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European Cup Winners Cup Semi-final: Second leg
agg: Celtic 1-2 Liverpool
link to First leg: Celtic 1-0 Liverpool
Trivia
- The second leg of Celtic’s second European semi final.
- Agg: Celtic 1-2 Liverpool
- This was a Tuesday night game. Celtic travelled south on the Monday and were based in Southport before the game.Hundreds of Celtic fans had came to Central Station to cheer the players off.
- Every player in the squad was fit and as usual in the big games Jock chose not to announce his team till just before the match. Jimmy Johnstone found himself dropped and Bobby Lennox moved to outside right to accommodate a line of Lennox, McBride, Steve Chalmers in at centre forward, Auld and Hughes on the left wing.
- The game was played in monsoon conditions which turned the pitch, which had already been covered in snow and lashed by rain in the past week, into a mud bath.
- There was controversy after Lennox has a goal ruled out in the last minute. Celtic fans riot after the final whistle and a hail of missiles rained down on the pitch. Chairman Bob Kelly stated after the game that Liverpool fans had started the bottle throwing after a foul by Tommy Gemmell on a Liverpool player.
- Over 100 people were injured and Neilly Mochan and Bob Rooney had to appeal to the Celtic fans to stop the missile throwing. Cans and bottles are said to have been lined up together and went round the pitch perimeter three times.
- Shankly jokes to Stein about taking the empty bottles back in lieu of payment.
- In the other semi final Borussia Dortmund overcame West Ham and went on to beat Liverpool in the final….played at Hampden Park.
- On the following night Celtic defeated Kilmarnock 3-2 in a Reserve League match at Rugby Park. The Celtic team was Martin, Craig, McCarron, Cattanach, Cushley, Brogan, Gallagher, Halpin, J. Quinn, H. Quinn, O’Neill. The Celtic scorers were Brogan pen, Cattanach, O’Neill.
Review
In the first half Liverpool were totally dominant and were a stark contrast to the unadventurous side which had came to Glasgow in the first leg.
Simpson made several great saves and Smith cracked a 30 yarder off the Celtic bar before Celtic found the sanctuary of half time.
In the second half Liverpool continued to attack and in 60 minutes Hughes was harshly adjudged to have fouled Strong outside the area. From the free kick Liverpool scored when Smith’s shot was deflected past the gallant Simpson.Five minutes later Liverpool were two up when the brave Geoff Strong, who was clearly injured, headed in a Callaghan cross.Celtic now faced ‘…..the biggest onslaught since the post office siege in Dublin in Easter 1916‘ (Evening Times 20 April 1966).
Celtic broke free later in the game as they desperately sought the goal that would take them threw on away goals. Chalmers hit the bar and Lennox missed from close in. With minutes remaining a long ball from Murdoch found Lennox tearing in on goal and he scored only for the referee to disallow the goal for suspected offside.
At the end of the game the 10,000 Celtic fans were incensed and launched a hail of bottles and missiles on to the field in anger.
The Belgian referee was deemed to have had a poor game and this game was a source of disappointment to Celtic players and fans for many years after.
Teams
Liverpool:
Lawrence, Lawler, Byrne, Milne, Yeats, Stevenson, Callaghan, Strong, St John, Smith, Thompson
Scorers: Smith (60), Strong (65)
Celtic:
Simpson; Young, Gemmell; Murdoch, McNeill, Clark; Lennox, McBride, Chalmers, Auld, Hughes
Scorers:
Referee: Joseph Hannet (Belgium)
Att: 54,208
Articles
- Match Report (see below)
Pictures
KStreet
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Quotes
“Jock, do you want your share of the gate money or shall we just return the empties?”
Bill Shankly to Jock Stein after the 1966 CWC tie with Celtic at Anfield
“The game at Parkhead was terrific. Bobby Lennox scored the winner but I missed one from under the bar. Heading was a strong point of mine but I missed a certainty. The ball came across and I got under it and headed over the bar instead of under it. We should have won. Bobby Lennox’s goal at Anfield should have stood. Even the referee admitted, after seeing the television, that he had made a mistake. The ball came through from midfield and I was furthest forward with Ron Yeats at my back and I flicked the ball beyond him.
“Bobby had started his run five yards behind me and ran past both of us to score but the referee gave offside. How he did I’ll never know. Liverpool ran out 2-0 winners to go through. I guarantee that we would have won the Cup- Winners’ Cup with the final at Hampden, which was virtually a home game for us. Borussia Dortmund beat Liverpool but we would have beaten them on the night.”
Joe McBride on playing Liverpool in Cup-Winner’s Cup semi-finals
Articles
Evening Times 20th April 1966
Bobby Lennox on the Liverpool v Celtic semi-final
Bobby Lennox:
“My recollection is that I had to pass my own team-mate Joe McBride as well as Liverpool’s defender Ron Yeats to get to the ball before I scored.
“We had won the first leg at Celtic Park 1-0 and that goal would have seen us lose 2- 1 on the night but go through on away goals.
“The reaction of our fans was the telling factor. They went loopy and threw cans and bottles when the final whistle sounded a couple of minutes after the referee’s decision.
“It was a terrible decision then and it’s a terrible decision now.
“I was so disappointed I didn’t even go to the final at Hampden to see how Liverpool got on against the Germans. And I wasn’t alone.
The ground was only one-third full as Borussia Dortmund lifted the cup with a 2-1 win.
“The funny thing is I remember being in town on the day before the game with Jimmy Johnstone and we bumped into Ron Yeats.
“He told us Celtic ought to have been in the final. But it’s easy to talk like that when you’ve already won the semi.”
Lennox scored the goal that beat Liverpool at Parkhead and relished the visit to the mecca of pop music and theatre of dreams Bill Shankly had started to construct at Anfield.
He said: “It was the time of the original Kop and the days before all seated grounds so the fans swayed back and forth as they sang `You’ll Never Walk Alone’.
“There were so many travelling fans in Liverpool that night in 1966 that our coach could barely make it into Anfield before the game.
“Afterwards a lot of people said to me that the defeat might have been a blessing in disguise because Celtic won the European Cup by beating Inter Milan in the final a year later and the legend of Lisbon Lions came into being.
“But I didn’t agree with that.
“If we had been allowed to get past Liverpool we would have gone into the European Cup as holders of the Cup Winners’ Cup.”
Outside there hotel in Southport before the match in 1966.
Photographer Tommy Gemmell, Posing Ian Young Ronnie Simpson and John Fallon.
From Celtic Programme 2 Nov 1995
