The crowd went silent, accepting the result without acrimony. Before the end they’d seemed irritated at times by some of Milan’s passing movements. Spurs had won fairly and squarely and there could be little argument. It had been a well-refereed match, played fairly by both sides. There had been few fouls and only one incident.

  In the dressing-room Bill and Eddie were ecstatic, going round praising everyone. Bill said that Cyril had played an excellent game – apart from one mistake. He said Perryman had also been great. In fact, everyone had done well. Eddie was personally praising Peters. ‘You played a real team game, Martin,’ said Eddie, shouting in Peters’ ear. ‘Do you hear me? Bloody great.’

  ‘I hear you,’ said Martin. ‘Now I want to hear Bill say the same.’

  Most of all, Mullery was being congratulated by everyone for his goal, a goal which had won the tie and got them into the final. ‘I’ve scored a few good goals in my time,’ said Mullers, ‘but that must be the most valuable ever.’

  The only player not joining in the shouting and congratulating was Martin Chivers. He went to his place and sat silent and alone, looking sullen and morose. His natural expression tends to be rather grim, except when he’s actually smiling, but this time there was no doubt he was feeling dissatisfied with himself. He knew he’d missed a great chance, one that he normally never misses. He knew that Bill and Eddie were displeased with him, thinking he should have tried harder and done more running. Once again, he had been left on his own up front. Peters had been forced for long spells to go back to midfield. It had been a game which had been won in the middle and on the flanks. The rest of the players left him alone with his thoughts, carefully walking round him.

  The referee came in to congratulate Spurs, followed by the manager of Milan, Nereo Rocco. Through an interpreter he too congratulated Spurs on their good game, saying he had no complaints about the result. They were a fine team, worthy winners, and he hoped they would do well in the final. Bill was equally profuse in his thanks, congratulating the Milan team. ‘I know what it’s like to be knocked out of a semi-final,’ said Bill. ‘It’s like the end of the world. But I hope you do well in the League.’

  The British press were eventually allowed in. They rushed to Mullery, asking about his goal, then to Cyril Knowles for his view on his great game. The Spurs directors arrived, plus Brian Curtin, the team doctor, Geoffrey Jones, the club secretary and Bill Stevens, the assistant secretary, all three of whom had flown in that day from London. Mr Broderick of Cook’s went into the bathroom to congratulate the players and emerged with his best suit soaked through. They’d shouted him over and then sprayed him with water. Brod, always a goer, stripped off naked and got in the bath with them. They roared when they saw his thin, weedy body. ‘I thought Belsen had closed,’ said John Pratt.

  It took about an hour for the team coach to get clear of the San Siro. Spurs were given strong police protection – a police car with a siren at the front followed by five camouflaged jeeps, full of extra policeman – but there were no incidents. The team were going back to their hotel up in the woods near Lake Como, with no chance of any nightlife, but they were too excited to be worried by the lack of any celebrations to come. Winning was excitement enough. At the hotel, Bill ordered champagne all round for the players then most of them went straight to bed.

  But on the plane next morning, going back to London, there was feasting and drinking all the way home. Nobody was sick. Nobody was drunk. Nobody made a fool of himself, but everyone was decidedly merry, players, directors, press and officials. The drink that wasn’t drunk was given to the players to take home. They staggered off the plane at Heathrow loaded down with big fluffy dolls they’d bought at Milan airport, with shoes they’d bought at Como, with the free bottles of champagne and miniature bottles of liqueurs they’d got on the plane, and, nicest of all, a free gold watch. Each player, including the substitutes, had been given a watch as a present by the Milan club. It was a gold, seventeen-rubies watch and must have cost around £15, according to an expert on the plane (Monty Fresco, the photographer).

  On the plane they’d read the London newspapers which contained reports of the other semi-final. Wolves had beaten Ferencvaros of Hungary. They were all slightly disappointed, having hoped for another foreign trip. Playing Wolves in the final was going to be more than a slight disappointment for the wives. The club had promised to take all wives abroad if Spurs reached the final. A night in Wolverhampton wasn’t exactly the wives’ idea of a treat, not compared with Milan which they all would have loved.

