This article first appeared in Issue 17 which was published in September 2020.
“There is a time and a place for all new things,” wrote Geoffrey Green in the summer of 1970. The Times football correspondent had just watched a tournament finale in which the winners’ football “spoke a delicate, dancing language of its own”. They “stroked the ball around in tight little circles, teasing and at times humbling their foe”. Green, who had been reporting on the game since the 1930s, was impressed with this innovative approach, concluding that “all this is good for football”.
Thoughts turn to the great Brazil side of that year’s Mexico World Cup. Yet the time Green mentions was May, not June, and the place not Mexico, but Milan. There, Feyenoord defeated Celtic 2-1 in the European Cup final, becoming the first Dutch team to win the tournament and ushering in a period of intense change in football. History has credited Ajax with revolutionising the game in the 1970s, but the decade began with Feyenoord. Modern football, it can be argued, starts here.
Read on for:
- How Feyenoord, not Ajax, lit the fuse of modern football
- Why Celtic’s wild European run nearly died on a coin toss
- The Battle of Britain that saw Celtic out-think and out-fight Leeds
- The Dutch league clash that birthed Total Football
- Why complacency meant Celtic let a second European Cup slip away
Celtic, beaten finalists in 1970, had by that point already claimed one of the most significant victories of the era, of course. Three years earlier, Jock Stein’s team famously became the first British winners of the European Cup, destroying Helenio Herrera’s Internazionale, if not quite the catenaccio system they had come to symbolise. In doing so they also became the first northern European winners of the tournament, which until 1967 had been shared between Spanish, Portuguese and Italian sides. It was a pivotal moment.
“Everybody at the time looked up to Italy and Spain,” recalled Wim Jansen, who played in Feyenoord’s midfield in the 1970 final. “The moment a club from a different country won the European Cup, I think everybody from these countries started to believe they could win it too.”
At the beginning of the 1969-70 European Cup, Celtic had established themselves among the elite of Europe. Feyenoord were on an upward trajectory, having won a league and cup double in 1968-69, but their European campaign that season ended in a first round defeat to Newcastle United and they were not considered contenders. The club made an ambitious coaching change, however, appointing the enigmatic Ernst Happel as the campaign began.
Strong starts and a final toss of the coin
Both eventual finalists started the tournament strongly. The Dutch champions disposed of KR Reykjavik 16-2 on aggregate, whilst Celtic defeated Basel 2-0 at home after a goalless draw in Switzerland. The draw for the second round was more interesting, pairing Feyenoord with the holders, AC Milan, and Celtic with five-time finalists Benfica.
Celtic produced a sparkling performance in the first leg at home, winning 3-0 and, as the Glasgow Evening Times put it, securing a place in the quarter-finals “unless the age of miracles is still with us”. It very nearly was. In Lisbon, Benfica levelled the tie at 3-3 in stoppage time. With no further scoring in extra time, the winner was decided by the toss of a coin in the referee’s office. The task was left to the two great captains: Billy McNeill the first man from Britain to lift the European Cup, and Mario Coluna, who had played in all five of his club’s previous finals. McNeill called heads and later described the scene: “The referee failed to catch the coin after he had spun it, and as it fell it hit him on the foot, bounced against the wall, then rolled around the floor on its edge until it went twisting down, and came up heads.”
Celtic were through but it was hardly a fitting way to decide the winner. Among the dissenters was the club’s own chairman, Sir Robert Kelly, who called it “a most unsatisfactory way to end such a vital tie in any competition”. Kelly had been an opponent of the practice since the 1960s when, as president of the Scottish Football Association, he petitioned UEFA to abandon it. Now he could push for change from the moral high ground. It was the last night on which a European Cup tie would be settled by the toss of a coin. UEFA introduced penalty kicks the following season. The first victims of the new system, naturally, were Scottish: in the next Cup Winners’ Cup Aberdeen lost a shootout 5-4 to Honved, whose goalkeeper scored the decisive kick.
