“I couldn’t say a bad word about Jock... but he was human. He made mistakes. He wasn’t invincible, and neither were the players”
● Fifty years ago today, Celtic, overwhelming favourites, lost to Feyenoord in the European Cup final. Goalkeeper Evan Williams, whose heroics almost spared the 1967 champions, looks back on a missed chance to cement the club’s – and Jock Stein’s – great
If Celtic’s European Cup triumph of 1967 was like the club being catapulted into an Oz-like technicolour land of wonder, their appearance in the 1970 final was akin to them being battered about in the monochrome Kansas as the roof came off.
“It is Lisbon in reverse” said Glasgow’s Evening Times of the pairing with the “unknown” Feyenoord. Prophetically, as it turned out. The headline ran on the afternoon of the final at the San Siro, 50 years ago today. It proved an occasion in which the underdog Dutch side eviscerated a big beast just as comprehensively as Jock Stein’s men had Internazionale in the Portuguese capital three years earlier. In both deciders, the 2-1 margin of victory flattered the vanquished as the victors gave their country a first success in the big cup.
“I saw Billy [Mcneill, Celtic captain] on a TV programme once talking about the game and admitting we could have lost 10-1. It was that sort of night,” said Evan Williams, whose goalkeeping display almost spared Celtic. “When you have parts that don’t function, the machine can completely break down. That is how it was against Feyenoord.”
Williams, now 76, is, though, remarkably free of bitterness and recrimination over a final in which not only was a European Cup at stake, so,too, was Celtic and Stein’s aura, and a golden opportunity to cement their greatness in that era.
Certain factors could be forwarded for that fact. Williams was the one Celtic player who emerged with his reputation enhanced. It was, according to him, his best game across his five years with the club he had taken a 50 per cent wage cut to join from Wolverhampton Wanderers the previous year. “Celtic was in my blood,” said the man from Dumbarton. His blood stirred in the San Siro as he fashioned a string of saves to keep alive hopes of Celtic sneaking a replay from an encounter in which they were led a merry, midfield-orchestrated dance. Never mind that the fatal concession of a second goal came only three minutes from the end of extra-time.
More than that, Williams has just too much respect for the Lions that embraced him on his arrival at Celtic Park, and the legendary manager that moulded them, to point any fingers.
Williams, the only player not on Celtic’s books in 1967 who started the club’s second European Cup final inside three years, didn’t have the personal experience to compare and contrast the two occasions.
He doesn’t care to dwell too much on just how much Milan was the antithesis of Lisbon for the club and their support. In the former, Stein was the man who outfoxed master tactician Helenio Herrera. Ernst Happel turned those tables in 1970. Lisbon was sun-soaked and the trip of a lifetime for almost 20,000 Celtic supporters. To be drowned out by the hornblowing, more numerous, Feyenoord faithful in rainswept San Siro, they had to endure logistical nightmares created by general strikes in Italy that had placed question marks over the final’s staging. Celtic, the brimming innocents of 1967, were rendered the all-too-satisfied expectants in 1970 by an unfancied Rotterdam club that put them in their place – with at least one parttime player in their ranks.
How so much could go so wrong for Stein and his players is the stuff of legend and conjecture. Members of the squad swear blind he did not appreciate the threat posed by Feyenoord in still basking over the glorious lancing of Leeds United in the semis the previous month in what was talked up as the final before the final. It is said that the preparations for the meeting with Feyenoord – which came two and a half weeks after Celtic’s previous competitive match – were all wrong.
Celebrated journalist Archie Macpherson has claimed the mood around Celtic’s hotel retreat 30 miles from Milan was “like a holiday camp”.
The players themselves have been accused of being distracted by the appointment of an agent to ensure they could cash in on endorsements from becoming only the third team to twice win the European Cup. A press conference had been set up to announce a series of commercial ventures – one of which was rumoured to be a record. And then there was the decision of Stein to deploy a 4-2-4 formation against the 4-3-3 configura