1984-11-07: Celtic 3-0 Rapid – Pages from the “Times”

Celtic……………………………. 3
Rapid Vienna…………………. 0
(Celtic win 4-3 on aggregate)

Celtic reached the quarter finals of the European Cup Winners’ Cup in a controversial and trouble torn tie at Parkhead. Their success was overshadowed by a bitter second half in which the Austrian team threatened to walk off.
Trouble started when Kienast was ordered off in the 72nd minute for an off-the-ball incident involving Burns, who had put Celtic 3-0 ahead. On the far side of the pitch, the Austrian substitute, Weinhofer, went down injured, apparently felled by a bottle from the terraces.
The match was held up for almost a quarter of an hour as the captain, Hans Krankl, attempted to lead his team off the field in protest. He was restrained by the coach and the game was completed without any further incident. The incident which provoked the trouble was the goal by Burns, who had tangled with the goalkeeper, Ehn, in the process of scoring, leaving the Austrian injured on the ground.
Celtic had taken the lead through McClair in the 32nd minute. MacLeod scored after 44 minutes with a fierce drive. Burns collected the third.
Celtic:- Bonner, McStay, MacLeod, Aitken, McAdam, Grant , Provan, P McStay, McClair, Burns, McGarvey.
Rapid Vienna:- Ehn, Leiner, Garger, Pregesbauer, Weber, Kienast, Kranjcar, Brauneder, Krankl, Brucic, Pacult.
Referee:- K. Johansson (Sweden)

Celtic have escaped a European ban but collected a £4,000 fine from UEFA following their European Cup Winners’ Cup tie against Rapid Vienna at Parkhead on November 7th.
UEFA fined Rapid £5,000 imposed a three-game touch-line ban on their coach, Otto Baric, and suspended Reinhard Keinast for four matches

By Clive White

UEFA did an amazing somersault yesterday and landed smack on their heads. Having fined Celtic £4,000 and Rapid Vienna £5,000 last week for misbehaviour during their European Cup Winners’ Cup second leg tie at Parkhead on November 7th, UEFA’s appeals committee in Zurich yesterday ordered Celtic’s home leg to be replayed at least 100 miles from Glasgow.
Celtic won the tie 4-3 on aggregate but now become the first British club to be ordered to replay a European tie.

The implication of UEFA’s first decision was that Rapid were guilty of a greater crime than Celtic for the misconduct of the Austrian players and officials. Celtic were fined because of two bottles thrown on to the pitch. It was accepted then that there was no proof that any player had been struck. The appeals committee, whose chairman was Sergie Zorzi, a Swiss, have now decided on the evidence of the Rapid club doctor that Rudolf Weinhofer suffered a head injury from an abject thrown on to the pitch.

Weinhofer had to leave the field after 80 minutes and could not be replaced as Rapid had already used their full quota of substitutes. “Therefore the match did not take regular course.” the communiqué said. It stressed that the ruling was definite and could not be contested again.

Celtic were astounded by the decision. “All I can say is that it is a bad decision – a ridiculous one, as anybody who saw the game will know.” Christopher White, a Celtic director, said. His father, Desmond White, the Celtic chairman, who was in Zurich yesterday, admitted last week that they were being fined “quite correctly” for the actions of a lunatic fringe. At the appeal they produced photographic and video evidence and Ernie Walker, the Scottish FA secretary, travelled to lend his support. The appeals committee also doubled the fine on Rapid.

Otto Baric, the Austrian coach, who has been banned from the touch-line for four matches after incidents in the match, said, “I am very happy that justice has won.” He thought that the ruling indicated how “biased” the original committee had been. Also banned for four matches was Rapid’s Reinhard Keinast.

Celtic must now attempt all over again to recover a 3-1 deficit and do so away from home, probably at Aberdeen, on December 11th or 12th. Newcastle and Sunderland are other possible venues. The last example of a match ordered to be replayed was 12 years ago in a tie between Borussia Munchengladbach and Internazionale. The Germans, who had been winning the tie 7-0 when an Inter player was struck by a missile, drew the replayed match and, having lost the away leg, went out of the competition.

