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| An everyday footballer scene |
Between 1974 and 1976 Bayern Munich won the European Cup, that useless stupidly formulated all knock-out competition for champions only, that ran sometime in the grey days before football was invented by Gianni Infantino with his Spyrograph and jumbo Lego. These were dark days indeed, when misfits and scallywags like St Etienne, Dynamo Tbilisi and Feyenoord could be seen strutting about European football like they owned the damn place.
Your Kievs and Magdeburgs, your Colognes (or worse still your Kölns) and Gothenburgs even your bloody Dundee Uniteds, strolled this odd planet playing football and keeping up with the Joneses, Schmidts and Bertillons. God love us, even dear old East Midlands rivals Derby County and Nottingham Forest strutted their stuff against Dynamo Berlin, AEK Athens, Slovan Bratislava and other souls so lost these days, they might as well not even exist.
Thankfully all of that has been stamped out now and we can bask in Celtic v Barcelona every single season, Milan v Barcelona every single season and pretend to be happy for FC Gloria Estefzvan when they qualify by mistake and then get absolutely murdered by stalwarts Porto, Real and Juve. Poor old FC Gloria getting a good seeing to, but at least the "prize money" (blood money) will be enough to have them dominate their domestic league back in Bulvakia and they will be back for more of the same next year.
Ah wait, we're supposed to be liking the Champions League, aren't we? I nearly forgot. The music that makes your hair stand on end. The marvellous flash redecorating that goes on overnight in all the stadiums to rid the place of all that unecessary local advertising: Bert Carbunkle's Fish and Chips and Loathing Sodbury Hillman Imp Spare Parts. Mastercard that little lot out of the way, we're coming through with the blue paint brushes and the illuminated football stickers.
Still, to us City fans, brought up on a solid diet of jokes and disaster, of timid trips to Lokeren and the snow covered wastes of central Poland (yes, Groclin Dyskobolia, I am talking about you), the odd soft shoe shuffle with Real and Napoli, with Dortmund and Ajax, seems like Christmas has arrived and won't go away. It smells new, like a fresh pair of trainers. It shines and it beckons us with its high hemline and heavy eye-shadow. Then it batters us over the head with its all-in travel packages, executive level seating and jumbo-sized Eurosnacks. Before you know it you're 3-2 down to Madrid and there's a twitchy copper looking at your forehead like he wants to practise aiming his truncheon arm and you are tonight's target.
Backed by the flags of Bredbury and Denton, you are beguiled by the foreign accents and the waft of strangely becoming pipe smoke. You take in the view through your giddy
Estreladam beer spectacles and breathe in the elixir of the Champions League, the biggest
ever thing to happen to you and your club, the all-inclusive place that makes you a little queasy at first, a little unsure whether to let yourself go completely and
like it. Once you're in you're in, though, no questions asked.You'd better buy the travel package, the executive peanuts and belt up for the ride.
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| Maier: big gloves |
Where were we? Ah yes. 1974. A time of strikes, brown tank tops and one dimensional half time snacks. Bayern, a young team of red clad physical specimens were about to spring a surprise and take over Ajax's great European mantle. The Dutch champions, led by the irrepressible Cruyff and Neeskens and Krol, had been champions of Europe in 1971, 1972 and 1973, beating Panathinaikos, Inter and Juventus. This incredible feat was immediately equalled by imperious Bayern, knocking the stuffing out of Atletico Madrid in a replay and then getting a touch lucky against St Etienne and Leeds United (yes, the very same Leeds United. This was a long time ago, remember) in the next two finals. Leeds fans thought Bayern had got so lucky, in fact, that they dismantled the Parc des Princes in protest.
This week, my beloved Manchester City face these aristocrats of European football, these giants that have bestrode the continental game unchecked for 40-odd years.
Manchester City versus Bayern Munich.On the same pitch.
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| Breitner: fuzzy |
It still takes a little repeating for it to settle properly. We are not European aristocrats. Not even European upstarts. We are still cringing from Malcolm Allison's "
Cowards of Europe" speech, made shortly before we got our backsides tanned by Fenerbahce, a team, nay a place, nay a word that in those days might have conjured an image of some thick Hungarian broth with too many chick peas in it to most of us, so out of step with continental football matters were we.
Nowadays, you cannot stand a round with any sort of pride unless you own a Dukla Prague top, can recite all the trophies won by Ruch Chorzow in the last quarter century and have a season ticket at 1FC Nuremburg. "
Well, yes, me and the lads, we go across to St Pauli. it's so damn cheap and they have a little train that delivers sausages to your seat. The chairman's a transvestite, you know...?".