Feyenoord’s statement victory over AC Milan
Feyenoord, meanwhile, reached the quarter-final with a statement victory over AC Milan. Few gave the Dutch side much hope, partly due to Milan’s 4-1 dismantling of Ajax in the previous season’s final. “I cannot see Feyenoord doing more than putting up a good fight,” wrote Brian Glanville in the Football Post. Milan won 1-0 in the first leg at San Siro but the game was notable for Feyenoord’s strong containing game, with Jansen particularly effective.
On his arrival in Rotterdam ahead of the return leg, Italian coach Nereo Rocco was wary: “The impression we had of the Dutch game is not correct. Ajax played without brains in Madrid [during the 1969 final]. Feyenoord worked very sensibly in Milan.” They worked very sensibly in Rotterdam too. Jansen cancelled out the deficit after six minutes, looping a cross over the goalkeeper and in off the far post. Then, in the 81st minute, Wim van Hanegem capped a controlling midfield performance by heading the winner. “They dominated us,” Rocco said after the full-time whistle. “We are still wondering why.”
The rapid progress of the Dutch game took the rest of Europe by surprise. What did Feyenoord do differently that season? “Nothing much!” says Ellen Mannens, a Dutch journalist and Feyenoord supporter. We met during her research for a book celebrating the 50th anniversary of the European Cup victory (Forever the First) in which she gathered the stories of players and supporters. “Ernst Happel gets a lot of the credit but the players say that the trainer the season before him [Ben Peeters] made them stronger. He put on extra training for strength.”
The foundations of Dutch ascendancy
This physical strength, allied to technical and tactical nous, was the foundation of the Dutch ascendancy in the 1970s, and came together successfully for the first time during Feyenoord’s run. In his magnificent examination of football in the Netherlands, Brilliant Orange, David Winner sets out the factors that account for the country’s rapid rise, from professionalisation in 1954 to improved diet and cultural liberalisation. Despite being Dutch champions and representing the country internationally, Feyenoord were still adjusting to the professional arena. Mannens tells the story of Joop van Daele, a substitute throughout the run to the final. A versatile defender, Van Daele also worked at the telecom company PTT (making him, quite literally, a utility man). Unfortunately, his playing commitments across Europe exhausted his annual leave so that when Feyenoord were invited to The Hague to celebrate their eventual victory, Van Daele had to work instead. After signing a professional contract in the summer of 1970, the bespectacled defender (he actually played wearing glasses) came off the bench to score the winning goal in the Intercontinental Cup against Estudiantes, losing his specs in the ensuing celebrations. The incident spawned a worrying number of novelty records by Dutch artists.
After eliminating the holders, Feyenoord reached the final without too much fuss; “solid if unspectacular”, was how John Motson and John Rowlinson put it in their 1980 book on the history of the European Cup. They defeated East Germans Vorwärts Berlin in the quarter-final, then Legia Warsaw in the semi-final, using the same formula: a disciplined display in eastern Europe followed by a decisive victory in Rotterdam. Feyenoord played a well-balanced 4-3-3 formation with pace, power and guile in the right areas. A strong defence was built around captain Rinus Israel, behind a midfield core of Jansen (“canny and thoughtful” – David Winner), Van Hanegem (“tough-tackling, visionary passing genius”) and Franz Hasil (“a credit to the great traditions of Austrian football” – Hugh McIlvanney).
Hasil was brought to the club by his compatriot Happel in the summer of 1969 and proved key in transforming Feyenoord from a competent domestic side to European challengers. The attacking trio was formed by outside forwards Henk Wery and Coen Moulijn (described jointly as “clever and resourceful” by Glanville) and centre forward Ove Kindvall, the closest thing to a star name in the side. The Swede was the focal point, an intelligent, prolific goalscorer at club and international level. In the 1969-70 edition of the Ballon d’Or – awarded at the mid-point of the European Cup campaign – Kindvall placed joint-fourth, level with Johan Cruyff. Feyenoord were hardly an undistinguished side that appeared from nowhere.
