The best moment of this was at the end, hearing Clive Tyldesley yelling “Manchester United have reached the Promised Land”. How on earth was that 25 years ago? And will we ever stop wandering in the Wilderness and get there again? Anyway, after a slow start with too much waffle, the whole programme was very interesting, and brought back a lot of memories. It started in 1985 – the year of The Ban.
Let’s just go back to 14 months prior to Heysel. March 1984. United v Barcelona in the Cup Winners’ Cup. I wasn’t allowed to go because I’d only just turned 9 and was deemed too young to be out late on a school night. So I missed one of the greatest United performances of all time! Most European matches before the finals weren’t televised then, although I think that that one was on the radio. I moaned so much that, when United qualified for the UEFA Cup for the following season, I was allowed to go. Hooray! November 1984, United v PSV Eindhoven, there I was. The match went to extra time, and goodness knows what time we got home, but I must have got up for school the next day because I was allowed to go to the next two European matches. First up, Dundee United. Then Videoton. But we lost to Videoton after penalties at the end of the away leg. The away leg wasn’t even on the radio: we had to watch the shoot-out on Ceefax. And thus ended my first season of European nights. But we won the Cup! And so we were in the 85/86 Cup Winners’ Cup.
But then we weren’t.
The programme began with The Ban. The various contributors didn’t argue with the ban, but they did say just how rotten it was for everyone. It was rotten for us, but it was even worse for Everton, who’d just won the league and seemed to stand a very good chance of winning the European Cup. (Steaua Bucharest won it instead. Everton would have made mincemeat of them.) Instead, we got something called the “Super Cup”. As the programme said, no-one had the slightest bit of interest in it. Then there was the “Full Members’ Cup”, which I vaguely remember one of the papers nicknaming the “Fool Members’ Cup”. United never even entered it. For some reason, the programme never mentioned Channel 4 showing Italian football, but they talked a lot about English players going to Rangers.
Then, in 1990, the ban was lifted! United and Villa were back in Europe. Our first match was against Pecsi Munkas. I think you pronounce it “Peshki Munkas”. “Pesh” for short. And we won the Cup Winners’ Cup! English clubs were back in business!
Er, yes. Then it all went a bit pear-shaped. In 1993, back in the European Cup, by then “the Champions League” but still only for champions, we lost to Galatasaray, in the infamous “Welcome to hell” match. The programme took Paul Parker (why Paul Parker?) back to Istanbul, for a reunion with some of the Galatasaray players from that night. And I’d forgotten about Blackburn losing to Trelleborgs, the Swedish part-timers whose players included a rat catcher, but there was that too. And there was Forest losing 5-1 at home to Bayern in 1996. After English clubs had dominated Europe in the first half of the ’80s, we’d fallen behind and it was a long way back.
But we did it! That wonderful night in 1999. “Manchester United have reached the Promised Land”. And, since then, English clubs have won the Champions League six times more. Spanish clubs ten, times, Italian clubs three times, German clubs (well, club) three times and Portuguese clubs once. So we’re not doing badly. The ban seems a long time ago now, but it was a difficult time. And this programme brought back a lot of memories. It was just rather depressing when one of the presenters said that he wasn’t even born at the time!
Unbelievably, it’s 25 years since the Treble. That’s the one that sticks in the mind, partly because it *was* the Treble and partly because of the incredible finish, 1-0 down with seconds to go and then winning 2-1. But how I wish I could relive those wonderful couple of months in 2008, when United won the league and the Champions League, and Rafa won the French Open and then Wimbledon … that amazing final, arguably the best tennis match ever. Happy days …