This one perhaps fell under the radar at the end of last week, so it’s well worth a catch-up as Matt Corr, with the valuable assistance of Celtic historian Pat Woods, provides us with a fascinating insight into the groundwork from Jock Stein – carried out before he was appointed as manager of Celtic – that led to that glorious triumph against Inter Milan in the European Cup Final in Lisbon on 25 May 1967.
Catch up here before continuing if you’ve missed these brilliant Celtic articles…highly recommended, high quality Celtic content right here…
PART ONE…Matt Corr with Pat Woods: When Jock Stein met Helenio Herrera – The Invitation
Enjoyed that? Then read part two which is even better!
PART TWO…When Jock Stein met Helenio Herrera. Part Two: The Meeting
And then onto Part Three and that’s you caught up…
PART THREE…When Jock Stein met Helenio Herrera – Meanwhile, Back in Scotland
When Stein met Herrera – How our protagonists fared… Helenio Herrera
Herrera would enjoy a bittersweet end to the 1963/64 season with Inter Milan. Seven days after the meeting with Jock Stein and Willie Waddell, the Italians beat French champions AS Monaco in the European Cup with a solitary Nicola Ciccolo goal in the San Siro. Inter would enjoy a much more comfortable evening in the return leg, played in Marseilles the following midweek, two goals from Sandro Mazzola and one from Luis Suarez providing a 3-1 win. On the same evening, Borussia Dortmund beat Benfica 5-0 to eliminate the two-time winners.
The quarter-final draw paired Inter with Yugoslav champions Partizan Belgrade, goals from Jair and Mazzola in the first leg effectively clinching the tie ahead of the San Siro return, Mario Corso and the Brazilian winger again adding to that tally in Milan to see Herrera’s men safely through to the last four. There they would join five-time winners Real Madrid, who had eliminated cup-holders AC Milan by the odd goal in seven three weeks earlier.
As an interesting aside, Partizan Belgrade inside-forward Vladimir Kovacevic was the joint top goalscorer in that European Cup of 1963/64, the Serb tying with Sandro Mazzola of Inter Milan and Ferenc Puskas of fellow-finalists Real Madrid on seven goals. Two years later, ‘Vladica’ was part of the Partizan side which went all the way to the European Cup final, the Yugoslavs shocking Manchester United in the last four before losing to Real Madrid in Brussels, a sixth win for the Spanish masters who had eliminated Herrera’s cup-holders Inter Milan in the semi-final.
Kovacevic had scored for Partizan in Nantes in their preliminary round win in October 1965, but he would appear for the French champions in the European Cup of the following season, 1966/67. Nantes beat Iceland’s KR Reykjavik before facing Celtic in the second round, Vladica appearing in both matches against Jock Stein’s men as the Hoops won each leg by 3-1, and it is his number eight canary yellow jersey from one of those ties which many believe is the one swapped with Bertie Auld and which was recently sold at auction.
Inter’s semi-final opponents would be Borussia Dortmund, who followed up their emphatic win over Benfica by defeating Dukla Prague. The teams shared four goals in Dortmund before second-half strikes from Mazzola and Corso saw the Nerazzuri reach the European Cup final at their first attempt.
The opposition in Vienna’s Praterstadion on 27 May 1964 was Real Madrid, with Puskas, Di Stefano and co chasing a sixth European crown. But the night would belong to Herrera and Inter, a double from Sandro Mazzola and another from the aptly named Aurelio Milani sealing a 3-1 win and a second successive European Cup for the city.
Four days after that triumph in Vienna, Inter completed their Serie A programme with a 2-1 home win over neighbours Atalanta. At the same time, a penalty kick from West German star Helmut Haller was enough to give Bologna a 1-0 victory over Lazio at their Stadio Comunale. With the two clubs finishing level on points, and no goal average or differential rule in place, this meant that for the first and only time in Serie A history a play-off would be required to decide the destination of Lo Scudetto.
As so often with Italian football, there had been much drama off the pitch, Bologna deducted three points in March for alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs by five of their players, a sentence overturned on appeal with just three games remaining, with claims of wrongdoing by the powerful northern clubs adding to the intrigue. In midweek, during a meeting with the Italian Football Federation to discuss arrangements for the play-off match, Bologna’s owner and president of 30 years, Renato Dall’Ara, collapsed and died with a heart attack.