“Britain’s Hopes Rest with Leeds”
If Feyenoord’s unglamorous ties in the latter stages caused them to fly under the radar somewhat, the same could not be said of Celtic, who were drawn against Fiorentina in the quarter-finals. Celtic were the only previous winners left in the competition but they were not favourites. That title belonged to Don Revie’s Leeds United, who had bulldozed SK Lyn Oslo and Ferencvaros to reach the quarter-finals, scoring 24 goals and conceding none. Leeds won England’s First Division the previous year with a record 67 points but also gained a reputation for tough, uncompromising play. During the 1969-1970 season, perhaps with the pressure off, Revie sacrificed some of the grit for glamour. He brought in forward Allan Clarke for a British record £165,000, pairing him with Mick Jones up front, and he allowed Peter Lorimer more freedom to attack.
Leeds kept only eight clean sheets all season, compared with 24 the season before, playing with more flair, movement and variety. “Britain’s Hopes Rest with Leeds”, proclaimed Football Post’s headline in its preview of the quarter-final ties. “There is no obvious weakness in the Leeds team,” noted Glanville, who predicted a straightforward victory against their opponents, Standard Liege. His assessment was correct – the Belgians were defeated 1-0 in both legs, Lorimer and Johnny Giles with the goals.
Glanville was less optimistic about Celtic’s chances: “Fiorentina must be favoured to beat Celtic, largely because they are so much more reliable in defence.” This forecast was not so accurate. Celtic recorded another stylish 3-0 victory in the first leg, with Glanville later acknowledging that “Celtic struck a blow for football in general, and Scottish football in particular, by thrashing a Fiorentina team cravenly huddled in defence.”
Celtic had taken a significant step toward the semi-final but their defensive collapse in the previous round reminded observers that qualification was not a formality. Stein prepared his team with this in mind. “We have learned the bitter lesson of Lisbon and Benfica,” he said before the match. “There will be no repeat tonight. If the game calls for fast, attacking football we can play it. If it needs close defence we can also adapt ourselves.”
Beating the Italians at their own game
His line-up suggested that the lesson had been learned. Forward John Hughes was replaced by 20-year-old defender George Connelly, making his first European start. Connelly – a tall, elegant player, often likened to Franz Beckenbauer – was moved into midfield, forming a trio with Bertie Auld and Bobby Murdoch. The plan was to defend further up the field, an approach that surprised seasoned spectators such as John Rafferty of the Scotsman: “This was typical original thinking by Stein for one could not remember previously hearing football tacticians advocate defending in the midfield. And it was strange that it should be so, for military tacticians had for long defended the most suitable line and not the last one.” Stein also instructed his players to hit the ball out of play if they needed to regroup and to pass the ball back to goalkeeper Evan Williams to slow the pace of the game. Multiple sources report that Tommy Gemmell was, bizarrely, penalised for passing the ball back to Williams too many times.
Celtic stifled the game in midfield and, despite the loss of a goal before half time, frustrated Fiorentina to see out a 3-1 aggregate victory. The Evening Times was impressed that a Scottish side could beat the Italians at their own game, claiming, perhaps hyperbolically, that “Celtic invented a new type of game. They had to defend, but they took it a step further.” The performance in Florence counters popular mythology around Jock Stein’s Celtic: that they were the relentless, swashbuckling upholders of attacking football. They could stink the place out too and still be praised for it. Stein was, above all, a pragmatist. “This is not the situation for genius,” he concluded. “Just good common sense.”
The semi-finalists were confirmed: Leeds, Celtic, Feyenoord and Legia Warsaw. Conspicuous by their absence were Italian, Spanish and Portuguese teams. The 1970 tournament was the first not to feature a single Latin side at this stage and it would take 15 years for one (Juventus, in Heysel) to lift the trophy again.
Celtic, Leeds and the Battle of Britain
The draw paired the two British sides, generating the first clash between English and Scottish champions in European competition. Leeds were considered heavy favourites by most observers, particularly those in England. Revie’s side were enjoying an excellent season, cruising through the earlier rounds of the European Cup and FA Cup and leading the First Division as winter turned to spring. When the draw was made, the opinion of Ken Jones in the Daily Mirror was representative: “Leeds’ chances of winning the European Cup were strengthened when they drew Celtic in the semi-final… It is hard enough to try and beat Leeds twice in one season never mind twice in a fortnight.”
