Fagan’s warm-up to Rome triumph was five days getting DRUNK on the beach
AHEAD of what would have been the Champions League final in Istanbul tomorrow, Sportsmail continues its look at Scots who lifted the European Cup. Today, Stevie Nicol recalls a dramatic evening for Liverpool in Rome in 1984.
WHEN surrounded by legends, just try to do as they do. No questions, no quibbles, no stopping to marvel at the glory of it all.
And no doubting the methods of a manager who took a very bold approach to preparing for the 1984 European Cup final.
If Joe Fagan thought the Liverpool team needed five days on the lash ahead of facing Roma in their own back yard?
Well, it’s not as if Stevie Nicol was in a position to raise objections.
The 22-year-old former Ayr United player, having waited long enough to play himself into the first team at Anfield, had learned to go with the flow.
The Scot, who joined compatriots Kenny Dalglish, Graeme Souness and Alan Hansen when he replaced Craig Johnston in the second half of the ’84 final, missed the first penalty in Liverpool’s shoot-out triumph.
There’s a story behind that, Nicol tells Sportsmail. But, then, there’s a story behind almost everything that went on exactly 36 years ago tomorrow.
Explaining just how blasé Fagan and his senior pros were in the build-up to taking on the Italians at the Stadio Olimpico, he likened life with the Reds as akin to joining a cult. One where winning was just expected.
‘Playing in European Cup finals was just normal — it was expected of Liverpool to be either in the final, winning it, whatever,’ said Nicol. ‘For someone like me, I think Liverpool is a bit like the Moonies — you just get sucked into it and you end up just doing what everybody else does.
‘Other places, other clubs, this would be some huge deal. For Liverpool, this was just another game that had to be won.
‘As a player, I got sucked into a way of thinking. Regardless of whether it was Rome, Timbuktu or anywhere else, the attitude was:
“This is what we do”. The thing about ’84 is we actually went for a five-day break before it. Basically, just sat down on the beach together and got drunk. From finishing the last game of the season and playing the final, I’m going to say there was like a two-week period. And there’s nothing worse than training for training’s sake. ‘So Joe decided we would train for a bit, go away for five days — and then do another five days’ training. That was great, it just broke it up. ‘We went to Tel Aviv and the funny thing is there were two Italian journalists with us. Well, they were basically following us but we knew they were there, knew who they were.
‘And the look on their faces every day, as we were sitting down on the beach, or sitting in the squares, in the cafes playing drinking games … you could see them looking at each other and going: “What’s going on? These guys are supposed to be playing in the European Cup final in a week?”
‘Because Roma were locked away for two weeks in a training camp up in the mountains.
‘I can’t think of anything worse than being stuck away for a fortnight. We did the complete opposite. We had five days’ holiday, it was a great bonding exercise, fantastic.
‘Joe was taking the approach that had been passed all the way down from Shanks (Bill Shankly) to (Bob) Paisley — and would then be passed down to Kenny (Dalglish) as manager.
‘They all believed that it was okay to have a drink, as long as you trained hard to get rid of it — and acted responsibly.
‘It was normal for us. Not for the Roma boys, stuck up in the mountains for two weeks, chewing their nails.’
The final itself isn’t really remembered, even by those of us who watched it goggle-eyed in expectation that, yes, another group of influential Scots would once again carry a major English club to European Cup glory. It happened so often that only the really great games stand out.
What everyone old enough to have seen it will recall, of course, is goalkeeper Bruce Grobbelaar’s spaghetti legs distracting Bruno Conti and — crucially — Francesco Graziani sufficiently for both men to miss their penalties.
Nicol, who had blazed his own spot kick over the bar as first man up in the shoot-out, was more than a little relieved.
‘The week before, the day before we left to go to Rome, we had a penalty competition — and I was
the only one who scored,’ he told
Sportsmail.
‘The five who took them in the final were the same five who took them in practice.
‘We played against the kids and the kids beat us. We only scored one and that was me. Everyone else missed or had their shots saved. And Bruce never saved one!
‘I missed in the shoot-out because of inexperience. One hundred per cent, it was inexperience.
‘The reason I went first was because there was this kerfuffle over the order.
‘Phil Neal was the penalty taker but then there was the question:
“Do you want him to go first? Why not save him for later in the shoot-out”?
‘I just said: “Look, I’m taking one anyway. It makes no difference whether it’s first, last or whenever”.
‘But, when I think about it now, it was all inexperience. Instead of keeping my head down and then watching it on replay a thousand times if I wanted to, I was too anxious to see where it was going.
‘I lifted my head early and that’s why it went over the bar. I wanted to see it hit the net.
‘Bruce good in the shoot-out? Well, naw, he never saved one there either! He didn’t get close! He just put them off but never actually saved any. He had ten penalties that week, five in practice and five in the shoot-out — and he didn’t save one.
‘I don’t think he even went the right way for any of them. But I supposed he did all right…
‘Of the game itself, I remember the goal we scored, remember the goal we lost.
‘Joe’s message before the game was about all the pressure being on them as the home team, so just frustrate them. We were solid. Nealy scored, then they equalised.
‘When I came on to play on the left-hand side, the message was to get forward if you can.
‘In extra-time, I went from playing wide to playing in the middle with Souness.
‘I was to go forward at every opportunity and he was to sit. It was nothing we hadn’t done before, these are your two jobs.
‘It was treated as if we were playing West Brom away in the league.
‘I can’t remember exactly but I’ll be shocked if we did anything out of the ordinary in the days before the game.
‘The game would have been on a Wednesday, so we would have arrived on the Monday, trained on Tuesday and then gone straight into the game.
‘That was what we would do for any game. No changes, do everything as normal.
‘The fact that the game was in Rome, you remember I was joining a team who were European champions.
‘So, for 90 per cent of the squad, this was a normal thing. It wasn’t anything out of the blue.’
Nicol, now based in the States where he’s an expert pundit for ESPN, says even the inevitable open-top bus parade back in Liverpool felt ‘kind of normal.’
As he watched Jurgen Klopp’s men being applauded through the streets last May, though, he realised just how special it was.
‘It’s not until you stop playing or go elsewhere you realise that, although it was normal for Liverpool, it’s not normal for anyone else,’ he explained.
‘Watching Andy Robertson on the tour, I loved that. Straight away you go: “Jesus Christ! I was on that bus”!’
“Bruce just put them off ...he didn’t actually save ANY of their penalties”