  But Spurs were at last in a final. They’d been knocked out of two other cups that season in the late stages but after nine months of trailing round Europe they’d made it. In the fourteen years since Bill had taken over as manager, he was now in line for his seventh major trophy.

  The nicest news of all in the morning papers concerned Steve Perryman. He’d been chosen by Sir Alf Ramsey for the England Under-23 party. Most experts had said earlier in the season that Steve wasn’t fulfilling the promise he’d shown the year before. Now he was going forward again, as those two goals against Milan had shown. Every player was genuinely pleased for Steve. Everyone is a Steve Perryman fan.

  Things had come right for others as well, such as Joe Kinnear, but Mullery’s was the most dramatic resurrection of all. There was no holding him on the plane. Looking at a photograph of his goal which showed the Milan keeper desperately throwing himself to the side, Mullery said he shouldn’t have tried. ‘Nobody could have stopped that goal.’

  At the airport, Brian Curtin, the club doctor, let his carrier bag drop and there was a loud noise of glass breaking. Everyone cheered. ‘I’m over twenty-seven,’ said Mullery, ‘but I don’t let bottles drop!’ He was referring to the doctor’s theory that in future players would be retiring at twenty-seven. At the back of Alan’s mind, throughout his months of injury, was the thought that Spurs had washed their hands of him, just because he was thirty.

  ‘It’s not true,’ said the chairman as we went through Customs. ‘All that was wrong was Alan’s injury. Yet everybody thinks we treated him badly. We just wanted to get him fit again.’

  The season had gone almost full circle. It had all begun at Wolverhampton, back in the sunny days of last August when Spurs had played their first game of the season. Now they were going to end the season as they’d begun, against the same opponents, with the same captain and very probably with the same team.

  24. THE EUROPEAN FINAL

  * * *

  ‘The great fallacy is that the game is first and last about winning. It’s nothing of the kind. The game is about glory. It’s about doing things in style, with a flourish, about going out and beating the other lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom.’ – Danny Blanchflower, ex-captain of Spurs.

  It was a very festive party which left Tottenham for Wolverhampton for the first leg of the UEFA Cup final. The club had booked three carriages on one of the five special trains from Euston. In the club party were a hundred members of the Spurs staff, from directors and players’ wives down to catering officials and gatemen. The team itself had gone up to Wolverhampton the night before. The wives were still wishing they were going somewhere glamorous in Europe, but at least with it being so near, everyone had been included. It was a hot sunny day in London, with temperatures well up in the sixties, just as it had been in August when the season had begun with the same train ride to Wolverhampton. At Wolverhampton the sun had gone and it was cloudy and raining.

  ‘After all these months dragging round Europe, I have to end up in the final against Waggy,’ said Joe Kinnear in the dressing-room. David Wagstaff, the Wolves player, is one of the few wingers that Joe ever feels nervous about. Not scared. It’s just that over the years he’s become a bit superstitious about playing against him. Now that Joe was back in the side once again, he didn’t want to make any mistakes.

  ‘Don’t worry, Joe,’ said Alan Mullery, patting his back. ‘He won’t get round you tonight.’ Now that Mullers was back in the side once again, he didn’t want anyone to forget who was captain.

  Mike England’s bogey player is supposed to be the Wolves striker, Derek Dougan. Back in the days when Mike was a groundstaff boy at Blackburn Rovers, Dougan was also there – as a first-team player. One day Dougan threw his boots back at Mike, saying they hadn’t been cleaned properly. The Doog has cooled down since those days (he can’t actually remember the incident), as befits a TV star and a pillar of the Player’s Union, but the rivalry still exists. At the beginning of the season Mike had felt nervous. Now he was back on top form and felt very confident.

  ‘You could do it tonight, lads,’ shouted Eddie Baily. ‘Win here and you’ve got the cup. Right. Over the top!’ It was like an old and dusty record, one I’d heard echoing down the dressing-rooms of Europe all season.

