It was not a deliberate attempt to look poor in front of watching German eyes, it was the real thing. Yet twenty-four hours later the same chaotic group delivered the most professional and high-class display in Aberdeen’s history. Even in Ferguson’s time nothing matched the defensive excellence of the master class they produced that night in Munich. Leighton, Miller and McLeish delivered their finest hour. Kennedy and Rougvie produced massive performances at full-back and Cooper, Simpson and Bell were outstanding across the middle. Ferguson’s tactics were followed to the letter. Aberdeen constantly closed down the Bayern players and forced them to turn and look in vain for another route of attack. They were frustrated into shooting from a distance and that was easy for Leighton. Cooper shackled Breitner and Rummenigge got nothing out of Miller. ‘I think if Rummenigge goes up to the refreshment stand Willie Miller would be up his back after him,’ said Archie Macpherson during his television commentary. Rummenigge had a header and then a shot saved by Leighton, but the only lasting impression he made was to knock out one of Miller’s front teeth when he attempted an overhead kick. To his credit, Rummenigge tried to help Miller find the missing tooth on the pitch, and later admitted that he had been impressed by ‘the one who lost his teeth and shouted a lot’.
A storm of whistling and boos met the Bayern players at half-time and again at the end. But the Bayern fans recognised how strong Aberdeen had been, and Bell was notably picked out for applause. McGhee said: ‘The football we played that night was as good as we ever produced in Europe. It was sublime. We passed the ball the way you’d expect Bayern to pass it.’ Beckenbauer was startled by the performance: ‘I just could not believe that this was the same Aberdeen team who played against us in Hamburg. In a tactical sense they have developed so much in a short time.’ Jupp Derwall, the West German national manager, heaped on more praise: ‘Bayern are by far the best technical side in the Bundesliga but Aberdeen matched them all the way. I have never seen a better performance by a Scottish team on German soil–either at international or club level.’ The great Breitner said: ‘They paced themselves quite brilliantly against us in Munich. They were still running strongly at the end.’ Bayern’s general manager, Uli Hoeness, felt vindicated: ‘When I went to Scotland to watch Aberdeen I was rightly quoted in saying they were a better side than Real Madrid, Inter Milan and Barcelona. I do not think anyone believed me. I do not think the Scottish people believed me.’
For the two weeks before the second leg Aberdeen was at fever pitch. The club’s travel agent gambled that they would not only finish off Bayern but reach the final in Gothenburg. He took the risk of booking 1,600 hotel beds in Sweden. After the debacle of the Liverpool tickets sale, the club introduced a system which gave priority to season-ticket holders and then those who had collected vouchers distributed at domestic games. When the initial deadline passed, secretary Ian Taggart phoned every season-ticket holder who had not asked for a Bayern Munich ticket. He did so as a courtesy in case they had missed the deadline by accident. It did not take him long: there were only four who had not responded. On the black market tickets with a cover price of £3 were being sold for £30. ‘People were scrambling for anything they could get,’ said Taggart. Pittodrie would be bursting at its 24,000 seams.
There were two domestic games between the first and second legs, against Kilmarnock and Partick Thistle and the defence who had been so impeccable in Munich failed to keep a clean sheet in either. The team’s focus was on the second leg. Bayern flew into Aberdeen the day before the match looking cool and composed. Reporters jostled around Hoeness and asked if he thought Bayern could get the scoring draw which would take them through on away goals. ‘Draw? I’m very confident that we have a real chance of actually winning,’ he said. Ferguson was wary, determined to strike a balance between confidence and realism. The job was only half-done. ‘I’m certainly not over-confident, but I’m not worried. I would much rather be in our position than theirs.’
What happened on 16 March 1983 was marketed years later by Aberdeen on a DVD called ‘Pittodrie’s Greatest Night’. It tends to be recalled as a cacophony of hysteria and noise, but that was not entirely the case. After ten minutes Bayern were awarded a soft free-kick. Breitner rolled it to Augenthaler in a pocket of space and he took a couple of touches before striking a shot which rose into Leighton’s top corner. Bayern had their away goal. Pittodrie hushed. Several minutes later Jock Brown, STV’s commentator, said: ‘Really now you could hear a pin drop.’ Bayern looked in control and Aberdeen were being closed down. Nothing was coming off until McLeish hit the face of the crossbar with a header. It gave them a lift, and the goal they needed arrived six minutes before half-time. A cross was going out of play until Black stretched and twisted his neck to nod the ball back into the goalmouth. Augenthaler blocked it but the ball ran loose and Simpson barged in to force it home.