Celtic’s European Cup Winners’ Cup second round, second leg tie with Rapid Vienna, which has to be replayed, will be played at Old Trafford on Wednesday, December 12th.
As UEFA had stipulated that the match should be played at least 100 miles from Glasgow, Manchester United’s 58,000 capacity home was chosen in preference to Aberdeen’s Pittodrie for security reasons.
Trouble flared at Parkhead when Rapid’s Keinast was sent off. Bottles were allegedly thrown onto the pitch, and Rapid claimed one of their players was hit.
UEFA last week ordered the tie, which Celtic won 3-0 (4-3 on aggregate) to be replayed, and doubled an original fine of £5,000 for “incorrect conduct" by the Rapid team.

Questions of balance confronts Celtic
By Hugh Taylor

Although Celtic are regarding their contest with Rapid Vienna at Old Trafford tonight more in the light of a crusade than a football match, they are concerned with protecting the good name of the club than with extracting revenge. This was made clear by their manager, David Hay, before he took his players south to Manchester for the replay of their European Cup Winners’ Cup second leg tie.
Celtic are deeply incensed not only with Rapid, who are alleged to have stooped at Parkhead to underhand tactics which ranged from brutal assault to play-acting, but with UEFA, “The order for us to replay a match we had won so well is one of the worst injustices in football.” Hay said.
While he may be seething inside, Hay is adamant that Celtic’s famous name must not be further tarnished – a bottle thrown at Parkhead led to the replay decision. He says “I would rather lose by playing well than win by shady methods.”
Yet Celtic players have never been keener to win and Hay can only hope that he has got the balance right. He says: “It isn’t easy, I have to ask the lads to be disciplined all through but at the same time point out to them that, as they are two goals down from the first leg in Austria, they will have to have a real go. Is that contradictory? I don’t know, but I do know that we can’t lie back”
Although Celtic failed to touch anything like their best form in losing to Aberdeen on Saturday, they have sparkled recently and even though Johnstone is not eligible for this game they have at their command enough forwards of class to ensure that their recent astonishing goal flow does not dry up tonight.
Rapid will play to an even tighter pattern than they did at Parkhead but the speed of McClair and unceasing probing of McGarvey plus the wing play of Provan and the cavalier raids of MacLeod, the defender with the powerful shot should give Celtic the variety of attack to pierce a defence which was anything but impregnable at Parkhead.
Rapid say they will be under strength, with their two most notable players Krankl and Panenka, missing because of injuries, but the cheering news for Celtic is that their centre back, McAdam, is fit.
Everything points to a Celtic win but the most fervent hope of everyone is that the Scottish followers, who want to see justice done and Celtic repeat their 3-0 victory, will not organise a lynching party if things are going wrong on the field. If they do, it could spell the end of Celtic in European football for a decade.

By Peter Ball
Celtic……………………………. 0
Rapid Vienna…………………. 1
(Rapid win 4-1 on aggregate)

A night which began with crowd fervour ended with crowd violence, to provide a depressing finale to Celtic’s ill-starred European Cup Winners’ Cup second round tie with Rapid Vienna. At Old Trafford last night, Celtic swept forward on an emotional charge, fell to the classic counter-attack, a single goal giving the Austrians victory on the night, and a 4-1 win on aggregate.
That was distressing enough for Celtic, whose sense of grievance was understandable at UEFA’s order to replay their second leg, which they won, 3-0. But whatever the rights and wrongs of UEFA’s original decision, made because an Austrian player reportedly hit by a bottle, the behaviour of Celtic’s fans last night left them sadly exposed, the Rapid goalkeeper Feurer being attacked by one fan during the second half and Pacult, the goals corer, by another as he left the field.
When the venue was named, a Scottish colleague asserted that the prospect of Celtic in full cry was a sight rarely matched in football. If the team was slow to live up to the boast, the fans were another matter.
The suspicion that their passion might prove their team’s undoing, however, was quickly fostered as a series of headlong assaults left them looking exposed should Rapid mount a quick counter-attack.
For 15 minutes, all the Celtic pressure produced nothing more threatening than an Aitken drive, which flashed over the bar, and an attempt by Burns which brought Feurer rather unnecessarily to full stretch: but that was enough to keep the crowd in full voice.
The 16th and 17th minutes saw expectation suddenly displaced by despair. Provan’s third corner of the night was only half cleared, McGarvey drove the ball across goal. Burns missed as he ran in and Aitken, coming in behind him, poked the ball against the post.
As it rebounded into the penalty area, Celtic were still caught up in the excitement of the moment, three players attempting unsuccessfully to recover and turn the ball back in.
They failed: and they were left exposed as a quick break by the Austrians transferred the ball to Pacult just inside his own half. The slow McGrain, the covering defender, failed in his attempt to trip the Austrian forward, who ran wide of the advancing Bonner and clipped it into the net.
That effectively was the end for Celtic. They continued to surge forward, but their individual runs betrayed a tactical naivety.
Before the game, the Celtic manager, David Hay, had said that even more important than winning was retaining the club’s name. The tackles of McGrain and Aitken were already putting it at risk when a fan, if he can be so called, did the club irreparable damage. He came out of the crowd to launch himself at Feurer, punching the goalkeeper into the back of the net.
It took five policemen to pull him off, and although Feurer recovered to make two splendid saves as football briefly reasserted itself, the end was again violent. Pacult being kicked in the groin as he left the field, by another Celtic supporter.
CELTIC: P Bonner: D McGrain, M MacLeod, R Aitken, T McAdam (sub:J Colquhoun), P Grant, D Provan, P McStay, F McGarvey, T Burns, B McClair.
RAPID VIENNA: H Feurer: L Lainer, K Garger, R Weinhofer, H Weber, K Braunder, Z Kranjcar, G Willurth (sub: M Keller), H Gross, (Sub: R Rotter), P Brucic, P Pacult.
Referee: L Agnolin (Italy)