  It would be a shame for either team to lose. While Spurs had been triumphing in Iceland, France, Romania and Italy, being unbeaten in ten matches and scoring twenty-seven goals with only 4 against, Wolves had been equally successful in Portugal, Holland, East Germany, Italy and Hungary, scoring twenty-five goals with only seven against. Both teams had been excellent adverts for English football. In the whole history of European cups, it was the first time two English teams had ended up in the same final.

  It must have been rather strange for the referee and his two linesmen, all three of whom had trailed their way across Europe from Russia to spend a rainy, drizzly night in Wolverhampton for a match between two English teams. At least the two sides would be able to swear at each other with impunity.

  In the first half, there was nothing to swear or cheer about. Both teams, knowing each other too well, seemed to be holding back, stuck in their own lethargy, waiting for something to happen. The happening was Chivers. He didn’t do it just once, but twice. After twelve minutes of the second half, he ran from the far post to meet a Mike England free-kick and headed it straight into the net. It’s one of the team’s most successful free-kick situations, one practised many times back in the pre-season training. Wolves came to life after this, managing to sneak in the equaliser from a quickly taken free-kick of their own.

  Chivers’ second goal was perhaps one of his best of the whole season. He got the ball from Mullery out on the left flank, after Cyril Knowles had overlapped up to the halfway line. Chivers was on his own, miles away from goal, and it seemed as if he would have to wait for reinforcements. But he didn’t pause, turning simply on the ball and racing for goal, shrugging off two defenders. While still a good thirty yards away, at full speed and without appearing to aim or break his stride, he shot with his right foot into the far corner of the net. The goalkeeper hardly moved, transfixed by the speed of the shot.

  On his own, Chivers had won the match. Apart from the two goals, he hadn’t actually done much. He’d simply risen to the occasion twice, turning on two moments of deadly accuracy, while all around him lesser players had been rushing, bustling and getting nowhere.

  Eddie Baily was the first to sprint on to the pitch, embracing Chivers as the whistle went. In the dressing-room, he said that if Martin liked he would lie down on the floor and let him walk all over him. ‘What can I say? I can’t say nuffink, can I? You’ve knocked me out, Martin. I’m out for the count. I’m on the floor bleeding for a count of three and you’re saying 4-5-6-7-OUT! Martin, what can I say?’

  ‘Thanks, Ed,’ said Martin, grinning, his eyes narrowed, savouring Eddie’s self-humiliation, but not really being fooled, knowing that if he didn’t do it again in the return match, Eddie would be back to normal.

  ‘It couldn’t be better,’ said Bill, all smiles. ‘It just couldn’t be better. We set our stall as best we could, and look what happened. There’s no justice in football. If I was the Wolves manager now, I’d be in tears. That first goal came at the perfect time, just as we were going under.’

  The chairman of Wolves came into the dressing-room, bringing with him a young boy who wanted the Spurs’ autographs. ‘Well done, lads. Congratulations.’

  ‘You don’t mean that, do you,’ said Joe Kinnear.

  ‘I do,’ said the Wolves chairman. ‘No one could complain about those two goals. They were beauties. I really do mean it. Well done.’

  The return match at Tottenham was an even sadder night for Wolves. They played better than they’d done at Wolverhampton, but could only draw 1–1. Spurs therefore won the final 3–2 on aggregate.

  From Spurs’ point of view, it was a Glory Glory Halleluja evening. It was their biggest (54,303), most colourful, most excited home crowd of the whole year. As the last match of the season, it couldn’t have been better stage-managed. The crowd invaded the pitch afterwards and cheered the Spurs team as they triumphantly held aloft the enormous UEFA Cup. But most of all they cheered Alan Mullery. It seemed inevitable that he should be the star once again. He scored Spurs’ only goal of the game, a diving header from a Martin Peters’ free-kick. Yet again, one of the dead-ball set pieces had come off. It was the one where Chivers and Gilzean are the decoy men, running to the near post and taking defenders with them.

  It was champagne and hugs all round in the dressing-room afterwards, but somehow it was all slightly subdued. The team knew that they hadn’t played as well as they could. It would take some time for the full significance of their win to sink in.