It was a niggly match with lots of fouls and interruptions. Both teams gave the ball away and made unforced errors, especially Aberdeen. Bayern indulged in some mild time-wasting in the knowledge 1–1 was good enough for them to go through. The Aberdeen support was unsure of itself. Brown picked up on the mood again. ‘Pittodrie’s a very strange ground in that there are moments of complete silence despite a full house being inside the stadium.’ With just under half an hour left a cross into the Aberdeen box was flicked on by Dieter Hoeness, Uli’s brother, and headed back out by McLeish. The ball dropped just inside the box and Hans Pflügler connected with a volley which whistled past Leighton. There was an audible gasp from the stands and then a ripple of gracious applause. It was surely all over now. Ferguson admitted: ‘My gut feeling told me we had had it. I had to do something, because you are not going to sit back and accept defeat.’
Ferguson’s full-backs were struggling against the wingers Pflügler and Karl Del’Haye. Five minutes after Bayern’s goal he took off Kennedy and put John McMaster into midfield. Rougvie switched from left-back to right to deal with Pflügler and Cooper concentrated on Del’Haye. The changes settled Aberdeen at the back, but time was running out. With fifteen minutes left Ferguson made his final substitution: John Hewitt for Simpson. Within seconds of the change Aberdeen were awarded a free-kick just outside the Bayern penalty area. Strachan was about to take it quickly but had second thoughts. McMaster stood just behind him. Strachan turned and spoke to him. McMaster was nicknamed ‘Spammer’ because he came from Greenock where the locals were teased for spending so much on their houses that they had only enough money left to eat spam. McMaster said: ‘The wee man’s exact words to me were, “We’re fucking it up, Spammer”.’
Ferguson and Knox had always encouraged the players to experiment with set-pieces. McMaster and Strachan were left-and right-footed respectively, and sometimes they would both run towards the ball as if they were taking it, and then stop as if they had misunderstood and got in each other’s way. There would be some gesturing and arguing. At first the crowd would groan or even shout at them. All of it was pure theatre. The thinking was that the defenders would momentarily switch off, then suddenly the kick would be taken with little or no run-up and the ball whipped into the box where only the Aberdeen players were still primed. McMaster said: ‘We did it umpteen times. We practised this free-kick, arguing with each other, and it came off a couple of times in Scotland. Big Alex knew when he saw the pair of us doing our run against Bayern. So did Black and Hewitt. I knew Gordon would take it because it was on his side. It worked a dream. The whole stadium was saying, “What the hell are they doing?” The Germans couldn’t believe it.’ Strachan spun and sent in a perfect delivery, and McLeish rose for a header which beat Manfred Müller’s diving attempt to claw the ball away.
The game was broadcast live across Scotland and what happened next was almost too quick for the STV cameraman. A replay of the goal was shown, then the broadcaster cut to a close-up of McLeish in midfield. In the footage his eyes are clearly following a long diagonal ball from left to right. What the cameras had missed was a gl
orious cross-field pass by McMaster. Suddenly the camera switches to show Black leaping to flash a header which Müller dives to push away only for Hewitt to rush in and knock back through his legs. Aberdeen had scored twice in forty-eight seconds. It was as if a power surge had shot through Pittodrie. For the first time in the entire tie Aberdeen were ahead. The remaining thirteen minutes were bedlam. The noise was deafening as whole blocks of supporters bounced and leapt, sensing that something extraordinary was unfolding. Miller said: ‘The atmosphere was quite amazing considering it was all Aberdeen supporters. It was packed. They stuck with us at 2–1 down and when it turned in that two-minute spell they went over the top in a way that they wouldn’t normally.’ McMaster regards the end of the Bayern game as ‘the best fifteen to twenty minutes of my life’. When the final whistle went at 3–2 it was pandemonium.
