Be it with a keen sense of planning or informed perception, ITV 4 chose the week when two English clubs met in the European Champions League quarter-finals to show their two-part documentary WHEN ENGLISH CLUBS RULED EUROPE – chronicling the dominance of English clubs of the European Cup, which they won seven times in eight years between 1977 and 1984.
In these days of the ridiculously expanded, finance orientated, ludicrously named Champions League (if UEFA want a league of top European clubs why don’t they just do the decent thing and form it rather than contrive one in the guise of the European Cup), it is not unusual for two clubs from the same country to meet at the knockout stage.
But when English clubs were all-conquering in Europe, the chances of meeting opposition who played in the same domestic league were negligible as only the League Champions went forward into the European Cup – unless of course the holders of the trophy were also from that country.
The English first division achieved the extraordinary feat of being represented by two clubs for five successive seasons between 1978 and 1982, when it only produced one all-English tie, the first-round meeting between Liverpool (European Champions) and Nottingham Forest (League Champions) in September 1978.
While Real Madrid won the trophy five times on the trot in the dawn years of the competition, no country other than England can boast the winning club on six successive occasions.
In recounting the glory years of English clubs and exploring the reasons why they were so successful, several of those interviewed for the ITV documentary contend it is a record not likely to be matched, let alone broken.
English dominance came to an end after the tragic events at Heysel Stadium in Brussels prior to the 1985 Final when Liverpool played Juventus, 39 supporters of the Italian champions being crushed to death during crowd violence prior to kick-off.
On the pitch Liverpool were the key contributors to the run of glory, winning the European Cup in 1977, 1978, 1981 and 1984, those triumphs interspersed with Nottingham Forest winning the trophy in 1979 and then retaining it the following year. Aston Villa completed a six-year sweep in 1982 – with German champions Hamburg the only foreign club to get a look in during this time, becoming European Champions in 1983.
In enjoying once more the footage of some incredibly gifted, mostly British, players overcoming the best Europe had to offer – often on quagmire pitches – it was interesting to hear a number of key figures citing how much mental toughness had played a part in the respective success of their team.
Often thought of as an attribute lacking in British sportsmen, it would be hard, let alone foolish, to suggest footballers such as Graeme Souness, Tommy Smith (Liverpool), Kenny Burns, Larry Lloyd, (Nottingham Forest) and Des Bremner, Ken McNaught (Aston Villa) lacked toughness of any description.
All three clubs also had their undoubted match-winners (Kevin Keegan, Kenny Dalglish, John Robertson, Trevor Francis, Gary Shaw, Tony Morley) as well as unsung heroes (Howard Gayle, Alan Kennedy, Colin Barrett, Dennis Mortimer) with each squad – miniscule in number by standards of today – bound together by desire and abundant team spirit.
Of the former players asked for their thoughts it is Souness who comes over as the most insightful. Speaking with great clarity on what made Liverpool so formidable both at home and abroad, he is also gracious in responding to a point made by Larry Lloyd earlier in the programme – who suggests Nottingham Forest winning the League title, two League Cups and twice being European Champions is the greatest achievement in the history of British football.
‘I wouldn’t disagree with him,’ reflects Souness as part one of the documentary closes at the point where Forest have retained the European Cup in 1980. ‘Given where they had come from and their resources, he may will be right.’
What the clubs also had in common were managers completely single-minded in their quest for football excellence – none of whom suffered fools or anything less than total commitment to the cause of the team.
Forest had the masterful Brian Clough, Liverpool the incomparable Bob Paisley (who saw them to their first three wins, Joe Fagan in control for the fourth) and although Tony Barton, a very capable coach it has to be said, was in charge of Aston Villa on their night of triumph, the team had been molded into League Champions the previous season and steered to the last eight of the European Cup by hard-nosed disciplinarian Ron Saunders – who resigned due to a dispute with the Villa board only days before the quarter-final.
These were straight-talking men who each excelled in securing the highest level of performance from every player in their charge.
‘By getting the very best out of every one of us,’ states Forest skipper John McGovern, ‘Brian (Clough) took us to a level of performance where we probably surprised ourselves, but he found it in every player.’
But the players themselves would not shirk responsibility either. ‘Once we were out on the pitch we had big personality players who would drive the others on,’ remarked Souness, none more so than himself. ‘And it all stemmed from a determination to see things out and about wanting it more than the opposition. Many times, that’s what saw us through.’
The great paradox of the era is below par performances by the England team, whose failure to qualify for major tournaments – or were undistinguished if they did – being in stark contrast to the success enjoyed at club level.
One major factor was the inability by The Football Association to appoint someone up to the task of managing the national team, Don Revie and Ron Greenwood both unsuitable for different reasons (even Bobby Robson failed to see England through to the first major tournament of his reign).
Had the governing body acted for the greater good and appointed Clough – who clearly craved the job – rather than out of pathetic self-interest, wary of the feathers he would ruffle, the story surrounding the England team might have been markedly different.
Indeed, it is hard to see a Clough-led England not qualifying for the European Championships of 1984 – a year when six English players were in the Liverpool squad that beat Roma in their home stadium to become Champions of Europe for the fourth time.
The ITV documentary concludes with the terrible tragedy of Heysel, the consequence for English clubs a ban from European competitions that would last five years (six in the case of Liverpool). Unusually for a programme of this nature it does not end by posing a hypothetical question – the obvious one in this case being what would have happened had the disaster at Heysel not occurred?
With an exciting Everton team under the management of Howard Kendall taking the League title from their Merseyside rivals in 1985 (and again in 1987) it is safe to assume they would have been a powerful European Cup force – and while acknowledging the marvelous AC Milan side that won back-to-back European Cups in 1989 and 1990, would they have achieved such a feat with the Barnes-Beardsley-Houghton-Aldridge Liverpool team to contend with?
When considering such imponderables, the cost in human life, the 39 dead and 600 injured at the 1985 Final, must never be overlooked – the awful blight of hooliganism bringing a catastrophic end to the outstanding era of European Cup success for English clubs.
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This article was first published on 6/4/2018
NEIL SAMBROOK is also the author of MONTY’S DOUBLE – an acclaimed thriller now available in paperback and as an Amazon Kindle book.