  ‘I’m going on the drink now,’ said Gilly, ‘and I’m not resting till Sunday.’

  ‘We played rotten tonight and won,’ said Martin Chivers. ‘You can’t do better than that.’

  ‘Brilliant save, Pat,’ said Bill, congratulating Jennings.

  Eddie Baily was sitting very quietly in a corner. ‘The nine months seemed long, but those last twenty minutes. Bloody hell. They were like an eternity.’

  Upstairs the club had laid on a large banquet. All the players were there, from Wolves and Spurs. (None of the Spurs players nicked off this time to any rival party.) The Spurs background staff and players’ wives were also invited. All in all, it was a splendid evening, a perfect climax to a long hard season.

  ‘A season is only a good season if you win something,’ said Philip Beal the next day. ‘It’s no use being second in the League, or third or fourth. It’s no use being beaten in a cup final. People don’t look back to that. A season is only remembered by the trophies that have been won.’

  Philip Beal is twenty-seven and has had twelve years at the club, far longer than any other player. His contract was up at the end of the season. He knew that with a big trophy behind them, he had a far better chance of getting some good terms out of the club. He was determined this time to ask for loyalty money.

  Other players woke up to thoughts of new contracts, wondering how much they could get. Pat Jennings had had another fine game. One football manager had even been quoted as saying that he was now the best goalkeeper in Europe. His case was going to be very strong. The talk of contracts brought the season back to where it all began. The players might be making plans for their summer holidays, but Bill Nicholson knew that for him the worst part of the year was yet to come.

  The club had made a good bit of money out of Europe, and of course so had the players. Their extra bonuses for winning in Europe came in all to about £1,000 each, quite modest for cup bonuses, but of course it was just the beginning. By winning, they were going to be in Europe for another year. Next season they would be the only London club with the honour of playing in Europe. The final match at Tottenham had brought in gate receipts of £45,000, a record for any match at White Hart Lane.

  As Philip Beal said, it had been a good season, simply because of the continent. They’d flown 10,238 miles round Europe, but it had been worth it. In England they’d travelled 7,500 miles by train, but had ended up only sixth in the League. That would quickly be forgotten.

  Perhaps the length of the season would be remembered. It had been the hardest ever in terms of the number of matches played. Counting all their cup and League games, and their two friendlies in Scotland, the team had played a total of seventy games. In Bill and Eddie’s day, a first division team averaged no more than forty-five matches.

  Derby had won the League, by one point. Spurs at one stage hadn’t been far behind them. If they could have been more consistent, they would have been well up with the leaders. But there seemed something in the team’s character all season which made them fade in ordinary League matches against so-called lesser teams. They seemed to lack aggression, the killer instinct. However, to finish sixth in the League was respectable if not exciting.

  But almost every big occasion had been a joy to watch, even on that momentous day when Leeds knocked them out of the FA Cup. Leeds, after all, went on to win the Cup and in that match they were unstoppable. During the season Spurs produced consistently high form in every cup match. Was their failure in ordinary matches a group weakness or a weakness of certain individuals in the group? It would take a psychologist to work out the reasons but, even then, unless he could come up with a positive way of solving the problem, Mr Nicholson would doubtless not want to know.

  Of the personal stories of the year, Alan Mullery’s was by far the most dramatic. His rise and fall and resurrection is a morality tale for all footballers. After he was called back from the dead for that first Milan match, Spurs had their best run of the season. Not one of their nine remaining matches was lost – and they included hard European matches and two London derby games, against Arsenal and Chelsea. Not only did Alan come back for Spurs, he was back in the England party against West Germany. He withdrew from the second game, deciding that he’d already had a long and hard season, wanting instead to spend some time at home with his family. He reckoned that being an old man of thirty, he wouldn’t make the England World Cup team for 1974, so he might as well let a younger player have his chance. ‘As far as the team’s concerned, it’s been a fabulous season. They reached the quarter-final of one cup, the semi-final of another and then won the European final. I think the UEFA cup is the hardest European trophy to win because there are so many matches to be played.