How did we ever survive without all of this modern paraphernalia?
Let us be clear on what City face tonight. Bayern Munich have won this thing more times than we have been in it. More times than some of us have had hot
Zigeuner Schnitzel dinners in fact. So, here are some of those heroes in full glory. Look at them. Drink in their furrowed lines. Gaze into those eyes. Try, if you will, to copy their hair. For here is history. Here is where power began. The team that would "
still be in that shed" but for Gerd Muller's glorious goals, according to Kaiser Franz.
SEPP MAIER, goalkeeper, joker, bandy-legged wearer of the biggest gloves ever seen in world football. The man was a legend between the sticks, with his toothy grin and his adhesive hands. We had never seen goalkeepers wearing gloves like him before. They were huge paddles and made him look like an alien with oar-ends sticking out of his nice Addidas top. Bayern wore the three stripes like princes. Nobody wore Adidas in English football. They looked like otherworldly knights come to dethrone us all whilst wearing top quality Teutonic sportswear.
PAUL BREITNER: Amazingly talented full back, who - but for the most ridiculous bush of hair sat atop his great communist/maoist bonce - would surely have been remembered as one of the very best. Smote long range winners like they were going out of fashion, quoted Mao in his spare time and fled to Madrid, where the white shirts of Real clashed terribly with his fuzzy barnet.
HANS GEORG SCWARZENBECK: The man with the extraordinary hooter never got the recognition he deserved, as the calm rock alongside Beckenbauer in the heart of the Bayern defence, stayig behind when Kaiser Franz went on one of his regular sorties. Schwarzenbeck played many years at Bayern and in the national team, winning the World Cup in 1974. Then it all went to his head and he opened a tobacconists instead.
FRANZ BECKENBAUER: Kaiser Franz, the ultimate template for the mobile, forward-moving centre half-cum-sweeper. Beckenbauer was quite unlike anything most people had seen at that stage of the 70s. His craft, like Bobby Moore, was to stay on his feet and steal the ball away. No need to tackle and slide, when timing will do it all for you. What made Beckenbauer different was his ability to then move upfield and not lose possession. A truly majestic sight going forward, he was one of the best footballers Germany has ever produced.Reinvented himself several times as a successful manager, administrator and UEFA Football Person.
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| Schwarzenbeck: unfeasibly long sideburns take attention from nose |
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| Beckenbauer: adidas |
GERD MULLER: Centre of gravity so low that even a Jack Russell could not have destabilised him. Muller's tree trunk thighs and eye for goal made him an unmovable object and an unreasonable force. 487 goals in 555 games. For West Germany, as they were then, more goals (68) than games (62), an unbelievable feat. Rightly nicknamed Der Bomber, Muller was so addicted to goals that retirement from football brought real problems for him and only the kindness of the club enabled him to fight off alcoholism and make a comeback to the football industry. Will always be the yardstick alongside which all modern scoring records are compared.
ULI HOENESS: Hoeness has the words Bayern Munich inscribed in his bone marrow. The attacking midfielder or left sided striker played in all three of Bayern's European Cup triumphs and was in the victorious 72 and 74 West Germany side that carried off the European Championship in Brussels and the World Cup in Munich, of all places. Hoeness will perhaps be better remembered for missing the
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| Hoeness scores against Atlético Madrid in the 1974 final |
penalty that allowed Panenka to do an erm Panenka and win the 76 Euro final for Czechoslovakia, so he has several reasons to be put firmly in the European Hall of Fame. Later converted himself into a one club administrator at Bayern, like Beckenbauer and Rummineige, and has developed into one of the most outspoken brands of its kind in the modern game. Not clear whether he pays his taxes or not, but cannot be faulted for being the owner of a Nuremburg bratwurst factory.
FRANZ ROTH: One of the less celebrated members of the team but not in Munich, where his contribution to the cause is well remembered. Scored against Leeds in 75 and St Etienne in 76, as well as a goal against Rangers in the 67 Cup Winners Cup Final. A man for the big occasion.
KARL-HEINZ RUMMENIGGE: A name to strike fear into defenders and proof readers alike, it is often thought that Rummenigge was around later than this era, but he was present in both the 75 and 76 finals and became a Bayern legend over a 310 game career for
die Roten.Another who could not resist the temptation to ascend those lushly carpeted steps up into the boardroom for a good argument over how football should be run in the modern age.