McGhee said: ‘If you edited the goals out and watched the game, and asked someone who won, they’d say Bayern Munich every time. They had the possession and the technique. But we won. They would have looked at us and thought, “How the hell did we lose to them?” It was like a circus act. Smoke and mirrors.’ Miller added: ‘I don’t think Bayern took it too well. You know how the Germans are, arrogant and confident. They certainly didn’t take the messed-up free-kick well. They claimed it was a fluky goal. Little did they know…They expected to beat us. You could tell that from the way they walked on the pitch, the way they handled themselves. They were a bit like Ipswich, stunned that we could play that well and beat them. They didn’t take it too graciously.’
Staff at the airport hotel where Bayern stayed after the match saw the Germans sitting in muted disbelief, bickering about the ‘confused’ free-kick. More than thirty years later Rummenigge, by now chief executive of Bayern, could still instantly recall the Aberdeen games. ‘It was a very, very big surprise for us and for the football world. The Aberdeen supporters pushed them like hell. They deserved it. They fought like hell, to the last second. That became typical of Alex Ferguson all the way through his football career. Alex was a very young guy. It was quite clear from the very beginning that it would be the start of a very successful story for him. My memory from 1983 was not so good but I always had a great respect for him.’ Those number one writers Ferguson affected to disdain had been at Pittodrie for the second leg. They were invited back to the ground the following afternoon when they hung on Ferguson’s every word as he reflected on the most startling result of his managerial career thus far. He insisted that the players take the plaudits. ‘It will be to their eternal and undying credit how they salvaged what I thought was a lost cause and came out on top.’
The quarter-finals had been a riot of dragon-slaying: Bayern, Barcelona, Inter Milan and Paris Saint-Germain were all eliminated, leaving Real Madrid, Austria Vienna and Waterschei to join Aberdeen in the semi-finals. The Bayern games had been such an adrenalin rush that when the Dons were drawn against the Belgian club the sense of anti-climax was palpable. No one had heard of the part-timers from Genk, who had just knocked out Paris Saint-Germain. They had Dutch international Adrie van Kraay, who had won the Uefa Cup with PSV Eindhoven, Belgian internationals Eddy Voordeckers and Lei Clijsters, and Lárus Guðmundsson was a lively young Icelandic striker. But there was no way of dressing it up: there was no Rummenigge or Breitner in their ranks. Beating Bayern Munich instantly transformed the way the football world thought about the last British club left in any of the three European competitions. ‘We wanted to avoid Aberdeen,’ admitted Waterschei manager Ernst Künnecke. ‘They deserve to be favourites for the cup. I’m a little bit afraid of their strength.’
After the emotional peak of the Bayern second leg Aberdeen lost three of their next four league games, a sequence which cost them the championship. It was the sort of run which often befalls a club distracted by Europe. Ferguson and the team were pent up, waiting to be unleashed on Waterschei, and it showed as soon as the first leg began on 6 April. It turned into a pounding. After four minutes Aberdeen were 2–0 up, and two goals in two minutes made it 4–0 in the second half. When hapless Waterschei pulled one back, Aberdeen added another for 5–1. The 700 Belgian fans in Pittodrie were shell-shocked. ‘A quite magnificent display by Aberdeen,’ said Alan Green at the end of his Radio 2 commentary. ‘Britain’s last representatives in European competition, so much hoped from them, so much expected from them, and they haven’t let anybody down.’
Black, Simpson, Weir and McGhee (twice) had scored, but the architect of the night was Bell. When Ferguson used Simpson and Cooper in midfield there was no room for Bell’s balance, individualism and dribbling runs. The hurly-burly of Scottish football did not suit him quite as much as Europe, where he was given more room and time to dictate the play. He had been wonderful in Germany and was hurt to be left out of the home game against Bayern Munich. Bell said: ‘Fergie was on my case a bit because every time the team got beat I felt as if I was the scapegoat. I think it was because of the way I played, very individual. If that works, it’s great. But if it doesn’t come off…I was given man of the match in the 0–0 game in Munich and then he left me out of the second leg. I wasn’t big-headed; I was quite shy. At Kilmarnock the weekend before Bayern at home I wasn’t in the team or even on the bench. Then I was an unused sub at home against Bayern.’
