by Greg Tesser
Local Government Minister at that time was the suave and urbane Tony Crosland, and he was even more worried about the election being held during the World Cup. He blamed the defeat on ‘a mix of party complacency and the disgruntled Match of The Day millions’.
One government minister with an authentic football background was Denis Howell. A former Football League referee, the then Minister of Sport had no doubt why the election had gone wrong.
‘The moment goalkeeper Bonetti made his third and final hash of it on the Sunday, everything simultaneously began to go wrong for Labour the following Thursday.’
The portents were surely there on the Monday morning after the German disappointment when Home Secretary Roy Jenkins held a meeting in Birmingham. Howell said: ‘Roy was totally bemused that no question concerned either the trade figures or immigration, but solely the football and whether Ramsey or Bonetti was the major culprit.’
Howell has since become an almost mythical figure of history. A plain-looking man with a soft Brummie accent, he was appointed Minister for the Drought during that long hot summer of 1976, and whether he was in touch with the gods or not, his presence influenced the sky to form clouds and eventually, loads of the wet stuff followed.
This England performance, which has gone down in international sporting folklore as one of those rare occasions when a side seemingly in charge of its own destiny managed to ‘snatch defeat from the jaws of victory’, divides opinion. Some blame Bonetti, but like Alan Hudson, I am on the side of the other camp, questioning the decisions of manager Ramsey.
As Huddy made clear to me many years later: ‘What Alf Ramsey did with his substitution was far more damaging (than Bonetti’s performance in goal). And after all, Ramsey – since 1966 – had made quite a few ricks.’
TWELVE
COMMUNISTS AND
FASCISTS AND FASHION
The new campaign for Chelsea was full of much promise. The only problem was how both Bonetti and Osgood would react to the massive let-down of Mexico. Would this lead to a cloud of depression, or would the two Peters pick themselves up, dust themselves down and get on with the business of ‘trophy collecting’? Only time would tell, of course.
The Charity Shield match-up with League Champions Everton was very much one of those ‘after the Lord Mayor show’ occasions. Much joyous singing as the team paraded the FA Cup, but as I have already outlined, not a Stamford Bridge afternoon to live in the memory.
The highlight for me was meeting DJ Ed ‘Stewpot’ Stewart, who, prior to presenting Ossie with his Striker award, paid him huge compliments: one in particular I shall always remember was, ‘maybe if he had played in the Brazil game, things could have been different’.
This Brazil theme continued later that month when I met Peter Pullen for the first time. Peter wrote for World Soccer magazine, but away from his writings on the game, he was also at the time the Brazil Sports attaché in London. Later he was part of the Brazil Football Federation’s failed bid for the 1994 World Cup, and later still a FIFA delegate.
To cut a long story short, he contacted me purely for a chat about Peter Osgood. I think I had written something for a magazine along the lines that Ossie played football in the manner of a boy brought up on the Copacabana beaches, not in the Royal town of Windsor. These words obviously fascinated Pullen, in essence because at the time in England shouts of ‘Get Stuck In!’ were common at most grounds. For many fans, sweat still counted more than improvisation, languid skill and technical ability.
Upon entering his office, I was struck by both his elegance and obvious sophistication. The dour, monochrome worlds of Ramsey and Revie were as far away from Pullen as Mars.
Reclining in his chair, he listened intently to what I had to impart. ‘It’s a shame,’ I said, ‘that Peter Osgood couldn’t play for a club in Brazil – I am sure he would be idolised out there. What do you think?’
Now, I wasn’t attempting to try to arrange a transfer to Corinthians or Santos. Life then was just not like that. The world was a much bigger place, and anyway, even though I was his agent, I was not allowed to involve myself in any contract or transfer dealings. No, I was just making a point, and I simply wanted Pullen’s immediate reaction.
His answer to my rat-a-tat-tat of a question was frank and unsolicited. ‘Peter Osgood would grace any Brazilian team,’ he replied, his voice both soft and soothing. ‘The problem we have in Brazil is all about money, so competing with what he earns in England would be difficult. What is most unusual is his style – the power that he possesses, which is typically English, but mixed in with this is finesse and subtlety, which you associate more with players from the Latin countries.’
Before I left, and as we shook hands, he reiterated his comment that if Osgood had been born in Rio, he would have made the Brazil national team. ‘Take that, Mr Ramsey!’ I said to myself as I climbed into a black cab.
