24 hours that made the Lisbon Lions
Minute by breathless minute, how 10,000 ordinary fans became part of legend... as Celtic were crowned champions of Europe 50 years ago
IT was the day that shook football, when an unfancied provincial club from Glasgow defied the odds to become the first British team to lift the European game’s most coveted prize. In contrast to the millionaire ‘galacticos’ who will line up next month for the Champions League final, the Celtic side that lifted the European Cup 50 years ago was made up of local lads, all born within 30 miles of Parkhead stadium.
And among the crowd on that sunlit May evening in 1967 were thousands of ordinary working class Glaswegians, who had spent their life’s savings to travel 2,000 miles by plane, train and automobile to watch history unfold at Lisbon’s Estádio Nacional.
Celtic’s 2-1 victory over mighty two-time champions Inter Milan has become the stuff of footballing legend, immortalising those unlikely victors as The Lisbon Lions. But it also left those lucky enough to witness it with a lifetime of memories – of a heroic match, a first taste of foreign travel and a world beyond Glasgow.
The emotion and human drama of that momentous time has now been captured in an hour-long BBC documentary, entitled Glasgow 1967: The Lisbon Lions, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of that historic triumph.
Here, the Scottish Daily Mail honours those intrepid fans by recalling those precious 24 hours that would change Scotland’s biggest city and its people forever.
MAY 24, 1967
6am First light over Lisbon on match day and the first of Celtic’s 10,000strong travelling support were on their way to the Portuguese capital. Foreign travel was not common in 1967 – especially on a working wage – and most that were flying could only afford a day trip. Childhood friends Danny Bill and Jimmy Quinn had no idea the other was going until they bumped into each other at Glasgow Airport. Shipyard worker Mr Quinn borrowed £18 from his mother but recalls having to break the news to his over-eager girlfriend that he wasn’t saving up for an engagement ring: ‘I just said to her, “See this getting married carry-on, saving up for an engagement, well I’m wanting to go to the final. End of story”. She wasn’t best pleased. She didn’t speak to me for ages!’
Mr Bill worked as a plater in the shipyards. His work welfare fund ran a prize raffle offering a day trip to the game plus a match ticket. It was won by a friend who gave him the prize for £20.
9am: Arriving in Portugal felt ‘like a different world’. Mr Quinn said: ‘I hadn’t been out of Scotland before, never mind going to Europe. We were just that happy to be on the plane. It was a prop plane, not a jet.’
For some of the club’s most devout fans, the desire to follow their beloved Hoops to the final even meant a slight tweak to their moral compass.
‘You couldn’t get a seat in a plane for love nor money, but there was a magazine called Titbits which was running a plane,’ chuckled ardent supporter, Father Thomas Hendry. ‘The parish priest did all the spadework. [In the end] we got three seats. A priest in another parish came as well. We took off from Renfrew and our first stop was Cardiff. That was to pick up alcohol.’
11am: For those arriving by road, that Thursday morning came at the end of an exhausting week-long journey through France, across the Pyrenees and through Franco’s fascist Spain to the Portuguese capital. Fans crammed into any old banger and hit the road. Some jazzed up a dark green Hillman Imp – made at the nearby Linwood factory – with stripes of sticky white tape to replicate the team’s colours.
One supporter, Ian Martin, recalled being a small part of a huge convoy leaving Glasgow: ‘We were in a Mini Cooper, my big mate had just bought a Hillman and my father and his mate had a Morris 1000.’ But disaster was never further than a sudden turn of the wheel. He added: ‘One of the boys lost his case before we reached Bishopbriggs, off the roofrack.’
For others, the journey south took an unexpectedly romantic turn. Charlie Fryars was among a group that got lost in Nantes city centre. They went straight to the station bar where an attractive young woman was serving.