Anticipation built ahead of the first heavyweight Battle of Britain – so did Leeds’ fixture list. Between the second leg against Standard Liege and the first against Celtic, they played five games in 10 days, adding to their own workload by needing two replays to see off Manchester United in the FA Cup semi-final. Revie was forced to prioritise either the league or Europe. He chose the latter, sending out a team of reserves against Derby County immediately before the first Celtic tie and coming away with a 4-1 defeat and a £5,000 fine from the Football League for fielding an uncompetitive team. With the exception of Norman Hunter, who was absent through injury, Leeds’ strongest side was kept fresh for the visit of Celtic on April Fools’ Day.
Don Revie and Jock Stein, two of the greatest managers of the era, were friends as well as adversaries. Yet that didn’t stop the pre-match mind games. Stein sought to play on Leeds’ well-publicised fatigue. “Before the game, he actually commented to me that some of our players were looking tired,” revealed Billy Bremner in Paul Harrison’s biography. “Clever, psychological stuff.” Revie, for his part, kindly offered to resolve a kit clash of his own creation. Both teams normally wore white socks and Revie insisted that Celtic change, despite previously reassuring Stein that it would not cause a problem. Different versions of Revie’s “solution” have been passed down by observers. In one he offered a choice of blue or red socks – not the favourite colours of the Celtic support. Stein opted for red, reasoning that they would show up orange under the floodlights and give his side the appearance of an Irish tricolour.
A tactical masterclass by Stein
The shenanigans strengthened Stein’s creation of a siege mentality. He revelled in his team’s underdog status and even made a virtue of Celtic’s inconsistency. “Leeds know nothing about our team while we know everything about theirs,” he told the Evening Times the night before the game. “It will be a matter of our flexibility against Leeds’ predictability.” This point was underscored by his selection of George Connelly, a surprise itself, heightened by the youngster’s deployment in an advanced midfield role. The move surprised even Connelly, who described it in his autobiography as “a culture shock considering I’d been turning out at centre-half for the reserves”. By the time anybody noticed, he had already given Celtic the lead. Forty-five seconds after kick-off, a loose ball fell into his path on the edge of the Leeds box and his deflected shot squirmed past Gary Sprake and into the bottom corner. It was the first away goal Celtic had scored in the campaign, and the first Leeds had conceded at all.
Leeds never really recovered. The trio of Bobby Murdoch, Bertie Auld and Connelly dominated the midfield (“it is not often Bremner and Giles have to play second fiddle in this way”, wrote Geoffrey Green), controlling the game and limiting Leeds to long balls forward, which were dealt with easily by Billy McNeill (“an immovable lighthouse at the heart of defence”). Winger Jimmy Johnstone had one of the finest games of his career, relentlessly driving his team forward, “as elusive as a piece of wet soap in a shower bath”. It was another tactical victory for Stein as Celtic took a 1-0 lead back to Glasgow.
The Scottish press could barely contain their glee. Since the draw was made they had seen their game disparaged by colleagues across the border – now was not the time for magnanimity. Celtic “whipped this “most professional” of teams in every phase of the game”, wrote Malcolm Munro in the Evening Times. “They were so impressive in doing so that even the caramel-chewing journalists (they talk as though they are chewing caramels) who cannot see past England and anything English were silenced by Celtic’s treatment of ‘the machine’.” This assessment of Celtic’s performance was largely shared by the English press (those that did not choke on their caramels, presumably) but, as Green cautioned: “They have won the battle, they have yet to win the war.”
