The day I whacked the wrong Bayern player in Euro semi-final
THERE are only 31 days in May but May 1985 was a month with enough highs and lows to last a lifetime.
Everton won one final in the most glorious of circumstances, lifting the club’s firstever European trophy by beating Rapid Vienna 3-1 on an unforgettable night in Rotterdam.
Three days later, Manchester United prevented us from winning the Treble in the FA Cup Final. We also won the title but did not get the chance to play in the European Cup the following season because English clubs were banned after Heysel.
While I look back on much of what occurred with pride, I was also left with profound feelings of regret and disappointment that still linger.
We had to produce something special to win the Cup Winners’ Cup, beating Bayern Munich in the semi-final.
Everyone remembers the second leg at home, and so. It was arguably the greatest night Goodison Park had ever experienced.
For every Evertonian of a certain vintage, the night of 24 April 1985 was an “I was there” moment – I was there, battling away in the middle of the park as if my life depended on it – even though there are times when it seems too surreal, too magical, to have actually happened.
On that night the Goodison crowd whipped every single Everton player into a frenzy. It wasn’t to Bay- ern’s taste and their manager Udo Lattek later complained that the game we played “was not football.”
Not that Lattek’s criticism stands up to scrutiny. We played that night. We played as if we wanted it more than anything else in the world.
If he was honest, he would have admitted that the atrightly was clear the damage he’d inflicted on me wasn’t enough for him. He wanted more than blood.
“You English pig,” he shouted before walking away. I clocked that it was Hans Pflugler and decided, there and then, that this wouldn’t be the last time we had a confrontation, even though the gash he had opened up on my calf wasn’t going to make it easy for me to complete the match.
But there was no way I was going off in this one. I was having Pflugler and Everton were having Bayern: It was that simple.
While our club doctor, Ian Irving, was stitching my calf at half-time, all I was thinking about was this blond geezer who had left me with a hole in my leg.
With 15 minutes left, we had turned the game around mosphere inspired us and intimidated them, although the silence when the ball hit the back of the net when Bayern went ahead was eerie.
It was the first goal we had conceded in Europe that season and, to make matters worse, I was struggling a bit.
I’d gone in for a tackle and just about managed to nick the ball away when this kid came in and smashed me. I knew straight away that he’d done a bit of damage. He stood over me, like Muhammad Ali over Sonny Liston, and it