Waterschei at home was Bell’s finest hour. He ripped into them from the start, his first stylish run ending with an outside-of-the-boot pass across the goal which Black tapped into the net. Waterschei’s resistance had lasted eighty-five seconds. Bell continued to run at them, teasing and tormenting, and set up the third for McGhee, too. The crowd enjoyed Bell’s virtuoso display so much there were boos for Ferguson when he took him off in the closing stages. Miller said: ‘Waterschei just couldn’t handle Dougie Bell. They were like rabbits in the headlights. He tore them apart.’ The instant aggression and pressing sent Watershei into a tailspin. They had wanted to ease themselves into the game but were blitzed. Aberdeen chased and harried them as soon as their defenders got the ball. Miller said: ‘They couldn’t cope with the style of play we put on that night. There wasn’t any complacency from us, maybe the opposite. We’d done the hard bit in beating Bayern Munich, so there was no way we were going to let Waterschei take away the opportunity of playing in the final.’
Even Ferguson was stunned by the margin of victory. What might have been a tense second leg thirteen days later had been reduced to a little more than a working holiday. By the time they arrived in Belgium they had been through a Scottish Cup semi-final against Celtic, which had deteriorated into a brutal kicking match. They lost Bell to severely torn ankle ligaments and Cooper to concussion and a broken nose. Strachan and Black also had ankle injuries. Usually Ferguson would have seethed about his men being booted around Hampden, but Aberdeen had won the semi-final and their European lead was unassailable. Life was good. When the squad arrived at their Genk hotel Ferguson was cracking jokes: ‘Some of you have a room with a view of the river. They didn’t give me one just in case we lose the tie.’
Wasterschei managed one unanswered goal but not the four they needed to survive. Aberdeen’s slightly makeshift team held out until the seventy-third minute when Voordeckers scored. McGhee said: ‘No one gave a toss about that one; there was no way we were going to go out. No one gave a monkeys.’ Ferguson offered the press pack a different version: ‘The boys are all in there absolutely sick at having lost their unbeaten record in the tournament.’ They had lost a lot more than that, though. One of the great pillars of Ferguson’s team, one of his most trusted lieutenants for the past five years, finished the ninety minutes against Waterschei and never played football again. Stuart Kennedy had also been injured in the ugly game against Celtic three days earlier. His right knee had taken a knock and he told Ferguson he did not feel ready to play in Belgium. But Ferguson did not want to change his back four. Kennedy recalled: ‘I said I wasn’t 100 per cent fit and in front of everybody he said, “You could play this game with your suit on and not bre
ak sweat.” My ego liked that, so I played.’
Fifteen minutes from the end his studs caught in the ground right at the outside lip of the playing surface and a Waterschei player fell on the injured right knee. Straight away Kennedy knew he was struggling. Aberdeen had used all their substitutes so he played on. ‘I finished the game–your system’s still warm so you can keep going–but I could hardly move my legs. Their guy attacked me down the wing a couple of times and I couldn’t shut him down. I got a hairdryer for that. An injury that finished my career and he gives me a hairdryer for not shutting the guy down. I couldn’t fucking run!’
Ferguson would later show Kennedy the compassion and sympathy the player richly deserved, but for the time being things were moving too fast for him to stand still. On the morning after the second leg he left his players and boarded a flight for his first look at Real Madrid.
Chapter 14
REAL MADRID
Alex Ferguson was eighteen when he first set eyes on Real Madrid and the great Alfredo Di Stéfano. As a young player at Queen’s Park he received the invaluable perk of a complimentary ticket for the schoolboys’ enclosure at Hampden to witness one of football’s classic games: Real Madrid versus Eintracht Frankfurt in the 1960 European Cup final. Just about every Scotsman of a certain age claims to have been one of the specks in the 127,000-strong ocean of heads as Real beat Eintracht 7–3 to win the cup for a fifth successive year. But Ferguson really was there that night, and watched in undisguised awe as Di Stéfano hit a hat-trick, only to be outscored by Ferenc Puskas, who weighed in with Real’s other four goals.
Fergie Rises Page 15