The second leg of the European cup semi final of 1970 saw a crowd of 136,505 watch Celtic defeat Leeds again in an epic encounter. The Hoops had made it to their second European cup final. pic.twitter.com/zK76SgchjE
— Lisbon Lion (@tirnaog_09) November 18, 2025
The second leg took place at Hampden a fortnight later, having been moved from Celtic Park to meet demand for tickets. An astonishing 136,505 people were in attendance – a record for a continental match that will surely never be broken. The vast majority were silenced after 14 minutes when Bremner strode forward and crashed a shot from 30 yards into the top corner to level the tie. An entertaining, even first half was played out with no further scoring and the Battle of Britain was deadlocked with 45 minutes to play. Two decisive moments settled the tie and each can be traced to one of the managers. Celtic started the second half strongly and equalised quickly through John Hughes, who beat Jack Charlton to head in from Auld’s cross. Stein recalled Hughes, who had missed the first leg, with explicit instructions to go up against Charlton, remembering the problems he caused the Leeds defender in a 1965 match between the Scottish League and English League during which he scored twice.
Revie also made an important tactical modification, designed to limit the impact of Johnstone after his thrilling first leg performance. Footage exists of his pre-match instructions to Terry Cooper and the returning Norman Hunter, telling them to double-up on the Celtic winger. Revie concludes that Johnstone will be forced to pass square, so Leeds can “pick up the people with less ability”. He was correct about Johnstone – but the plan led to Celtic’s winning goal. Minutes after Hughes’ equaliser, the little forward jinked into the box from the right flank before coming up against Cooper and Hunter, who had raced over from centre-half to support his full-back. Johnstone cut the ball back into the vacant space for his onrushing teammate with “less ability” – in this case one of Celtic’s finest ever players, Bobby Murdoch – who drove a powerful shot under substitute keeper David Harvey to put Celtic 3-1 ahead on aggregate.
There was no way back for Leeds. “Rise up in thunderous acclaim this morning and hail the greatest team in Britain,” proclaimed the Daily Express, praising Celtic’s “exhibition of power-packed, confident, skilful football that left Leeds shattered and shaken”. Two key themes emerged from the post-match reaction: the surprisingly comprehensive nature of Celtic’s victory and the sense that the tie was a surrogate final. The fact that the final was still to be played seemed immaterial; Malcolm Munro had a typically forthright opinion on Celtic’s chances: “They’ll win it. THEY’LL SKOOSH IT.”
As the 1970 European Cup final approached, the end-of-season run-in of the two finalists could scarcely have been more different. Celtic secured the league title in March and played their last competitive game on 18 April, some two-and-a-half weeks before the final. By way of preparation Stein arranged friendly matches against Fraserburgh and Stenhousemuir, the former to raise funds for victims of a lifeboat disaster in the north-eastern fishing port earlier in the year. These they won by an aggregate score of 15-0.
Feyenoord were still involved in a title race with Ajax and travelled to Amsterdam on 26 April knowing a win would put them only three points behind the league leaders. The match changed the shape of the sport. The Rotterdam side led 3-1 with 20 minutes remaining but a late, Cruyff-inspired comeback levelled the game at 3-3 and effectively sealed the title for Ajax. Despite the positive result, Ajax coach Rinus Michels was displeased with the way his 4-2-4 shape lined up against Feyenoord’s 4-3-3. The problem was neatly summed up by the Algemeen Handelsblad newspaper: “Ajax lost the battle in midfield and with that the golden attacking quartet.” “We have to become tougher compared to Feyenoord,” said Michels. “I have to think about a solution.” He did, replicating Feyenoord’s 4-3-3 with the twist of one central defender pushing forward whenever possible. This system would form the basis of Total Football, the success of Ajax and the Dutch national team in the 1970s, and much of the game’s tactical development over the following 50 years. Intriguingly Jock Stein was in attendance, telling the Dutch press that he had learned a lot about Feyenoord but being coy on the details.
If Celtic’s preparations were low key, their supporters travelled to Milan in expectant mood. Some 20,000 made the trip, despite the threat of strike action by municipal employees which put the match in doubt. They were assisted by a handy travel section in the Celtic View, which included a guide to exotic Italian food (“PIZZA: open tarts backed with any number of fillings”) and a history of Milanese architecture. Those who remained at home could watch the match live on two of Britain’s three TV channels; BBC2’s music show featuring Glen Campbell and Bobbie Gentry was the alternative.
