EUROPEAN COMMUNITY

THOSE GLORY GLORY NIGHTS....

“Kevin Keegan, the English jewel in the crown of West German football is backing Manchester City to topple Borussia Monchengladbach in the UEFA Cup quarter final...” 

So announced the Daily Express on Friday 19th January, the day of the draw for the last eight for what was then the third of UEFA’s yearly tournaments. This was January 1979, to be more precise, the last time the name of Manchester City was seen spinning around in UEFA’s little glass vases with any great regularity. In those days, City’s ex-manager was still the bubble-permed double European Footballer of the Year and City’s opponents were one of the strongest teams in (then West) Germany, rather than the rag-tag side that scraped through the relegation play-offs in the Bundesliga last season. Times move on and, more than 30 years later, City are once again edging into the limelight, helped this season by being drawn in the most evenly matched and interesting of all the Champions League groups. Napoli, Villareal and Bayern will present the Blues with a not inconsiderable barrier, but this is not the first time that the path to glory has been marked with Europe's finest.

Bell smashes in v. Twente

Back in 1979 City had already dealt admirably with Twente Enschede, Standard Liege and AC Milan, all big European hitters at the time, raising hopes that some glory could still be salvaged from a season which had flopped badly. Malcolm Allison’s second coming had proved to be a disaster and the Blues, tipped at the start of the campaign to be in the final shake-up for the title, were well adrift in lower mid-table. The Germans of Borussia Moenchengladbach were not without their problems either, slowly decreasing in power from the mighty outfit which had dominated the Bundesliga in the early 70s and jousted with Liverpool in UEFA and European Cup finals in recent years (many still remembered with awe Keegan’s last match in a Liverpool shirt as he gave the limpet marking of German stopper Bertie Vogts the test of its powers in Rome as Liverpool took the European crown on that famous night in 1977). This was a side steeped in experience and well used to the glory of winning titles and cups.

Gary Owen leaves his mark in Liege

Typical of Allison’s approach in this period, faced with the dilemma of who was to replace the suspended Gary Owen (Owen had kung-fu kicked his way into a red card in Liege in the second round the previous November), the maverick Allison opted to give the 18 year-old Nicky Reid a debut and ask him to man-mark the then-footballer of the year Alan Simonsen. Only Big Mal could have come to a well-thought-out conclusion like this when Colin Bell and Kaziu Deyna, European veterans both, were ready and willing to come in for Owen and shore up the middle of the park. Allison - as is commonly accepted - preferred the moves of the gambler, however, and the raw Reid was chosen to play.

Reid played well enough in the first leg, considering the almighty burden bestowed upon him (Allison would launch Tommy Caton with similar disregard for the youngster’s well-being at the start of the next season), but City struggled to get through a rugged German rearguard, backed by some great keeping from the giant Wolfgang Kneib. City, unable to build on the 25th minute lead given to them by Mike Channon, were pegged back mid-way through the second period, when Simonsen’s trickery on the wing opened up a chance for Ewald Lienen to equalise crisply. The Germans tested Corrigan towards the end and Bruns’ shot smacked off a post and with City losing their shape and composure (not for the first time in this European campaign). 

Kidd heads in at a misty San Siro

For reasons known only to himself, Paul Power then started a multi-player punch-up after a robust challenge on the keeper left players squaring up to each other ominously. By the end, Borussia were not entirely alone being pleased with the 1-1 draw. Allison later commented that “I would not say they were defensive, let’s just say they got all eleven players behind the ball every time we came within 40 yards of their goal!”.

The second leg in front of the towering old cliff-edge terraces of a Bokelberg packed to its 35,000 capacity, saw a gutsy City performance undone by sheer bad luck just before the interval. With the game ebbing and flowing and little to choose between the sides, Tony Henry sent a screaming shot onto the Borussia post in the 44th minute. The ball cannoned free to some distance from the home goal. Picking up the loose ball, the Germans swept straight up-field and Kulik buried a shot to send his side in at the interval one-up. Allison would later say that “the goal just before half time broke our neck” but in truth City were to take quite a hammering in the second half, with the Danes Simonsen and Kalle Del’Haye attacking down either flank in mesmerising fashion. By the 72nd minute City were three goals down, Bruns and the menacing Del’Haye adding to the German total, and heading swiftly for the exit. It had been a titanic struggle but the Germans on this form held just too many aces for the Blues to deal with. Deyna’s belated introduction for the struggling Nicky Reid sparked a revival and his sweetly struck volley from Channon’s pass brought City back into the game. The tie was already won by then, however. 

City had been steamrollered in the second half by the all-out attacking wing-play of Udo Lattek’s Borussia, who would go on to win the UEFA Cup that very season against Eintracht Frankfurt in the final. It had been a fantastic journey through to the quarter-finals, illuminating what might have been in an increasingly disappointing season. The 3-2 win over twente, a blistering 4-0 defeat of Standard and the never-to-be-forgotten games with AC Milan (2-2 in the San Siro, 3-0 at Maine Road on one of those truly unforgettable European nights when the noise cascading down off the Kippax would have woken the dead). This was to be the last season of European glory for the Blues, who went into steady decline from there.

Recent efforts in the rejigged Europa League have brought the amusing (Lokeren away), the bizarre (Faero Islands) and the occasional moment of big time tension (Hamburg home), but little sign of what was experienced in those heady days of 1979. Now, City stand on the threshold of something entirely different. The pot with the big ears beckons. The music, the banners, the stadium drapery, the wall-to-wall media coverage that comes with the Champions League will now engulf a wide-eyed Manchester City too. 

No one present at either match against Borussia Monchengladbach all those years ago could possibly have realised at the time how many years of torment were to follow before the Blues once again graced the Big Fields of continental Europe. That most surely is about to be put right.