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Trivia
- This was the first year that the Soviet Union’s Football Federation had submitted teams for the European competitions and they were expecting to do well. Dynamo Kiev arrived at Turnhouse on the Monday evening and tranferred to Glasgow. Kiev shocked Celtic officials by turning up at Celtic Park to train at 7.30 in the morning on day of game.
- Kiev were in the middle of a winter shutdown and had not played since mid November. This was an excellent Kiev side who would go on to win USSR championships three times. Their star men were goalkeeper Bannikov and forward Bazilevitch. Left half Josef Sabo one of their other stars was injured whilst training and never made the team.
- This was a big test for Celtic. So far in all European matches they had yet to face a team of the undoubted quality possessed by the Kiev side and there was a good degree of kudos to be facing a quality Soviet Union team in their first year in the European game. In the end Jock Stein plumped for an unchanged side.
- This was the game during half time when 16 year old George Connelly went round the entire perimeter of the Celtic Park pitch doing keepy uppy with the ball and didn’t drop the ball once! The huge Celtic Park crowd looked on in awe of his talent and temperament.
- Celtic play in change strip of all green.
- Before the game new Celtic goalkeeper Bent Martin gave the crowd a ‘display’ of goalkeeping skills.
- Bobby Murdoch gives one of the first glimpses of his powerful play as a right half.
- McNeill out injured, Murdoch is the captain.
- John Hughes missed a penalty.
- Jim Craig now training full time with first team despite still being a student at Glasgow University.
- This was the biggest crowd (64,000) to attend a European game at Celtic Park up to this date.
- Soviets bar Catholics gifts to churches in USSR (see article below).
Review
Celtic did not miss their influential captain McNeill and his replacement John Cushley was an excellent defensive barrier with John Clark.
Kiev looked sharp in the opening stages but their experienced keeper Bannikov blundered in 27 minutes when he allowed a 35 shot by Gemmell to slip in at the post. Shortly after that John Hughes sent a penalty over the bar much to the despair of the Celtic fans.
In the second half Murdoch scored with two powerful shots and hit the bar with a third as Celtic continued to dominate
After the game the Kiev coach Viktor Maslov complained about the German referee.
This was Celtic’s 24th successive game without defeat and 64,000 fans paid £20,000 to watch them. It was clear that Jock Stein and his men were going places.
Teams
Celtic:
Simpson; Craig, Gemmell; Murdoch, Cushley, Clark; Johnstone, Gallacher, McBride, Chalmers, Hughes
Scorers: Gemmell (27), Murdoch 2 (64, 84)
Dynamo Kiev:
Bannikov, Shchegolkov, Sosnikhin, Ostrovsky, Myedvid, Turyanchick, Bazilevitch, Syeryebryannikov, Puzach, Biba, Khmelnitsky.
Referee: C. Baumgarten (W. Germany).
Attendance: 64,000
Articles
- Match Report (see end of page below)
Pictures 
Articles
Evening Times 13th January 1966
Glasgow Herald 13th January 1966
The night George Connelly took the ball for a walk
https://www.celticfc.com/news/2022/january/12/the-night-george-connelly-took-the-ball-for-a-walk/
By Joe Sullivan
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It was on this day 56 years ago, on January 12, 1966 that Celtic beat Dynamo Kyiv 3-0 and headed towards a 4-1 European Cup-Winners’ Cup quarter-final aggregate win.
This was the night that a 16-year-old George Connelly thrilled the crowd with an astonishing display of ball juggling – walking around the perimeter of the playing field without letting the ball drop.
And to mark the occasion we revisit a Celtic View sit-down with the Celtic legend when his biography was published in 2007
THEY were the pretenders to the throne of the Lisbon Lions but, there was no pretence about this group of players whatsoever, as the 1960s melted into the ‘70s the assumption was ‘when’ they would take up the mantle, rather than ‘if’.
The ‘they’ in question were a bunch of lads known collectively as ‘The Quality Street Gang’ and individually each of them was still a frightening prospect as the rest of Scottish football looked on and wondered when the Celtic monopoly was going to end.
There was George Connelly, Lou Macari, Kenny Dalglish, Danny McGrain and Davie Hay – added to that there were the likes of Vic Davidson, Paul Wilson, David Cattenach and John Gorman.
The signs were that the championship was going to take up a permanent residency at Celtic Park and, the legend goes, that this reserve side was denied the chance to enter the old Second Division and gain more experience in case they actually won it.
