Legendary Steelman Martis tips current team to make their mark in Europe
Motherwell great John Martis has backed Stephen Robinson’s side to make their mark in Europe just as he and his team-mates did 60 years ago.
Robinson’s men, along with Aberdeen, will discover their first opponents in the Europa League qualifiers when the draw is made on Monday.
The Lanarkshire side made their European debut in 1991, but Martis and the great Ancell Babes side had earlier taken on foreign opposition in a less-formal setting – and roundly beaten them.
Capitalising on the new floodlights at Fir Park, Motherwell had enjoyed a run of impressive midweek wins over the likes of Swedish and Swiss opposition and thrashed Leeds 7-0 in the years leading up to 1960.
That year proved to be the high point of the popular friendlies, which attracted crowds of more than 20,000. Bobby Ancell’s side beat Gothenburg, Athletic Bilbao, who had won one Spanish title and three Copa del Rey trophies in the previous five years, before thrashing Brazilian sides Flamengo 9-2 and Bahia 3-0.
Flamengo featured Gerson, the playmaker in the great 1970 World Cup-winning team, but found themselves embarrassed after going two goals up. Ian St John netted six times for his home town side.
“Before the game you want to have seen them doing all their tricks,” said former Scotland centre-half Martis, who made almost 300 league appearances for
Motherwell. “We thought we were going to get a bit of a hammering.
“We possibly did surprise them because we had a lot of good footballers in the team. It was a good time at Fir Park.
“I don’t think they were used to results like that against them. They couldn’t do anything else but take it. I think they were a bit mesmerised with the football we were playing and the way we were scoring goals against them. That was the days when football was football.
“That was the way football was played in those days, you attacked all the time. If you don’t attack, you’re not going to do any damage. That was the style in Scotland, but we had good footballers in the team.
“We played quite a few friendlies and we never got beat. The stadium was packed at all the friendly games. We looked forward .
to them, we thought it was great playing foreign teams at Fir Park during the week, and we thoroughly enjoyed them all, probably because we were beating them. And the teams that came, they weren’t just ordinary teams, they were good teams.
“We played Leeds and Jackie Charlton was in the team and we beat them 7-0. I think Leeds thought they were going to come up here and run right over the top of us. They got a bit of a shock that night.”
Martis, now 80, lives round the corner from Fir Park and regularly watches his old team. And he is optimistic his successors in claret and amber can deliver some more famous victories.
“I think they can do well in Europe,” he said. “The manager’s got them playing good football, he has some good players in the team. He is doing a good job, I think he has got them geared up believing they are as good as anybody.
“I have spoken to Stephen Robinson a couple of times and to me he talks a lot of sense. And I think he is enjoying his job.
“It’s much the same team that got them there and that will be a plus for them. They will not need to get players used to their style of play.”
The deaths of two of the Ancell Babes in recent weeks, Pat Quinn and Willie Hunter, rekindled memories of a team that had promised so much. They beat Rangers four times in 1959-60 and won 5-2 at Ibrox in the Scottish Cup the following season. But they were broken up with the sale of St John to Liverpool and Pat Quinn to Blackpool and never fulfilled their potential.
St John later remarked it was the best football he ever experienced, a glowing tribute given he was a key member of Bill Shankly’s Liverpool side.
“We had a good team,” Martis said. “Unfortunately we never won anything, well we only won the Summer Cup. It’s just a pity we didn’t stay together longer. If we had stayed longer we would have won the cup or the league.
“The directors, if they got a good offer they just let players go. It wasn’t just us, it was all teams at that time.
“But it was enjoyable, everybody enjoyed themselves and it was always a good atmosphere.
“Bobby Ancell made you feel as if you were a better player than whoever you were going to play against. He made everyone in the team feel that way. He would say the best way to enjoy your football was to get on top right away.”