Feyenoord, meanwhile, could enjoy their underdog status as Celtic had done in 1967. “It’s Lisbon in reverse”, declared the Evening Times. Despite near-unanimous predictions of a comfortable Celtic win, Feyenoord captain Rinus Israel wrote a rousing column in De Telegraaf on matchday, headed “We will fight” and opening with the line: “Let me state one thing: we have the same chance of winning the European Cup as Celtic.” The newspaper also carried extensive details of the festivities planned in Rotterdam in the event of a Feyenoord victory – hardly a sign of a team with an inferiority complex.
The Final: Feyenoord 2 Celtic 1
Their optimism was justified. Celtic took the lead on the half-hour through Tommy Gemmell (his second European Cup final goal) but Israel quickly equalised. The game went into extra time and, three minutes from the end, Billy McNeill misjudged a long ball and Ove Kindvall nipped in to score the winner. This was not a case of the underdogs mugging a superior opponent against the run of play, however. “The score was a travesty,” said McNeill. “Two-one in extra time makes it seem close, but we know the real difference was about four goals. It was a whitewash. Everywhere that mattered we got stuffed.”
The match is a striking example of how much the game had changed in the three years since Celtic’s triumph in Lisbon. It both impressed and confused observers. The Glasgow Herald applauded the “surprisingly good Dutch team” and their “revelation of scientific football that shattered Celtic”. Milanese paper Il Giorno put it more poetically: “They humiliated Celtic with their clever ball control, doing what they liked with the Scottish bulls and twisting and turning like graceful toreadors.” Poor Malcolm Munro was forced to concede that Celtic had been “outclassed, outrun, outthought and outmanoeuvred”, adding, “you cannot play without the ball and Feyenoord saw to it that the Celts got precious little of it. Every man in the team was a master on the ball. Even the defenders were more adept at using it than the most skilful Scots.” If this was not quite the premiere of Total Football, it was perhaps the pilot episode.
Feyenoord show off their prize after defeating Celtic in the 1970 European Cup final. They became the first Dutch club to lift the coveted trophy. Ajax would then win the trophy for the following 3 seasons. It was the most successful period in Dutch football pic.twitter.com/AcjbUyiSWz
— The Cult of football (@ChrisCuthbert19) May 6, 2020
In La Stampa, however, Giovanni Arpino had major reservations. Throughout a despondent article headed “A Rough but Modern Football”, he lamented what he saw as a game of power, pace, errors and chaos. “Where are the ghosts of Di Stefano, Puskas, Pieró, Rivera, Mazzola, Suarez, the protagonists of a great period in the Champions Cup?” Romance and skill were being replaced by brute force and physicality. The sport he loved was changing before his eyes. The Corriere della Sera took a less sentimental view, drawing comparisons between the Dutch and Italian styles but noting an important difference: “constant movement in midfield.” It seemed Michels was right: it was all about the midfield.
Football meets geometry
It is interesting to note the different characterisations of Feyenoord’s style, described variously before the final as 4-2-4, 4-3-3, “total defence” and catenaccio. This suggests either an absence of appropriate vocabulary in the football lexicon or a system more complex than had previously required explanation. Perhaps the most apt description was provided by an A. Kane of Hemel Hempstead, who wrote an exasperated letter to the Celtic View: “Feyenoord’s maddening, clinical, almost military, precision of successive forward, diagonal, backward and triangular traceries was more in keeping with a geometrical exercise than a cup final. Irritating to watch to a degree – but it got them the European Cup.”
Reaching the final was a tremendous achievement for Celtic who, as in 1967, did so with an entire squad of Scots-born players. Yet the game is looked back on with a mixture of embarrassment, anger and regret, the inverse of Lisbon. It is difficult to pinpoint Jock Stein’s approach. His public words before the final were conflicting, sometimes praising his opponents, sometimes being dismissive and concluding with the hackneyed stock phrase of a manager who sees his team as heavy favourites: “Celtic’s biggest opponent tomorrow might be Celtic.”
