I apologize for the long post, and the name dropping, but like everyone on this site, I have a special fondness for the European Cup Winners’ Cup.
The first European tie I saw at Ibrox was in this competition, a 3:1 defeat against the eventual winners Valencia. Rainer Bonhof and Mario Kempes were outstanding that night.
I don’t remember the 1972 final, although I have clear memories of watching the two semi-final matches (the first leg in Germany, where we lived at the time, and the second in Glasgow). I remember that Derek Parlane’s girlfriend was my granny’s hairdresser and my brother and I got his autograph. I remember meeting John Grieg, Sandy Jardine, Alex McDonald and Colin Jackson several times that summer as they did a tour of various shops in Glasgow. Apart from my grandfather’s neighbours Tommy Muirhead and Bobby Brown, these were the first real-life footballers I had ever met, and they were very chatty and friendly.
In 1981, I was living in Germany and went to the final featured on the cover of the book, Dinamo Tbilisi v Carl-Zeiss Jena, in Düsseldorf. The losing semi-finalists were Feyenoord and Benfica, and they had been expected to contest the final, in front of 70,000 spectators. I remember that the final was halted after about 10 minutes for a confusing minutes’ silence in memory of the Chairman of the UEFA Referees’ Committee. Little did I know that in the last year of that decade, I would become Secretary of that very same Committee, and also responsible for the administration of the Cup-Winners’ Cup. After the presentation, the Tbilisi players did a lap of honour around the empty stadium; by the time they got to my end of the ground, I was the only person left, and they did a little victory dance just for me.
When I got back to Mönchengladbach railway station, my parents were there to meet me and told me that the Pope had been shot. (Sorry, can’t remember my reaction on hearing that, you’ll have to use your imagination…).
Early the next morning, I travelled by train and ferry to London, on my way to Glasgow. As soon as I got to London, I put my bag in left luggage and headed for Wembley, where Spurs were playing Manchester City in the FA Cup Final replay. The gates were open and I ran up the steps like Rocky Balboa reaching the top just in time to see Ricky Villa scoring his famous goal. All the talk on the underground train back was about whether Spurs would be able to play in the Cup Winners’ Cup the following season, as they had a ban dating back to 1974.
In 1988, I left my job in London and spent the year, and all my money, travelling around the world. By December, I had no job, no money and only the charity of my Rangers-supporting landlord, and good friend, kept a roof over my head. In January 1989, I casually replied to an ad in a national newspaper, and by June I was living in Switzerland and working for UEFA, as Secretary of the Referees Committee, with responsibility, as I mentioned above, for the Cup Winners’ Cup. I also had responsibility for the cups and medals of all competitions. These days, there are 700 or 800 people working for UEFA; on the day I started, there were just 27.
One of my first tasks was to order a new Cup Winners’ Cup trophy. Although I tried to talk them out of it, reminding them of all the great players who had handled it, I had to go ahead and order a new one. For some time, the old Cup, the one John Greig held aloft, stood on a plinth outside the Secretary-General’s office. One day, after seeing a member of staff flick his cigarette ash into it, I took it to my office and there it stayed until the Secretary-General agreed to build a special display cabinet for all the UEFA trophies.
In 1991, I carried the cup onto the pitch after Manchester United had beaten Barcelona in the final. In those days, only the 16 players (of each team) listed on the team sheet (plus the match officials) received medals. However, some months later, I managed to acquire a spare medal from the manufacturer, which I covertly gave to Alex Ferguson, after he jokingly complained that he had done all the work and got nothing. This was the first European medal he received. On the pitch, after the final, Johan Cruyff called me over and told me that his players were tired and cold and that in future, the runners-up should go first, get their medals and leave the stage to the winners. I passed Cruyff’s proposal onto the Secretary-General and the Committee agreed to do this.
Through my UEFA work, I got to know Campbell Ogilvie very well, and visited him at Ibrox whenever I was back in Glasgow. One day, he showed me round the trophy room and I was surprised to see that the club’s official Cup Winners’ Cup ‘replica’ was small, cheap, off-the-shelf effort. Long story, short: Rangers soon had a proper replica, made by the manufacturer of the real cup (and paid for by Rangers). Nowadays, clubs have full-sized replicas; however, in those days, everything was stricter, but it was the biggest replica allowed by the rules at the time.
Although technically the Cup Winners’ Cup still exists, merged with the UEFA Cup and then with the Europa League, I was very sad to see its name, and the trophy disappear in 1999. Whenever I become disillusioned with the commercialization and politicization of modern football, I think of maverick, unpredictable competitions like the Cup Winners’ Cup and remember why I have loved football so much.
The Cup Winners’ Cup gave Rangers fans some of their greatest nights, and the club its most famous victory. The Cup Winners’ Cup took me to Switzerland and gave my family many fantastic holidays there, and in Italy. The Cup Winners’ Cup that took me to Switzerland has kept me here. I don’t know if I will ever go back to Ibrox, but it is comforting to know that my parents’ bricks, my brother’s brick, and my brick will be holding up a wall at Ibrox long after I’ve gone, and that somewhere in the trophy room, or in the new museum, will be my own little contribution to the club, a homunculus (© Sheldon Cooper) in the form of the European Cup Winners’ Cup.