[usscouse]

A couple of guys asked was I at this match and a couple sent PMs and asked for a repeat of the post I did a couple of years ago. It’s gone now cleaned up on one of Matt’s sprees.
I’ve tried to redo it and got a bit long winded but then if you get bored you can always ‘move on. ’ After 40 plus years the memories may be a tad different and I really don’t feel I’ve captured the ‘feeling’ of the match or times,
I tried though!

Tuesday May 4th 1965 Liverpool took on the biggest team in Europe, perhaps biggest in the world at the time, the team that all others were looking up to, Internazional Milano.

It’s been 42 years 7 months and about 20 days since that day when we last played International Milan.

We, Joe Bewley, Alan Dwyer and I, decided to go to the match early that day we knew it was going to be a full house and no advance ticketing back then. I called in to work that morning telling them my car had died and I had to fix it. The guy who took the call said “Hmmm, going to the match. OK, I’ll let the boss know!”

We’d all bought houses out of Liverpool by then and were considered odd. Most working class people waited for the Liverpool City Council to allot them a council house or flat for rent, in whatever area of Maghull, Kirkby or Speke they could make most inconvenient to you. But at that time there was a long waiting list plus you needed a letter from gods boss to qualify. We’d moved east to Ashton-in-Makersfield and a new housing estate instead.

Anyhow, excited and all ready, we jumped into my old Hillman Minx complete with scarves, jam butties stuffed in our pockets and hit the starter to go………. wrong………the gods of the workers boss had picked on us for the sins of all the Liverpool workers who took off for the match that day and the car wouldn’t start. Buggers!

Then Alan said “Let’s go to Freddie’s” !

Freddie was a dapper little Italian guy, looked a lot like Gianfranco Zola, who had a fleet of ice cream vans that roamed the streets playing tunes like the pied piper to entice the kids out to buy his Italian icecream. We used to do the fleet maintenance on his vans on weekends. He saved money and we made pocket change but we’d built up a fun rapport with him. Before we got there he didn’t have a lot of friends, well not the type of friends who’d drag him off to the pub after we’d worked on his vans and tease him with bad Italian jokes until the beer came out of his nose. They’re called scousers!

He wanted to help badly but all he had that day to spare was a little Fiat van and I mean ‘little,’ with just a 600cc Italian motorcycle engine to power it, the ice cream freezer and 600 plus pounds of scousers in it was really too small (I went about 15 stone then)
We took it!

It was quite the adventure going to Liverpool down the East Lancs Road with everyone passing us and honking at the Liverpool scarves hanging out of the windows. Most of them had them too. We made it though and got as far as the backstreets somewhere behind the Arkles, the crowds and lack of parking stopped us getting any farther. Lack of parking for most cars that is. Alan found a spot about half inch longer than the van and drove head on in to it, then me and Joe unfolded ourselves, it only had the drivers seat, then the 3 of us lifted the back end and swung it into the kerb. A wonderful parking job!

It was then we noticed the buzz and started feeling the atmosphere as we stared to walk with the crowds of reds up towards the ground, we pulled into a pub, I can’t remember which one, we didn’t even try the Arkles. I wormed my delicate form up to the bar and grabbed 3 pints of best bitter, sucking it down as we looked at the crowd we figured we’d better get on in the Kop or risk getting locked out.

Getting in was fun, the police on horseback were trying to herd us together but there were too many to do it properly and they got called a few new names in the process. It wasn’t a mean crowd and the police showed a bit of unusual common sense and let us find our way in, Big relief as we got through the turnstyle and big relief when we got out of the “Bog” (I think the bog drained straight down to the Mersey in those days and came out of that long pipe at Crosby) and up to the aisles on the Kop.

We had a plan for getting our spot, done it before and it worked a charm this time. We walked up the aisle to the left of the goal, (As you look down on the pitch) up as high as we felt was right. Then when the first ‘Sway’ would come...…..

(The Kop was a series of wide concrete terraces going fairly steeply up into the stand and interspaced with so called “crush barriers” about 50 feet apart going up. A sway would start when someone was forced down off their step, people were so tightly packed that it would cause a domino effect and a whole group of people would suddenly go stumbling, swaying down the Kop to be stopped by the barriers and cushioned by the first ones jammed there. We’re talking of maybe a hundred or so people. Cracked ribs and fainting were not unusual.
They say that there were 28,000 on the Kop that night and I believe it, I swear there were times my feet were off the concrete for seconds at a time.)