Bologna would duly rename their stadium in his honour but perhaps his greatest reward would be the Serie A title, which his club delivered with a 2-0 win over Inter Milan in Rome’s Stadio Olimpico on Sunday, 7 June 1964. Like Kilmarnock, that remains Bologna’s last such success to this day.
Both Bologna and Inter Milan – as holders – would enter the European Cup of 1964/65, the new Italian champions falling at the first hurdle via that cruellest of methods – a coin toss. Trailing to a goal from Belgian legend Paul Van Himst from the first leg in Brussels, Bologna led Anderlecht 2-0 in the Stadio Renato Dall’Ara in the dying seconds of the return before a Jacques Stockman strike forced a play-off.
The teams would play out a goalless draw in a ghostly Camp Nou seven days later, before the Belgian skipper guessed correctly to progress. This remains Bologna’s only tie in the European Cup or Champions League to date.
European champions Inter fared much better, enjoying a preliminary round bye as cup-holders before destroying Romania’s Dinamo Bucharest 7-0 on aggregate in the first round. By that time, they would enjoy the mantle of World Champions, Herrera’s side having beaten Independiente of Argentina 1-0 after extra-time in a play-off in the Estadio Santiago Bernabeu to lift the Intercontinental Cup at the end of September, after the sides had recorded a home win apiece.
Next up in the quarter-final of the European Cup was Rangers, Inter 3-0 up after 50 minutes in the San Siro before Jim Forrest goals in Milan and Glasgow made the winning margin tighter than it ought to have been. Bill Shankly’s English champions Liverpool provided the semi-final challenge for Herrera, and once again he would prevail, overturning a 3-1 Anfield deficit within an hour in the return, the great Giacinto Facchetti’s third goal taking Inter into a second successive European Cup final, this time to be played in their home stadium, the San Siro.
Awaiting Inter in the final was Benfica, and their deadly twin strike force of Eusebio and Jose Torres, the competition’s top scorers with nine goals apiece. But they would be unable to add to that tally as a first-half goal from winger Jair saw Helenio Herrera win a second European crown on Wednesday, 27 May 1965, in front of 90,000 mainly-Inter supporters in the San Siro.
Domestic success ensued that season also, Inter regaining Lo Scudetto by finishing three points ahead of city neighbours AC Milan. Indeed, only a single-goal defeat by Juventus in the final of the Coppa Italia in Rome’s Stadio Olimpico in August 1965 prevented Herrera and Inter from making it a clean sweep. Still, they were now Italian, European and World champions.
Inter Milan would again come close to winning that quadruple the following season, 1965/66. The Italian title was retained by finishing four points clear of Bologna, but Fiorentina scored two late goals to knock Herrera’s men out of the Coppa Italia in the semi-final in Florence. The Intercontinental Cup was also retained in September 1965, following a rematch with South American champions Independiente, a goalless draw in Buenos Aires enough to secure the world crown after Inter’s 3-0 home win seven days earlier.
There was also a feeling of deja-vu when the first round of the European Cup brought another meeting with Romanian champions Dinamo Bucharest, but there would be no repeat of the one-sided contest of 12 months earlier, Inter requiring a last-minute winner from The Great Facchetti to squeeze through, having lost the first leg.
The quarter-final saw a comfortable win over Hungarians Ferencvaros, the tie effectively over after Inter’s 4-0 first-leg victory, but the Nerazzuri finally tasted European Cup-tie elimination in the last four, a repeat of the 1964 final against Real Madrid. Inter were 2-0 down on aggregate before Facchetti’s late goal in the San Siro allowed them to at least avoid a home defeat as the second leg finished 1-1, Jose Pirri’s early winner in Madrid seven days earlier proving decisive.
As mentioned previously, Real Madrid would beat Partizan Belgrade 2-1 in the Heysel Stadium in Brussels to claim a sixth European crown, a first in six seasons. UEFA would duly allow Real to keep the old trophy permanently, and design effort would commence on a brand-new style of European Cup for the 1966/67 campaign. I wonder how that would pan out.
