The 1971 Cup Winners’ Cup – When Chelsea’s debutants overcame the Old Masters of European football.
After winning the FA Cup in 1970, defeating Leeds United in a couple of brutal battles first at Wembley, and then in the replay at Old Trafford, Chelsea entered the European Cup Winners’ Cup. Under the guidance of their young and upwardly mobile coach Dave Sexton, the club were keen to prove their credentials of being more than a showy collection of flashy players more at home in Carnaby Street than on a football pitch. With the FA Cup victory suggesting the club were on an upward trajectory, European football was the ideal place to stake their claim. It was their first venture into European competition. It shouldn’t have been, but it was. Continue reading →
‘Cry “Havok!” and let slip the dogs of war.’ The 1970 FA Cup Final.
After the murder of Julius Caesar, Shakespeare has Mark Antony’s deliver a soliloquy wherein he selects this particular phrase to enflame the wrath of the masses against the assassins of the dead Emperor and implore them to deliver dread vengeance, even invoking the spirit of the departed Caesar to rise up from the dead and echo his call.
It’s doubtful whether either Don Reive or Dave Sexton dipped into their ‘Complete Works of Shakespeare’ in search of such emotive prose to inspire their teams ahead of the 1970 FA Cup Final between Leeds United and Chelsea, but given the events in the game that followed and the subsequent replay at Old Trafford some 18 days later, they may well have done so. Continue reading →
Gary Thacker 