………. we’d wait for that ‘sway’ and cut in, right in “front” of the crush barrier, so nobody could come down on us. It worked again and we had a great relatively safe spot to sing yell and chant all night.

There was still about two hours to go to kick off and the mood really was getting electric a totally amazing atmosphere. The old silly song ee-eye-addio (Hey-ho-the-derry-oh to some here) was still a favourite, with lines like: “Mazzola is a queer, Mazzola is a queer, ee-eye-addio Mazzola is a queer! Clever huh?
Mazzola was rated the best striker in the world back then.
It wasn’t just the Kop though, the whole ground was alive and singing and they kept packing them in.
Just down to our left was the Paddock a long strip that the standing starts below pitch level and comes up about 12 people wide and above that there was seating. (Only ponces with money sat at a game) That was where a lot of Italians sat, almost alongside the Kop. There was some good banter going on, just fun mind you not the mean stuff, that came along in the late 70’s and 80’s by the twat’s who spoilt my game.

When they did close the gates there was an official count of about 54,500, there had to be more than that in there though. It was crammed with a lot of happy people. About 20,000 plus were left out on the street

Just three days earlier Liverpool had beaten Leeds at Wembley to win the FA Cup for our very first time, in an emotional and hard fought match that went into extra time. 90 minute for the match and 15 minutes each way for the extra time, in an even, two hours of energy sapping football that finished with a horizontal Ian St,John heading the winner off a Cally cross just at full time. I didn’t get to that match. (KoppiteinKC may have.) I was there Sunday, up on St George’s Hall plateau on one of the lions when the bus rolled in to tour the town. The boys didn’t get much rest that weekend with the official and unofficial parties and speeches. Now here they were two days after that weekend to play the best of the best. Outside I was just as brash and confident as the next man but inside I was a bag of nerves worrying about tiredness and an emotional letdown.

We sang YNWA along with “Gerry and the Pisstakers” and the teams came onto the pitch then all the pent up emotions from the build up to the match and the wait in the ground started to the surface and we began to let it out. Liverpool came out first to a huge welcome from the 55 thousand.

Then Shanks turned it up! He had Gordon Milne and Gerry Byrnes. Hero’s of Wembley carrying the FA Cup. Gerry had his arm in a sling, he’d broken his right collarbone at Wembley and played the last half the match without telling anyone, didn’t want the team to play a man down. Subs weren’t introduced to football until August of that year, next season…!!!

Shanks had them do a f**king “Victory Lap” just at the same time as Inter came out onto the pitch. Those poor buggers, I felt sorry for them, it was bedlam in there, they couldn’t hear themselves think let alone talk to each other. They looked at each other shellshocked like deer caught in the headlights and the further Gordon and Roger got around with the cup, the louder it got. Luckily they made it down to the Anny Road end in comparative peace as the Cup got to the Kop end. I’d never heard anything like it before….nor since, come to think of it. Still I had that voice inside saying “I hope you can live up to it.”

All I can say about the match after my worrying and the long weekend winning at Wembley was “Liverpool were f**king brilliant”. Right from the kick off we took it to them and hammered them. Shankley’s total football, one touch two touch and move, move, move. Almost right at the start Thommo swung one across and Roger rose above the crowded defense to flash it over the top. A minute or two later of total domination and Cally tapped one into the Saint that he hit on the turn….1-0. Roger Hunt and the Saint, the perfect striking pair gave the best and tightest defense in Europe fits. Tommo and Cally couldn’t be caught running the wings the whole game. Stevo and Geoff Strong dominated center field and made their mids ineffective. Smithy the iron man and Big Rowdy Yeats stopped (almost) anything that came above the half way line. Chris Lawler our wandering left back would show up as center forward and add to their dilemma while Ronnie Moran stopped them on the other side. Tommy Lawrence had it easy!

Then just as I was thinking this is easy, too easy. Inter broke up the middle after Smithy went forward and Rowdy slipped as Mazzola went by and it was 1-1 Shit!

