In the opening period of season 1994-95, Celtic received an invitation to play a friendly match several months hence, a fixture which manager Tommy Burns was only too keen to accept, as it was against Real Madrid.
You are unlikely to remember this but the game went ahead on this day in 1995, at the Estadio La Rosaleda in Malaga and a crowd of some 40,000 packed in to see the action.
The teams were –
Real Madrid…Canizares, Chendo, Marcos, Nando, Redondo, Alkorta, Butragueno, Alfonso, Dubosky, Sandro, Martin Vasquez.
Celtic…Bonner, Boyd, McKinlay, O’Neill, Mowbray, Grant, Nicholas, McStay, Van Hooijdonk, Walker, O’Donnell.
From the press reports, there would appear to be little doubt that, even with a number of reserves in their side, Real dominated the play and gave Celtic little time or room to settle.
The match finished 2-0 in Real’s favour – the goals coming from Alfonso (18) and Butragueno (pen 24) – but the crowd provided a marvellous atmosphere and Tommy Burns was very happy that his players had experienced playing against such a top side.
Jim Craig
Celtic By Numbers on The Celtic Star Podcast Extra: Stats Entertainment!
We are joined on this podcast extra by Alan Morrison. Alan is the man behind the Celtic By Numbers website, so as you can guess we are going to be talking stats and how they can tell the story of Celtic’s Season so far.
We discuss our drop in performance this season, the creative hole caused by injuries, why we should be singing songs for the return of Stuart Armstrong, the Scott Sinclair situation, the problems of making too many changes, the case for the defence, Simunovic v Boyata, Olivier Ntcham’s influence and importance to the team and finally we admit that Kristoffer Ajer is the new Virgil Van Dijk!
I do remember this game but I remember the game the weekend following more. Tommy Burns said that the game against Madrid was a great education for the players and we must strife to play like them.
On the Sunday we drew 0-0 with Partick at Hampden in one of the worst games I have ever witnessed. We also wore a white away kit that game.