Games, goals and Col Gaddafi: the 1984 tour
Forget Marbella training camps, Mike McGrath recalls when Ron Atkinson took United squad to Libya
When Manchester United recently cancelled their plans for a warmweather training camp in Qatar – citing simmering political tension in the Middle East after the American assassination of Iran’s top military general – the irony was not lost on the class of 1984.
Back then, the club had thought nothing of packing the players off on a trip to Libya, a country under the brutal dictatorship of Colonel Gaddafi. The opportunity came about because an FA Cup defeat at Bournemouth created gaps in United’s schedule.
“We ended up going to Libya for a friendly while the later rounds were being played,” recalled former United defender Arthur Albiston. “You don’t want to be playing on a trip like that; you want to be playing in the cup.”
With Ron Atkinson as manager, however, while the rest of the country was enjoying the fourth round of the cup, United played friendlies in Algeria, then travelled to Libya during the next FA Cup break.
At the time, Libya faced global hostility over Gaddafi’s regime. Protests had been held against him at the Libyan Embassy in London and relations with the UK were soon to deteriorate further. Suffice to say that Libya in 1984 was not high on the list of winter sun destinations – but nobody seemed to have told Atkinson.
“I didn’t think it was dangerous at all,” said Atkinson, who had previously taken his West
Brom team to play pre-season matches in Aleppo, Syria. “We were given assurances. Gaddafi had it all under control, didn’t he?
“There was a spell when teams were playing in Saudi Arabia. We played in Syria with West Brom. They wanted to promote the game out there and if we could fit them in we would.”
United Review, the club’s match-day programme, reported on the trips where Bryan Robson and his teammates played a series of friendlies.
“Algeria and Libya have been the destinations for trips designed not only to ‘spread the gospel’ but also as a means of recouping some of the income lost by the early exits from the domestic competitions,” read the
report.
In Algeria, United played against a team that included Rabah Madjer, who went on to win the 1987 European Cup with Porto and score in the final against Bayern Munich. The following month, they headed to Tripoli on a 55-hour round-trip to defeat a Libya XI, with goals from Frank Stapleton and Mark Hughes. “I can’t recall much about the match but I remember getting hit by one of those rubberband guns,” Atkinson said.
Rather than safety, one of the problems United encountered was having a post-match drink in an alcohol-free country.
“The hotel was in Tripoli,” Atkinson recalled. “It was managed by a lovely Scottish guy. Drink was out of the question but our physio had a bottle of whisky he kept in the skip. We had that and I remember as soon as they finished, the hotel manager smashed everything to smithereens. If you got caught even with an empty bottle you were in trouble.”
It will be quite different next month in Marbella, the destination chosen to replace the planned trip to Qatar.
Solskjaer’s players will be more likely to bump into reality TV stars than political hostility.
Atkinson says his team never met Gaddafi, even though it seemed like the perfect photo opportunity. Gaddafi, later in his life, was interested in buying the biggest stake in United in 2004 but failed to agree a price.
The midseason trip to Tripoli two decades earlier seemed low-key compared with current tours. “We wouldn’t have entertained it if we weren’t out of the cup,” Atkinson said.
Later that season, United beat Diego Maradona’s Barcelona in the European Cup Winners’ Cup, before losing to Juventus in the semi-finals. The excursion to Tripoli became a mere footnote on the season.
But even if the players felt that a friendly in Libya was a poor alternative to the FA Cup, it must have done the trick: United won the trophy the following season.