalised again, thousands of women offered to bear his child.

That Celtic were tough was in no doubt. That Porto displayed an alarming propensity to fall over like schoolgirls was obvious to all. But this was Europe, not the SPL. A titanic effort against a side displaying a certain type of class against Celtic’s classy brawn saw the teams finish their 90 minutes level. An extra 30 minutes of toil awaited both teams. Celtic’s support, by now almost hoarse, roared the team on and waved the flags with hidden reserves of energy.

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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.”

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Epilogue:

The Scottish Football Association took a dim view of Chris Sutton’s comments after the Premiership showdown. They banned him for one match. On top of a previous three-match ban, Sutton was ruled out for the first four matches of the new season. The SFA remains powerless to make his allegations lie down in Coatbridge.

At the tail end of August, just as the Scottish season was about to kick in once again, UEFA saluted Celtic’s travelling support by giving them the organisation’s Fair Play Trophy, the first time in its history it had been awarded to a team’s fans rather than a club.

UEFA said: “Embracing the Porto fans who crossed their paths, they converted the city into one huge fiesta and, whether they saw the dramatic final from the stands at the Estadio Olímpico or not, created an atmosphere that the locals will never forget. On behalf of them and the game of football, UEFA can only invite everybody to take their hats off and salute the ‘Bhoys’ from Glasgow.”

FIFA, football’s global governing body, later endorsed UEFA’s decision. For the first time in its history, it awarded its own worldwide Fair Play Trophy to Celtic’s fans. They were, officially, the best supporters on the planet.

It was a view echoed in Seville. The City’s Mayor, Alfredo Sanchez Monteseirin wrote to Glasgow’s Lord Provost, Liz Cameron, with his personal thanks for an invitation to the party. Sr Monteseirin said:

“I am writing from Seville to you on the excellent behaviour, good fun and good manners shown by thousands of Celtic supporters during their stay in our city. You should feel proud to have fans such as these in Glasgow who give their city and country a good name.

“I would like to send publicly the congratulations of the City of Seville to the fans and, in general, to all the citizens of Glasgow.  We hope to see you again in Seville on a similar occasion, when you will surely be luckier on the playing field.”

On September 1, 2003, UEFA fined Porto £25,000 for a breach of regulations. Apparently, some of the tickets they were allocated for the match found their way onto the black market…

Steve Brennan

Steve Brennan’s latest book, The Hat in the Middle, is available now from amazon.com. Shiny Side Up, his first book, is also available as a paperback from amazon.com. His only work of fiction, Radiant Princess, can be found at amazon.com as paperback and e-book.