From the following kick off though, nothing changed, we went back and hammered them again and then again, the yelling, singing and chants got even louder. Then from a free kick that had me baffled in it’s movement Cally poked the second one home 2-1. Moments later Chris broke in from the left back spot as Roger and the Saint broke out taking the defense with them and hit a screamer into the top 90 for what we thought was the third goal but the ref for reasons that have never been divulged, (Something about scoring three in one match against an Italian club.) disallowed it!!
We should have known then. A few more attacks later Tommy Smith came forward with the ball again and slipped a nice one through for Sir Roger to hit on the run and stagger the keeper, it came off him to the Saint who nipped in to put it into the Kop goal. 3-1 for the guys in all red. The ref heard the Kop roar and looked into the crowd and decided, rightly, that it was a goal.

In a brief lull after the goal we heard a new and different song coming from somewhere on our right, above the goal. Someone was singing “Santa Lucia” the words were in English “Go back to It-al-y Go back to It-al-y Go-o ba-ck to It-al-y Go back to Italy” Like some of today’s modern songs it was just one line but it started to spread and pick up volume, soon it was all around the ground with all 55,000 singing. People in the city miles away claimed they could hear it, the locked out fans certainly could. It went on to the final whistle that nobody heard by the way. We knew the game was over when the players closest to the ref raised their arms in victory or ran off the pitch.

It took awhile to get out of the ground after the match and a little scary in moments, even for someone my size. Still fun though, smiles all around and a wonderful sense of camaraderie. We’d played the best team in Europe, the world and beaten them soundly. Any other team than Inter and we’d have had at least 6 goals but they held us to 3. Looking up as we passed the area where quite a few of the Inter fans sat, they still looked stunned but were applauding the win. One guy who spoke better English than I spoke Italian was trying to shout a question, finally someone heard it was, “What were we singing?!!”

It was a late ride home up the East Lancs that night and quiet. No voices left and ears still ringing from the roar. Then as we pulled left to get to Ashton I heard a noise in the van, sounded like Joe groaning then we realized he was actually singing……“Go back to It-al-y”


http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3t...sport?from=rss
You can see Gerry Byrne's empty sleeve in his jacket here, after the team comes out.

That was our first season in all red by the way, Shanks got the kit for the European match a couple of months earlier against Anderlecht.

[Twenty26Six]

BACK ROW: Gordon Milne, Gerry Byrne, Tommy Lawrenson, Chris Lawler, Ron Yeats, Billy Stevenson

FRONT ROW: Ian Callaghan, Roger Hunt, Ian St. John, Tommy Smith, Peter Thomspon

[Twenty26Six]

courtesy of LFCHistory.net: http://lfchistory.net/redcorner_arti...article_id=599

" ... This was one of the great European nights at Anfield and any supporter lucky enough to have been there will still talk about it fondly as one of their proudest moments. It would have been a special game anyway being the semi-final of the European Cup, but the atmosphere inside the stadium was enhanced because only three days previously Liverpool had won the F.A. Cup for the very first time in the club's history. The euphoria and emotion of that Wembley victory, plus the extraordinary homecoming the next day, were still hugely apparent as kick-off time approached.

In the home dressing-room, Bill Shankly was trying to keep his players calm but he had one master-stroke up his sleeve, which involved keeping his team where they were until the Inter players were safely out on the Anfield pitch. Then he sent Gerry Byrne and Gordon Milne out first with the F.A. Cup which they paraded around the stadium to an awesome reception before letting his players jog out to face the reigning champions of Europe. Inter were also unofficial world champions, having defeated Independiente to win the world club championship and had players of tremendous skill and tactical awareness, who were used to playing in front of hostile crowds both in their own country and abroad.

This was Liverpool's debut season in Europe and they had started easily enough by defeating Reykjavik from Iceland. But two much tougher tests followed against the champions of Belgium and West Germany, Anderlecht & Cologne respectively. There were two goalless draws with the Germans before things were decided at a play-off in neutral Rotterdam. This was long before penalty shoot-outs and even the 'away goals' rule and Liverpool went through only on the toss of a coin and even then that had to be spun twice because the first effort stuck in the mud! It wasn't the most satisfactory way to win a football match but everybody knew the rules and what it did set up was this fantastic clash with a successful club who were intent on defending their title at all costs and who also knew they would have the enormous advantage of playing the final in their own stadium if they could defeat the newly-crowned English Cup holders.