A Celtic fan who punched the goalkeeper of Rapid Vienna, Herbert Feurer, was sentenced yesterday to three months imprisonment by magistrates at Manchester.
The fan, aged 31 from Coventry, who pleaded guilty to threatening behaviour, had run onto the pitch, swung a punch at the goalkeeper and shouted: “I am going to kill you.”

By Peter Ball

Yesterday morning Celtic awoke facing the fact of their exit from European Cup competition – not only from this season’s European Cup Winners’ Cup, which came from Wednesday’s 1-0 second round defeat by and, on the night much superior, Rapid Vienna side, but probably for several more years after the assaults on two Rapid players by men wearing Celtic favours,
Celtic can have no cause for complaints on the first count, their naive individualistic attacks making little impact, and their departure already seemed assured early in the second half when a supporter ran out at the Stretford end and launched himself at Feurer, the goalkeeper.
Feurer fell into the back of the net and it took five policemen to remove the struggling assailant. At the end of the game the goal scorer Pacult, the most talented forward on view, was allegedly kicked in the groin as he left the field.
The disciplinary committee of UEFA will meet on January 7th to decide on their action when they have studied the reports of Luigi Agnolin, of Italy, the referee, and Erki Poroila, the Finnish official observer, especially so as the game was being replayed after a bottle throwing incident at Parkhead in November, and they will almost certainly decide that condign punishment is called for and that Celtic, like Rangers, their Glasgow rivals, and Leeds United in the seventies, face a lengthy ban.
Rangers were banned for two years after their 1972 European Cup Winners' Cup final victory in Barcelona over Moscow Dynamo, after their supporters had invaded the pitch on several occasions, and Leeds were banned for five years in 1975 after their supporters had destroyed part of the stand at the Parc des Princes in Paris after their European Cup Final defeat by Bayern Munich.
UEFA have been accused of failing to respond adequately in such matters in recent years, and their pusillanimous behaviour over this game, in which they first fined Rapid for the players’ indiscipline at Parkhead and then, on appeal, ordered the game to be replayed did not help matters.
Celtic’s case, however, may well lead them to revert back to their earlier policy of bans, even though neither Rangers nor Leeds are exactly comparable precedents. But while the numbers involved justified the comments of Desmond White, the Celtic chairman, that it was the “action of two lunatics”, such attacks on players will clearly have to be cracked down on if UEFA are to be taken seriously.
It is hard not to feel some sympathy for the club, whose representation of Britain in European Cup competition since they became the first British team to win the European Cup in 1967 has generally been praiseworthy.
The game at Old Trafford began in an atmosphere so close to hysteria that such individual lunacies were hardly unexpected, especially as drunkenness is all too often the problem at football matches involving Scottish teams. In the words of one policeman inside the stand: “I have never seen so many drunks in one place before.”

Berne, (Reuter) – the European football governing body (UEFA)will meet on January 17th to discuss the disturbances during last week’s replayed European Cup Winners' Cup match between Celtic and Rapid Vienna, a spokesman said yesterday.

