Tomorrow, Gareth Bale will represent Wales in the biggest club game in football. The Real Madrid superstar is already part of a select band of Welshman having been the fifth from the country to play in Europe’s grandest fixture. WalesOnline Chief Football

stayed focused on the referee who had blown for an earlier foul, only slowed down replays catch the full force of the challenge.

But this was a different time, this was the Leeds side – the Damned United side – so often criticised by Brian Clough who had taken over from Don Revie at the start of the season and who had left long before the Yorkshire heavyweights had made their way to a first European Cup final in the May.

Bayern’s players spoke of Leeds players screaming at them in the tunnel before kick-off in an attempt to intimidate the side of Sepp Maier, Gerd Muller and captain Franz Beckenbauer – a trio of World Cup winners from the previous year.

Andersson had been told to try and contain Billy Bremner, the Leeds captain, but Yorath – known as a hard man but by no means lacking in skill and ability – had been told to win every ball to give Bremner and Johnny Giles their chance to take the game to the German champions.

It was what on Yorath’s mind as he went in, studs high, leg straight, to challenge for the ball and making contact with Andersson’s knee.

Revie, co-commentating alongside David Coleman that night, said: “Leeds have opened quite well… I think Terry Yorath went for the ball, but I don’t know what happened then.”

On the video Yorath watches, Anderson’s hands are immediately over his face, Beckenbauer caught between signalling for a stretcher and complaining to the French referee Michel Kitabdjian.

“It’s not a happy thought to think that people remember that tackle when they think of me playing in a European final,” says Yorath. “The game was different, we played hard and we played to win.

“But that doesn’t mean I’m not sorry about it. I didn’t go in to hurt him, I went in to win the ball because we wanted to win that match so badly. Nobody said anything at the time, but I know it might have been different these days with all the cameras and replays.

“It was bad and I know it and I’m not allowed to forget it. Whenever I’ve gone to Sweden I’m asked if I remember it and of course I do. He never really played again.”

After nine months out, Andersson returned but never at the same level and, after a smattering of further games in Bayern red, retired.

Hoeness was another Bayern player forced off that night following a Frank Gray challenge, his own career eventually cut short and going onto become a Bayern suit.

In 1995 he encouraged Andersson to help rebuild Bayern’s youth structure. He did just that; Andersson’s influence has been credited with the discovering and development of a string of German world champions including Philip Lahm, Bastien Schweinsteiger and Thomas Muller.

Yorath is well aware. “I’m not insensitive,” he says with genuine sincerity. “How do you think I know that about him, why I know what happened to him, what he did after finishing? Think about it. I do.”

As he does of the final in general. Though Leeds did not take a backward step, Bayern were no saints and, in the eyes of Leeds fans, it was the English club that were the ones who were sinned against.

Leeds dominated proceedings and should have had a penalty when Beckenbauer scythed down Allan Clarke inside the penalty area just before half-time.

Then, as Leeds pushed after the interval, Peter Lorimer had the ball in the net. It was disallowed amid confusion, controversy and, eventually, the judgement that Bremner had strayed into an offside position.

Bayern scored against the run of play when Franz Roth opened with 71 minutes.

Yorath made way for Eddie Gray