Inter Milan started the new season as both Italian and World Champions and amongst the favourites for the European Cup, but this would prove to be a turning point for Helenio Herrera and his La Grande Inter project. Italy’s failure in the World Cup in England that summer – they were eliminated by North Korea – led to a ban on the import of foreign nationals, thwarting Herrera’s plans to bring West German midfielder Franz Beckenbauer and Portugal’s Eusebio to Milan.
Inter also failed to secure striker Luigi Riva from Cagliari that summer, and he would end up as the top goalscorer in Serie A that season. How different might history have been had Herrera added such quality to his ranks at that point.
Uruguayans Penarol would succeed Inter as World Champions in October 1966, beating Real Madrid home and away in a rematch of the 1960 Intercontinental Cup final. Even so, by the first week of May 1967, Herrera’s side remained odds-on favourites to both retain Lo Scudetto and win a third European Cup in four seasons.
Inter were comfortably clear in Serie A, having led since the first round of fixtures in September 1966, and had emulated Penarol with two wins over holders Real Madrid in the last-eight of Europe’s prestige competition, before eliminating Bulgarian champions CSKA Sofia in a semi-final play-off in – perhaps ironically – Bologna. They would be massive favourites to beat these upstarts from Glasgow in the final.
Then the roof caved in on the Nerazzuri, defeat to title rivals Juventus in Turin in front of a watching Jock Stein on Sunday, 7 May 1967 – the Hoops boss had travelled from Scotland with Helenio Herrera after the Inter manager had witnessed Celtic claim a first-ever domestic Treble with a 2-2 draw at a sodden Ibrox the previous day – reviving faint hopes of a late title challenge from the Bianconeri. In the run-up to the European Cup final against Stein’s men in Lisbon on Thursday, 25 May 1967, Inter continued to struggle, drawing with both Napoli and Fiorentina at the San Siro to sit just one point clear of Juventus with one match remaining.
The events in the Estadio Nacional on that memorable evening have been well documented and will be covered in the final section of this piece under Jock Stein. Suffice to say, everything Herrera had built up in the previous seven years at Inter was blown away by the finest display of attacking football ever witnessed, as the all-new European Cup headed north to Glasgow.
Three days after Lisbon, Juventus completed their Serie A schedule with a hard-fought 2-1 win over Lazio in Turin to move to the top of the table, one point clear of Inter. The pressure was now seriously on Herrera’s defending champions, however a win in their final match at mid-table Mantova would be enough to see them crowned champions again, with a draw forcing a play-off scenario with Juventus. In the event, it was the unthinkable third option which transpired on Thursday, 1 June 1967, and it was delivered with a twist.
Striker Beniamino Di Giacomo’s name appeared in the first part of this article, as Helenio Herrera described his training methods to George Reid back in October 1963. At the end of that season, Di Giacomo would be transferred to Mantova, and the football gods would now decree that he would score the only goal of the game in Mantua’s Stadio Danilo Martelli – named after one of the local-born victims of the 1949 Superga air disaster, a Torino teammate of Valentino Mazzola, father of Inter’s Sandro, who also lost his life that day. Di Giacomo’s goal against his old teammates early in the second half would hand the title to Juventus by a single point, Inter’s only hope of silverware now resting with the Coppa Italia.
Three days after the defeat in Mantua, Inter did get back to winning ways, Sandro Mazzola’s goal enough to beat Fiorentina in the San Siro in the quarter-final of the Coppa Italia. But the respite would be brief. On Wednesday, 7 June 1967, as Jimmy Johnstone was thrilling 120,000 spectators in the Estadio Bernabeu in Alfredo di Stefano’s benefit game to confirm a new world order, Inter slumped to a 3-2 semi-final defeat to Serie B outfit Padova in Padua.
They would have to watch as bitter rivals AC Milan claimed a first-ever Coppa Italia in Rome’s Stadio Olimpico the following midweek, Herrera’s La Grande Inter ending the season trophyless. That would represent the end of an era, as the former Kings of Europe went into a four-year exile from the continent’s most prestigious competition, at which time they would meet their Lisbon conquerors Celtic and Jock Stein in the semi-final. But there would be no reunion with Stein for Helenio Herrera in the spring of 1972. His final campaign in charge of Inter had involved no European action and ended with a fifth-place spot in the League table. At the end of that 1967/68 season, Herrera left Inter to take over at AS Roma.
Hail, Hail!
Matt Corr, with thanks to Pat Woods for provision of the original article and his insights on it.