By Clive White

UEFA strongly denied yesterday that a decision had already been taken not to suspend Celtic from European competition following acts of crowd violence during their European Cup Winners' Cup tie against Rapid Vienna at Old Trafford last week.
In response to a story in one English newspaper that Celtic would be ordered only to play their European ties for the next two years 150 miles away from Parkhead, a UEFA official said: “That’s rubbish, pure speculation. Nothing will be decided until the disciplinary meeting on January 17th.”
All Desmond White, the Celtic chairman, would say was: “We do not talk about fairy tales.” Should this come true Celtic would be ecstatic, since they are only too aware of UEFA’s dwindling patience with British hooliganism.
However, there is a precedent of a sort for the assault by two spectators on Herbert Feurer, the Rapid goalkeeper, and Peter Pacult, the Rapid goal scorer. Following an attack by Real Madrid supporters on the referee and Gerd Muller, of Bayern Munich, in a European Cup tie in 1976, Real were ordered to play their next two matches away from home.

A Glasgow Celtic soccer supporter, who attacked a player at a European Cup Winners' Cup tie was jailed for three months by Strangeways magistrates, Manchester, yesterday.
The man, aged 31, of Essex, ran on to the pitch at Celtic’s match with the Austrian team, Rapid Vienna.
He broke away from the police who had restrained him and kicked Rapid’s goal scorer, Peter Pacult, in the groin.
The man admitted behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace.

Celtic go on trial in Zurich today before UEFA’s disciplinary committee. A lengthy suspension seems inevitable following the incidents at Old Trafford last month in which two Rapid Vienna players were attacked by men wearing Celtic colours.
Celtic will have no say in the UEFA hearing – presided over by Dr Alberto Barbe of Italy – as the European Union do not permit evidence on behalf of the defence.

Celtic will know their European fate today, ending five weeks of speculation following their turbulent tie against Rapid Vienna. UEFA’s disciplinary committee met in Zurich yesterday to discuss the European Cup Winners' Cup replay at Old Trafford on December 12th.
UEFA’s seven-man committee did not begin their investigation until mid-afternoon and a spokesman said that no announcement will be made until this afternoon. He added: “The Scottish Football Association will have to be informed of the decision as well as Celtic. After that it will be made public.
Celtic face a European ban or a very heavy fine after two spectators attacked Rapid Vienna players Herbert Feurer and Peter Pacult in the replay which the Austrians won 1-0.

By Stuart Jones, Football Correspondent

Celtic were yesterday fined 50,000 Swiss francs (about £!8,500) and ordered to stage their next European tie at Parkhead behind closed doors. The punishment was imposed by UEFA after incidents in the second leg of the European Cup Winners' Cup second round against Rapid Vienna, replayed at their insistence at Old Trafford last month.
Although the irresponsible actions of two drunken spectators during and immediately after the game cannot be excused, UEFA may feel that it was perhaps not the brightest of ideas to have invited a huge army of Scots to cross the border and invade Manchester. Their reaction to the trouble that subsequently, and not surprisingly, took place is more commendable.

The disciplinary committee have demanded that “the silent night” at Parkhead, which is likely to be a UEFA cup tie next September, should not be captured live on television, and that the recorded highlights must not exceed three minutes. A spokesman yesterday confirmed that “ The idea is to punish the spectators of Celtic, rather than the club itself.”

The move is not new. Two seasons ago Aston Villa opened their defence of the European Cup against Besiktas inside an empty stadium and their followers later caught only a glimpse of their 3-1 win on the small screen.

Nor is it the first time a British club have been hurt by hooligans. Within the last dozen years Rangers and Leeds United have been suspended from European competition, Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United were ordered to play outside their own homes, and more recently West Ham United, as well as Villa, have held matches in front of ghostly audiences. It is a long and shameful record.

Although Celtic will, through the loss of gate revenue, pay a heavy financial penalty in addition to the fine, they can be considered to have escaped lightly. At the beginning of the season UEFA warned that, in an attempt to curb crowd violence, they would not hesitate to ban any club whose supporters were found guilty of misbehaviour.

As UEFA recognise in Celtic’s case, a sentence that affects so many does not necessarily fit a crime committed by so few. It is to be hoped that louts, if they can see through the alcoholic haze, will respond to the judgement. UEFA are unlikely, on any future occasion, to be so generous.