THREATS, DRUGS AND BRIBERY
The remarkable story of how Roma dirty tricks killed hopes of a Liverpool v Dundee United European Cup final in 1984
The irony of it all is that the Roma manager of the day, Nils Liedholm, was universally known in Italy as Il Barone — the Baron — because of his supreme sophistication.
‘he had a noble approach to football,’ says one Italian journalist who followed the side back then. ‘he was for Italian football in the early 1980s what Arsene Wenger was for you in the late 1990s.’
There was pitifully little nobility about the way that Roma defeated Dundee United in the 1984 european Cup semi-final, to secure a final against Liverpool in their own stadium. The then United manager, Jim McLean, has kept a video of the Stadio Olimpico second leg at his home at Broughty Ferry, yet has never been able to bring himself to watch it.
‘So much trouble, so much scandal, so many broken dreams,’ he reflected of a clash which brought allegations of drug-taking, physical threats to McLean and claims that the French referee, Michel Vautrot, had been bribed with £50,000. ‘It will stay with me for as long as I live.’
No-one doubted that the Italian champions Roma carried all the pressure into the semi-final that spring, while United were just happy to be there.
The Scots had squeaked past Rapid Vienna on away goals on a frantic night before 17,500 people at Tannadice. This coincided with Alex Ferguson’s Aberdeen reaching the Cup-Winners’ Cup last four. Two Scottish teams in european semi-finals and neither of them Glaswegian. It was some landmark for the so-called ‘New Firm’.
Roma’s burden was not only the need to reach a final on home soil but the pressure attached to Italian club football’s newfound big spending.
The Italian FA had ended a 10-year ban on foreign players, imposed when the national team were struggling. The Giallorossi had to justify their acquisition of Brazilian attacking midfielder Roberto Falcao, his international team-mate Toninho Cerezo and two of Italy’s 1982 World Cupwinning team.
United bundled these superstars into the tiny Tannadice away dressing room — ‘like a triangular shaped corner of a local pub’, as their midfielder eamonn Bannon once described it — and defeated them 2-0 in the home leg, displaying a relentless work ethic in the process. ‘We were always particularly strong down the Tannadice hill in the second half,’ Walter Smith, McLean’s assistant at the time, tells Sportsmail.
Rattled from the start, Roma provoked an incident with McLean, when the Scot threw a ball to winger Bruno Conti after it had run out of play beside the dug-outs. Conti knocked it straight back into McLean’s face and later claimed he’d been called ‘an Italian bastard’ by the manager. ‘I certainly didn’t hear that,’ Smith says.
Roma could not believe the home
team’s work ethic, which was a trademark of McLean’s teams. ‘It was brutal playing for him because of the intensity and expectations,’ says Billy McKinlay, who played in midfield for McLean a few years later. ‘His expectations were beyond reality. He used to admit that.’
This point was lost on the Italians, whose president Dino Viola lit a fire by claiming United must have been on drugs.
Smith has never been sure what Viola’s tone was, but the Italian press were certainly well acquainted with the president’s views when McLean was interrogated post-match in the little upstairs corridor outside the boardroom. The Scot was not diplomatic. ‘I’m sorry to say it tells us what kind of losers they are,’ he told Sportsmail’s Brian Scott that night.
So many Italian stories had been written on this drugs theme before the second leg that McLean made a joke of it, telling the press he just wished the players ‘were on the same every week’.
That piece of irony seemed lost on many in the Italian capital, where nothing could prepare United for the opprobrium and unalloyed hate which greeted them. ‘We felt it from the minute we arrived at the airport,’ says Smith. ‘Even the baggagehandlers were unpleasant. It was extreme hostility.’
Around 70,000 fans were positioned beyond Stadio Olimpico’s running track but the fruit they hurled at McLean’s players still reached the pitch. Video footage shows referee Vautrot picking up oranges from the turf midway through the second half, by which time the subdued Scots were trailing 3-0.
The clock on the stadium scoreboard read 17.21 at the end — the match kicked-off at 3.30pm in the afternoon — and United were out. But the battle had only just begun. Despite the home side’s advance to the final, McLean became the lightning rod for Italian hate. When he got up from the bench which had been put out in the open on the touchline, Liedholm’s players charged at him.
An iconic image from the ensuing melee captures defender Sebastiano Nela giving McLean a one-fingered salute. The manager also saw goalkeeper Franco Tancredi among a crowd of players who ran at him. ‘Behind me I could hear scuffles as people tried to attack me,’ he recalled. ‘I simply kept walking as they screamed at me.’
Smith just remembers wondering where the Italian police had gone, as he and reserve goalkeeper John Gardiner shepherded the manager towards the tunnel. ‘They’d vanished into thin air,’ he remembers. And then, in 2011 — 27 years after the match — came a revelation which seemed to plunge Roma’s victory to new levels of ignominy and sleaze.
Riccardo Viola, son of the inflammatory and now deceased former Roma president Dino, revealed that 100 million lire (£50,000) had been given to referee Vautrot through an intermediary, ahead of the second leg.
It was a little complicated. Viola Jnr described how an executive at a team with no connection to the game in question — Genoa sporting director Spartaco Landini — had told Viola Snr that Vautrot was a friend of his and could be bribed if the money was paid to an intermediary called ‘Paolo’.
But Viola Snr wanted to be sure that the referee was open to the bribe, so Landini organised a meal for the three of them at which certain actions would demonstrate that fact.
A waiter approached Vautrot saying: ‘Phone call for Mr Vautrot.’ At which point Vautrot supposedly left the table. He returned and said: ‘Paolo sends his regards.’
It was not exactly Watergate, yet United felt huge indignation, with former striker Paul Sturrock even demanding that the side be given European Cup medals. That didn’t happen — and the so-called bribe plot has since thickened substantially. Sportsmail understands that Landini admitted in a covertly recorded interview in 2012 that the so-called Vautrot bribe was a scam, organised between him and another football executive, designed to procure money from the unsuspecting Viola.
Vautrot never received a penny, according to Landini. The taped interview was undertaken by an Italian referee, Paolo Bergamo, who wanted to prove that he was not the mysterious middle man, ‘Paolo’.
The UEFA archive reveals no records of a reprimand or suspension for Vautrot, who went on to officiate at the 1990 World Cup. As head of French refereeing until 2003, he has done a number of interviews in France. But the subject of 1984 has never come up.
Smith says he was never convinced about the bribery claims. ‘Roma were an excellent side and the regret was that, after going 2-0 up, we had a good chance of getting to the final but didn’t take it,’ he says.
‘We just didn’t play as well as we normally did in Rome that night. Liverpool showed that greater experience to deal with the journey into a difficult environment.’
But it was for some a trip to hell and back. Smith has kept a copy of that picture of the melee in which Nela threatened McLean and it resides in his loft these days. ‘Yes, someone sent it to me and I’ve looked at it, on and off, over the years,’ he says.
‘It’s a graphic image. It was a graphic journey.’
“When McLean left his bench, Roma’s players charged at him”