Likewise, the explanations given by the players in autobiographies and interviews are contradictory. Their preparations were either comprehensive or complacent; they knew all about their opponents or they were surprised by them; they were concerned about bonus payments or not even aware of them.
What really happened? I asked Archie Macpherson. Among many roles in his long career, Macpherson commentated on the 1970 final for the BBC and was Stein’s biographer. Despite the passage of half a century, he vividly recalls the pre-match atmosphere in the Celtic squad: “There was an astonishingly lax attention to preparation. It seemed that they were almost in a holiday camp.” This attitude is unthinkable. Celtic had the opportunity to win a second European Cup and cement the club’s reputation as one of the continent’s elite. Macpherson believes the complacency “stemmed from the fact that Stein made a huge mistake in his assessment of Feyenoord. The word is, from the players themselves, that he was completely taken in by them.”
The Legacy: Space, Total Football and the changing era
Stein dismissed Celtic’s opponents as old, slow and mentally weak, with Van Hanegem written off as one-footed and one-paced. It set the tone. The decision to drop George Connelly and revert to a two-man midfield, perhaps in anticipation of an easier game than against Leeds, may also have played a part. The key on-field legacy of Feyenoord’s 1970 triumph was the concept of space. In Brilliant Orange, David Winner regularly returns to spatial creativity, architecture and planning when explaining the Dutch attitude towards football. He even names Chapter 14 “Dutch space is different”, the Cruyff reference in the chapter number underlining its significance. Football became about controlling space: making the pitch big when your team has the ball and small when the opposition has it.
The next phase in football, from 1970 to 1974, is considered the age of Ajax and with some justification – the Amsterdam side transformed the sport whilst winning three successive European Cups. Yet Feyenoord beat their rivals to the Eredivisie title twice during this period, in 1971 and 1974, adding the UEFA Cup the second time. They also supplied more players to the Dutch 1974 World Cup squad (seven) than any other side (Ajax supplied six). There was just something more lyrical about Ajax that captured the essence of the era: the balletic Cruyff versus the bandy-legged Van Hanegem.
In the 1974 World Cup, their joint venture would “do a Celtic”, comprehensively beating holders Brazil in the semi-final and entering the final as heavy favourites against West Germany, before throwing away an early lead to lose 2-1. “After the 2-0 against the world champions everyone was so relaxed and content that the next match didn’t seem to matter,” said Cruyff in his autobiography.
As for Scotland, there is an argument to be made that the 1970 European Cup final marked the end of the nation’s brief period in the sun, which peaked in 1967 during its very own summer of love. Celtic’s European Cup victory in Lisbon was reinforced by Rangers’ appearance in the Cup Winners’ Cup final and Kilmarnock’s in the Fairs Cup semi-final, as well as the national team’s win against the world champions at Wembley. After 1970 Scotland would never again have a representative in the final of Europe’s premier competition (at time of writing, at least…).
Over the next four years Celtic would reach two semi-finals and one quarter-final, but on each occasion were knocked out by the first A-list team they encountered. The pattern was consistent: comprehensive victories against the likes of Kokkola, Rosenborg and Waterford followed by disappointing eliminations at the hands of Ajax, Atlético Madrid, Inter and the less glamourous Ujpest Dozsa. With some isolated exceptions, the era of Scotland’s clubs appearing regularly in the latter stages of European competition was over.
1970 reconsidered
The changing nature of football meant that, from the 1970s, Scottish involvement in European football led to English success; the European Cup-winning Liverpool, Nottingham Forest and Aston Villa sides of the 1970s and 1980s all contained disproportionate numbers of Scots.
As for the performance of the national team in the intervening decades, the less said, the better.
Perhaps it is time to reclaim Celtic’s defeat in the 1970 final. Feyenoord’s victory may have been unexpected but only because of Scottish football’s tendency towards irrational optimism. They were a strong side from an emerging nation, a nation that would define the football decade. Celtic’s campaign provided some memorable moments and notable victories for the Scottish game, much like the club’s run to Seville in 2003, which is remembered more fondly by supporters.
Whilst the manner of defeat in the 1970 final undoubtedly stung, maybe the road to Milan should be reappraised.