‘Her name was Ghislaine, she was 19 and a student. I don’t know how it happened but we got on like a house on fire and within half an hour I was in love with her,’ he said. ‘Time just flew. At one point I turned round and there was my two companions with their heads on the table fast asleep. She put her arms around me and gave me a kiss and I thought this is the love of my life.’
However, a simple faux pas by his new love brought young Charlie to his senses: ‘She wanted my Celtic scarf and I said no, we needed it for flying out the car window and I wanted my scarf to be in Lisbon. I wakened up my companions and that was us. We were on our way.’
Midday: By now, the trickle of fans in green and white had become a flood as they made their way to Lisbon’s main square to drink in the atmosphere and the local beer before the evening kick-off.
Edward Rooney said: ‘The main square was a sea of green and white. The locals were mesmerised. They couldn’t believe the colour, they couldn’t believe the volume of people that were there.’
Celtic fans, for their part, were glimpsing life under the autocratic rule of Antonio Salazar. Father Charles Cavanagh was shocked by armed soldiers on every street corner. ‘Those guns were the reality of everyday life for the Portugese people,’ he said. ‘Some of the things we were doing, singing in the streets enjoying ourselves, that wasn’t accepted by the regime.’
2pm: Mr Bill and Mr Quinn felt the culture shock when they entered a bar near the dockside for a couple of beers. ‘Next thing, there were bottle tops being thrown at us, so we left smartly,’
said Mr Bill. ‘To this day, I don’t know whether it was Portuguese or Inter fans, but we knew we weren’t welcome.’
3pm: By midday, all the planes had left Glasgow bar one, which finally took off more than three hours late. One passenger, John Cowan, remembered the rising panic that they would not make the stadium before kick-off at 6.30pm local time. After coming in to land, there was no one to meet the plane.
Mr Cowan said: ‘Everything was in slow motion then. The landing crew, well, God knows where they were. We were the only plane – no steps – so I sat down on the ledge and jumped down. I didn’t realise how far a drop that was.
‘But I was 19 and a fit guy. I hit the ground with a real thud and recovered, but there were guys coming after me just dropping, dropping, and then we started running to the terminal building…’
5pm: By late afternoon, fans were converging on the Estádio Nacional to cheer on their boys – a local team in every sense, forged in the same tenements and on the same Glasgow streets where they had grown up. Fine young men who ate out at the local café and married the girl next door.
‘We travelled more in hope than expectation,’ admitted Mr Bill. ‘Really nobody expected Celtic to win the cup. You were just happy to be there.’
Mr Quinn tells the programme: ‘When we turned up at the stadium, the weather was beautiful and we just strolled inside. There was no turnstiles and nobody asked you for your ticket.’
Such lax security allowed pickpockets to mingle with the fans. ‘There were stalls on the trackside selling beer,’ said Mr Bill.
‘I went up to get one with my jacket over my arm and turned round to find a guy in my inside pocket. But he got off his mark quickly.
‘Then we went up to our seats, which had pads on them in Inter colours but we were in the right ones. We sat level with the penalty box towards the end in which the three goals were scored.’
A far cry from the ring of steel that will likely be thrown around
Cardiff’s Principality Stadium on Saturday, June 3, when Juventus face holders Real Madrid in this year’s UEFA Champions League final.
6.25pm: As the match neared kick-off, the fans were unaware that back home the great city of Glasgow was a virtual ghost town. A famous newspaper photograph shows a view down a deserted Sauchiehall Street, something completely unheard of in those days.
With its great industrial sprawl, its reputation for hard men and poverty-blighted lives, for gangs, for drunkenness and for sectarianism, Glasgow appeared an unlikely setting for a fairy tale.
But for one night, everyone, it seemed, came together – glued to a television, either at home or huddled round the windows of television hire shops in the hope of glimpsing a sporting miracle.
Willy Maley, now a Professor of Renaissance Studies at Glasgow University, said: ‘My father worked in the Red Road flats at that time and he watched the
first half at the Radio Rentals shop on Springburn Road.’