George Connelly.jpg
Arguably the most talented, undeniably the most unruffled and certainly the most enigmatic of this bunch was George Connelly who hailed from the coalfields of Fife.
He was already the stuff of legend before he even kicked a ball for the first team thanks to an exhibition of keepy-up in front of a 64,000 crowd who had gathered for Celtic’s European Cup-Winners’ Cup tie against Dynamo Kyiv on January 12, 1966 when he was still only 16-years-old.
He made his debut in April, 1968 and was a regular in the team by 1970 but by September 1975 he had played his last game for Celtic.
In between times there had been highs like dispossessing John Greig before scoring in the 1969 Scottish Cup final 4-0 win over Rangers and playing a crucial role in Celtic’s triumphant double-header with Leeds United in the 1970 European Cup semi-final (below, scoring at Elland Road).
Connelly Elland Road.jpg
It seems though, that for every high there was a low, for every peak a trough and Connelly’s walk-outs, from both Celtic and Scotland, became as legendary as his performances on the park.
Since then, he has led a hermit-like existence but the turmoil of the lost years have now been unearthed by the player himself in Celtic’s Lost Legend: The George Connelly Story, the book we thought we would never see.
George broke the habit of half-a-lifetime by returning to Celtic Park not once but twice recently – first, for a half-time appearance at the recent UEFA Champions League win over AC Milan, and then to officially launch the book at Paradise.
He said: “When I first started the book I knew I had to be honest so that’s how I approached it.
Connelly book.jpg
“Sometimes it was painful as there a few things I didn’t want to recall but other things in the book brought back happy memories such as talking about big games and such. There were parts that I didn’t enjoy all the same.
“I feel better now for this experience though and I got a lot of things off of my chest – I talked about things that I haven’t talked to anybody about before.
“I’ve had this book idea in mind for over 20 years and people have been asking me about my life but it’s always been in my mind.
“I am getting on in years and I thought this was maybe a nice time to bring it out.”
The book though means George is back in the public eye and he has always been notoriously shy of media attention – not a trait that goes hand-in-hand with launching a biography.
He said: “I’m finding it fairly easy just now and I’m quite enjoying it all. I know I was a bit of a shy lad when I was playing football but I can handle the press and media a lot better now than ever before.”
Rather amazingly though, he did approach his recent re-appearance at Celtic Park to make the Paradise Windfall draw with some trepidation.
Connelly Celtic Park.jpg
He said: ““It feels like I’ve been welcomed back into the family, it made me feel good because when I came up here at first I didn’t know how I was going to be received.
“I was really pleased with the reception I got when I did the half-time draw.
“It was a worry to me as to how I would be received. I thought that people would hold the walk-outs and such like against me.
“I quit the game when I was only 26 and it was a worry leading up to the AC Milan game but everything turned out fantastic.”
He added: “In recent years I’ve been keeping in touch with what was happening at the park because my son David got a season ticket.
““I found myself watching the games again so that I could talk to him about them.
“I’ve always followed the football and liked it but I really started watching it again and starting to love it once more when my son David started to go to Celtic Park.
“My son’s in Australia now but Peter Lawwell has told me I can come up to the park any time and he’s told me not to be a stranger.
“I’m in touch with Davie Hay quite a bit and he wants me to come along to games.
“Previously I didn’t keep in touch with anybody. I spoke to Bobby Lennox on the phone and I was always invited through all the time by my former team-mates but I never really kept in touch with them on a regular basis.
“But I’m back in the fold again so to speak and we’ll see what happens from here.”
He added: “I’m a part-time taxi driver just now and I’m just going to take it day by day. I’m not going to project and look forward and I’m a fair age anyway now so I’m just going to take each day as it comes.
“My biggest regret would be reaching my peak and only having a couple of seasons there.
“I would have liked to have been at the top a lot longer.”
Brogan & Connelly.jpg
GEORGE CONNELLY PROFILE
BORN: March 1 1949
POSITION: Defender/midfielder
CAREER: Tulliallan Thistle 1963, Celtic (provisional, July 9 1964; full, June 19 1965), Falkirk (loan, July 14 1976), free October 18 1976, Tulliallan Thistle (August 11 1978), Sauchie FC (March 4 1982)
HONOURS:
League Championship 1968/69-1973/74;
Scottish Cup 1968/69, 1970/71, 1971/72, 1973/74, 1974/75.
League Cup 1968/69, 1969/70, 1974/75.
INTERNATIONAL RECORD: 2 full Scotland caps.
CELTIC RECORD: 254 appearances, 13 goals.
