A WHOLE NOU BALL GAME
United’s quarter-final triumph over Barca remains iconic
KEVIN GALLACHER was startled to see a church in the Nou Camp tunnel.
By the time Dundee United had delivered one of Scottish football’s greatest-ever successes in Europe, it was Barcelona who were left without a prayer.
It may be 33 years to the day since Jim McLean’s men clattered the Catalans, yet it remains crystal clear in the mind of Gallacher.
Looking at the respective clubs now, it’s hard to imagine that it happened.
But back then things were different. Clubs like Barca still had riches which United could never dream about but the gulf wasn’t as great and the Tangerine heroes proved it.
Gallacher was among McLean’s maestros as they sank Gary Lineker and Co.
Having scored the winner in the first leg, his strike had given United a fighting chance in the return against Terry Venables’ stars.
Gallacher said: “Everything stands out. You arrive the night before to train on the pitch and the grass is longer than normal for us. It’s sticky and dry. The weather is warm and the environment is different.
“You are going up the tunnel and there is a church there. You are thinking: What have we come to here? It’s massive.
“You go down the stairs, back up more stairs on to the pitch and it’s like a gladiators’ arena. There was a massive wow factor.
“But we’d faced Roma away in a semi and had experienced guys with us who were calm about the situation.”
That calm showed through during the 90 minutes which followed with a cunning which brought Barca to their knees.
United started well only to lose their aggregate advantage on the stroke of half-time as Ramon Maria Caldere netted.
At that stage, United looked in trouble but Gallacher claims the setback actually worked in his team’s favour.
He said: “We had only thing in our minds when we were going to Spain and that was to go out and play the way we played on a Saturday. That’s the way the manager had us.
“We had a game plan and we were aware of how good Barca were having seen them in the first leg at Tannadice.
“It was brilliant in the Nou Camp and the one thing we had in our favour going into the match and the tie is that they were going through a little poor spell in their season.
“Venables was getting a little bit of stick and if we could rub salt into the wounds, we could get the crowd against the team and the manager.
“We treated it like going to a Celtic Park or an Ibrox and facing the Old Firm away.
“We knew we were a good team and, if we stuck to our tactics, it would come good. It started off well only for them to get the goal to level the tie.
“At that point, you imagined people would be looking at us to see if we had strength but what the Barca goal actually did was open them up. They started to attack more and that suited us better.
“Myself and Paul Sturrock had speed going down the sides, Iain Ferguson in the middle and Eamonn Bannon bombing up and down for fun. We were built to suit the tactics which they adopted after scoring.”
United’s win was secured late on by John Clark’s header from a free-kick which was followed by Ferguson’s nodded winner from a Sturrock cross.
Unfortunately, despite beating Moenchengladbach in the semi-finals, Gallacher and his team-mates lost the twolegged final to Gothenburg.
But March 18, 1987 remains one of the biggest results in Scottish football history and Gallacher said: “Righly so.
“We played 50 games by the time we got to the final and it was special to have a result like this in amongst it all.”