6.30pm: German referee Kurt Tschenscher blew his whistle and the match was under way on time.
6.37pm: Within seven minutes of the start, Celtic’s dreams looked all but over. Inter scored a penalty – a 1-0 lead they were content to defend to the death using manager Helenio Herrera’s famous Catenaccio, or ‘doorbolt’ tactics. 7.15pm: Half-time. Inter were
still 1-0 up, and desperation was beginning to set in as the Italian champions’ more cynical, defensive approach survived a barrage of shots from Celtic’s fast-paced attacking style.
7.48pm: With the second half well under way, Celtic needed a spark of inspiration to break down Inter’s 11-man defence. Hope arrived in the 63rd minute when Jim Craig laid off a sublime pass for Tommy Gemmell to fire into the top of the net. The teams were level and the relief was palpable at the green and white end of the stadium.
8.09pm: Amid the lengthening shadows and with the game drifting towards extra time, delirium erupts! Just six minutes of normal time were left when Stevie Chalmers fired what proved to be the winning goal for Celtic. The score is a personal triumph for the young striker, who almost died from a deadly strain of tuberculosis aged 20 before he ever pulled on a pair of boots for Celtic.
His late deflection silences Inter’s expectant support, sparking jubilant scenes on the Celtic terraces. Mr Bill said: ‘You knew that was it. Everyone was jumping about celebrating. It was so near the end that lots of fans began making their way down the front to work out how to scale the moat at full-time.’ 8.15pm: The final whistle sounds, triggering a simultaneous explosion of joy in Lisbon and Glasgow. Fans in kilts and Tam O’Shanters race onto the pitch to embrace their stars. Mr Quinn said: ‘I remember thinking going on the pitch wasn’t a good idea. I was a coward, plus I hadn’t brought my trunks with me. So we made our way along towards where the trophy was going to be presented. It was the best move we ever made.’ 8.30pm: Grown men were in tears as an exhausted Celtic captain Billy McNeill hauled himself up to the podium to receive the European Cup, the first Scottish, British and northern European team to hold the famous trophy aloft.
Mr Quinn said: ‘We ended up just a few feet down from Billy McNeill when he lifted it. I had to move a giant Inter flag out the way so I could get a picture on my wee camera. It only took eight photos, so I needed to get it right.’
Mr Fryars summed it up: ‘It’s a frozen-in-time moment which will remain in my mind until the day I die.’
10pm: Later that same evening, many fans had packed onto buses and were heading to the airport, ready to fly back from this adopted paradise to the more familiar stone tenements and modernist high rises of their home city.
In the pubs of Glasgow, the celebrations were only just beginning as the retelling of a famous victory grew arms and legs as the beer and whisky flowed and the names of the victorious Lisbon Lions were cheered to the rafters. Closing time eventually arrived that night, but time has never closed on these memories.
A HOMECOMING
THE team were lauded as heroes by the thousands of fans who lined the streets to cheer their open-top bus as it wound through the streets of Glasgow on a victory parade. But the fans who followed them to Lisbon also found themselves strangely revered on their return.
Jimmy Quinn, who was back in Glasgow by 6am the next day, said: ‘I had to go straight to my work. I felt like I was in a dream. I was the only guy who had gone.
‘So many people asked me what it was like I nearly ended up with laryngitis.’
He eventually married his longsuffering fiancée a year later. ‘We honeymooned in Lisbon. No, no, it was a caravan in Girvan actually,’ he laughed.
Mr Bill raced to his local pub for opening time at 11am: ‘I went in and they all started singing my name! One guy said to me: “You should have been in here last night – it was brilliant”. I had to laugh.’
Not every fan’s memories are entirely free of regrets, however. Charlie Fryars later packaged up his scarf and sent it to Ghislaine at the Bar de la Gar, Nantes. ‘I never heard from her,’ he adds, with a wistful smile.
Glasgow 1967: The Lisbon Lions is on BBC One Scotland on Wednesday, at 9pm.