Liverpool made one enforced change to the team which had triumphed at Wembley. Gerry Byrne had broken his collar-bone very early on in the final against Leeds and with substitutes not being allowed until a bit later in the decade had bravely continued throughout the 90 minutes and extra-time, even though there was a danger that he could have punctured a lung if he had been involved in another collision. Obviously he could not be considered for the semi-final and his place was taken by the experienced Ronnie Moran, making what turned out to be his last senior appearance in a red shirt at Anfield. Inter started with no fewer than 10 of the players who had won the European Cup in Vienna the previous May, with Milani's place being taken by Piero.

Whether the Italians were unsettled by the reception given to the home team or not, they started shakily and Liverpool made a dream start by taking the lead with less than 5 minutes gone. Ian Callaghan made ground down the right-wing and his centre was brilliantly volleyed past Sarti by Roger Hunt. But an uncharacteristic error by skipper Ron Yeats near the half-way line soon led to a counter-attack which ended with Mazzola hitting the equaliser past Tommy Lawrence. However, the Reds soon got their rhythm back and deservedly regained the lead 10 minutes before half-time with a perfectly-worked free-kick routine. Ian Callaghan was again involved and he cleverly ran into space behind the Italian wall to receive the ball and drive it across Sarti into the far corner of the Anfield Road goal.

It could have been even better because before the half was over Chris Lawler had a thrilling run and shot ruled out because one of his colleagues had strayed into an offside position. Liverpool continued to create chances in the second half but had one or two scary moments at the other end too. But a quarter of an hour from the end Ian St. John was in the right place to pounce on a rebound and restore Liverpool's two-goal advantage. The joyful reaction of the home players at the final whistle was understandable whereas the Italians trudged off knowing that their hold on the European Cup if not hanging by a thread had certainly been loosened somewhat. They would need all their skill and experience to overturn Liverpool's advantage in Milan.

The Liverpool party flew to Milan a week later in confident mood but Inter were only the 4th opponents they had met in a competitive European match and they realised afterwards that they would have to become quickly aware of all the tricks that some of the continentals would pull to unsettle their guests. Liverpool's base at a tranquil hotel on the banks of Lake Como seemed ideal but droves of chanting Italian fans disrupted the players' rest, as did a bell which sounded noisily at regular intervals from a nearby monastery or church. Legend has it that Bill Shankly asked Bob Paisley to go and see the Monsignor and ask him if he could muffle the bells so that his players could get some rest! Apart from these problems, there had been a massive drop of hate-mail leaflets in the city with scurrilous accusations about the Liverpool players and all this had the effect of hyping the match up so that when the teams finally did walk out, it was to a very highly-charged atmosphere.

However, it was more the performance of the man in the middle that quickly wiped out the two-goal advantage from the first leg. Awarding what appeared to be an indirect free-kick on the angle of the Liverpool penalty-area, he allowed the subsequent chipped shot from Corso to stand when it went straight in past Tommy Lawrence without touching another player. Shortly afterwards, as Tommy Lawrence bounced the ball on the edge of his area (remember that keepers then were permitted to wander all over their area without being penalised), one of the Inter forwards challenged him and kicked the ball into the empty goal as Tommy waited for it to bounce up into his hands again. To be fair to the Italian, there was no physical contact between him and the goalkeeper but even if it didn't come into the category of ungentlemanly conduct, it was still nearly always the case that goalkeepers got the decision in their favour when there was any challenge on them - whether it was legal or not - and especially in Italy. Angry Liverpool players chased the referee back to the centre-circle but he again awarded the goal. It would have taken an astonishing effort to win the tie after those setbacks and it was no surprise when Facchetti rounded off a flowing move in the second half by thumping home the winning goal.

Inter did go on to retain the trophy that year and Bill Shankly's great side of the mid-60's never did win a European trophy, although they came mighty close in this their first campaign and also the following year when they reached the final of the Cup Winners' Cup, only to be beaten by Borussia Dortmund. But they were the forerunners of the great Liverpool teams which dominated domestic and European football in the next decade and beyond. There was rightly great disappointment at the manner of the defeat in Milan but also great pride that for 90 minutes at Anfield they had frightened the best team in the world at that time. ... "

Liverpool: Lawrence, Lawler, Moran, Strong, Yeats, Stevenson, Callaghan, Hunt, St. John, Smith, Thompson.

Inter Milan: Sarti, Burgnich, Facchetti, Tagnin, Guarneri, Picchi, Jair, Mazzola, Piero, Suarez, Corso.

Copyright - Chris Wood (chris@lfchistory.net)