OUR YOUNG STARS WHO RULED THE CONTINENT
Nevin reflects on a nostalgic journey as he commemorates ‘the lost final’
FOR Pat Nevin, the search for footage of the lost final felt like a personal, bittersweet vigil. A sublime solo goal against Czechoslovakia in the final of the Under-18 European Championships in Finland helped to secure the only UEFA trophy won by a Scotland national team, in May 1982.
Nevin’s father, who passed away a decade ago, was never able share in the moment.
When his working day ended at British Rail, Patrick senior used to return home to take his son through an hour of keepy-ups, dribbling, penalty kicks and tricks close to their Easterhouse home in Glasgow.
He was there for the hard times during his boy’s professional career at Clyde, Chelsea, Everton and Scotland. He wasn’t there for one of the early highlights in Finland and that remains a source of some regret.
‘Dad saw almost all of my goals and followed my entire career,’ Nevin tells Sportsmail. ‘He only missed two huge occasions in my career. One was when I was at Chelsea and going for promotion to the top division and I made the winner at Grimsby and he was at my sister’s wedding.
‘The goal in the final in Finland was the other one.’
Nevin’s search for footage of the golden goal is the centrepiece of a documentary on the BBC Scotland channel this weekend.
‘The Lost Final’ is a nostalgic, at times moving, walk down memory lane to a time when an outstanding generation of young Scottish footballers winning a major international tournament barely made it on to the evening news bulletins.
In the pre-internet age, coverage of Andy Roxburgh’s team easing their way past Albania, Marco van Basten’s Holland, Turkey, Poland and Czechoslovakia was scarce to non-existent. And, when he embarked on a quest to track down highlights of the final before a 40th-anniversary reunion of the team at Hampden recently, Nevin held out little hope.
‘Back in 1982, dad couldn’t get to Finland and he’d have been reading reports from journalist Chick Young at the Evening Times to keep up,’ adds Nevin.
‘I was chatting to my wife about the programme and she said: “It would have been amazing for your dad to see this”. More than anything, that’s probably the one thing that strikes me.
‘I’ve told my brothers and sisters and they are dying to see it. But more than anything else, I wish my dad could see the documentary.’
A jinking, mesmeric Scottish winger in the old school tradition, Nevin scored over 100 goals in a senior career spanning 19 years. While his effort in the Under-18 final wasn’t his best goal, the significance of the strike which lit up Scotland’s only competitive tournament victory made it one he longed to see again. It proved a long and frustrating search.
‘I scored a lot of professional goals,’ said Nevin. ‘And I scored other goals in that tournament I have no memory of at all. But that one really stuck. It wasn’t my best goal, but it was one that helped Scotland win our one and only championship at international level. It’s up there.
‘I actually scored a much better goal earlier that season for Clyde against Albion Rovers. Craig Brown often says it’s up there with the best goals he has ever seen. The Celtic manager Billy McNeill had come to see me that day and I had a terrible game on rock hard ice. With five minutes to go I thought: “Bugger this”. I dribbled it from the halfway line past seven players and the keeper, stood on the line and tapped it in.
‘And as I ran back to my own half, I looked up at where Billy was sitting. He’d already gone...’
A talented wide player at Celtic Boys Club, Nevin was released at the age of 16 despite finishing the season as top scorer and player of the year. Sanguine over the rejection, he had already made up his mind to pursue a future in higher education before nailing down a ‘sensible job’.
Signing professional terms with Clyde under Brown, he was due to sit final exams the day after the final against Czechoslovakia. Understandably, he reasoned that Scotland would never make it that far.
‘I wrote a little bit about winning the tournament in my book, The Accidental Footballer,’ says Nevin. ‘But while this programme is based around me trying to find footage of the final, the real story is the quest to meet my former team-mates again.
‘It became a lovely experience. And through it I realised that winning that tournament meant quite a lot to a lot of people.
‘Things happened very quickly for me after that game. I moved from Clyde and became player-ofthe-year at Chelsea.
‘But I realise now that for a lot of the guys involved, the final had real importance in their careers.
‘Paul McStay said how much confidence he derived from winning that tournament. Billy Livingstone played for Wolves and said to me how important the tournament had become to him.
‘For some of the players whose career didn’t flourish as they would have hoped, it became more important as the years went on.’
Spoiler alert. While the story of the lost footage is best left for the climax of the documentary, the reunion of old team-mates — including Dave Bowman, Peterhead boss Jim McInally and Alloa’s Brian Rice — is an emotional watch. At heart ‘The Lost Final’ is the story of a group of young men defying the odds in a very Scottish football fairytale.
‘You know what footballers are like,’ grins Nevin. ‘We try to be a bit cool, especially when we haven’t seen each other for 40 years.
‘But quite a few of the players have been in touch since the reunion at Hampden to say how much it meant to them. Even just getting together and talking about it and having the chance to share our experiences.
‘The programme is brilliantly named. It really is the lost final.’
While the Dutch side beaten by the Scots in the group stage promoted Van Basten to the senior ranks and won the 1988 European Championships, Scotland’s Under-18 side travelled to the World Youth Cup in Mexico the following year and, after beating the hosts in front of 86,582 fans at the Azteca Stadium, lost to Poland in the quarterfinals. Many went on to play for the senior team in major tournaments.
‘It wasn’t as if we burned up and disappeared after the finals,’ adds Nevin. ‘That group in Finland should have included Brian McClair, Eric Black, Neale Cooper, Dave MacPherson, Billy Davies, Kenny Black and Bryan Gunn. Another one who doesn’t get a mention is Steve Clarke.
‘We were all around the same age at the same time and a few of that team went on to play a lot of games for Scotland and qualify for tournaments.’
In 1992, Andy Roxburgh — coach of the Under-18s — took the senior team to the European Championships for the first time. Nevin, McInally, McStay, McClair and Bowman were all part of a squad which competed with seven of the best sides in Europe.
‘We held our own against world champions Germany, the European champions from the Netherlands and beat the Soviet team in a European championships with only eight teams,’ says Nevin. ‘We did all right.
‘I wouldn’t use the word golden to describe our generation because to be golden you need to win something later. But it was a really good generation which produced a lot of good players. I think we did all right…’
The Lost Final, Sunday 7.15pm, BBC Scotland channel and iPlayer.
My goal helped Scotland win our only international championship