The next time I shared a glass with Peter, I related to him what Pullen had said about his ability, and his eyes lit up like small beacons. He was flattered – there was no doubt about it. Like any artist, Ossie needed his ego massaged from time to time. In an environment in which you are only as good as your last game, and the chant of ‘Osgood Is Good’ was often corrupted by opposition supporters to ‘Osgood Was Good’, Peter needed his fair share of flattery.
Having lifted the FA Cup for the first time, the Chelsea players were straining at the leash to get their teeth into Europe and the European Cup Winners’ Cup.
The first round saw them drawn against the unheralded Greek outfit Aris Salonika. No problem here, we thought. But what we hadn’t taken into account was the powder keg political situation in that country at the time.
On 21 April 1967, there was a coup d’état in the country, led by an influential and ruthless group of colonels. Their military rule lasted for some seven years, during which Western-style democracy and basic freedoms were denied to the population as a whole. Essentially it was pure Fascism. Some politicians, in both Britain and America went even further, labelling it as ‘unadulterated Nazism’. The American ambassador in Athens, William Phillips Talbot, complained that the colonels’ rule ‘represented a rape of democracy’.
By 1970, this odious regime was probably at its most potent. Political parties had been dissolved, and torture of political opponents was widespread, with Amnesty International representative James Becket declaring in 1969 that ‘a conservative estimate would place at not less than two thousand the number of people tortured’.
The Greek citizens’ right of assembly had been overturned and political demonstrations were declared verboten. Widespread surveillance was commonplace, which understandably resulted in people looking nervous and tense in bars and cafés, as any political discussion or even minor criticism of the government was outlawed.
The men at the helm of the junta were by no means purely and simply mindless thugs. They were subtle, and realising that such entertainments as the odd rock concert and the showing of an occasional liberal film would garner the regime some semblance of credibility, they set about what they regarded as a PR campaign. But it was all a vast sham.
Initially the monarchy was retained, and in December 1967, King Constantine II launched an unsuccessful counter-coup. Eventually after hiding out in various villages, he and his family decamped to Rome, eventually ending up in London where they lived in comparative anonymity in Linnell Close, Hampstead Garden Suburb. I lived opposite the ex-King for some twenty-four years, and I was struck almost immediately by the personae of the Special Branch men that kept guard outside his front door. They were so archetypal it wasn’t true – dark suits, dark glasses – the whole Hollywood Secret Service baggage – the lot.
So, arriving at some ungodly hour at Luton Airport on 15 September 1970, this was the land that I was to encounter in a matter of hours. I was with a small group of ‘Chelsea People’ plus a few journalists, most notably former captain of Spurs and Northern Ireland Danny Blanchflower, then putting pen
to paper for the Sunday Express.
I was dressed in a light blue King’s Road three-piece suit – flared trousers of course – and shod with yet another pair of wet-look loafers complete with obligatory buckle. My hair was long and I sported an impressive – well I thought so anyway – drooping but well-nourished Viva Zapata moustache.
The journey on the plane was, to put it mildly, eventful. There was just the one female attached to our group, a perky Lulu-lookalike who walked in the manner of a fashion model, often wiggling her neat bottom à la Marilyn Monroe. She was a kind of courier, and she wore a perpetual smile. Needless to say, the men became her number one fans.
Also on board for some unfathomable reason was a paltry party of Coventry City people on their way to Bulgaria for a European Fairs’ Cup-tie against Trakia Plovdiv (they won 4–1), so we were obliged to stop off in Sofia for a few hours.
By today’s high-tech standards, the plane was rickety and looked past its best-before date. Therefore, like the tie itself, our journey was a two-legged affair. Sofia, the capital of the then hardcore Communist country Bulgaria, was those days locked in a Stalinist shroud of repression, and the airport itself was rudimentary with a capital R.
It was just like walking on to the set of some Cold War spy movie shoot. You half-expected a well-preserved Californian film-maker, all trendy shades and perma-tan, to come out of the shadow of an antiquated plane and bellow: ‘Action!’
But this was no film-set; this was colourless Communism down to the seedy bar, with a smell of what I hoped was just cabbage, where we had to twiddle our thumbs drinking, or trying to drink, weak-as-water Bulgarian beer – ‘gnat’s pee’, as someone wryly observed.
The surly, sour-faced woman behind the bar became quite animated when she thought we might be in possession of the odd Deutsch mark or US dollar, but when she discovered that all we had (apart from Greek drachmas, of course) was good old British sterling, her cracked-face smile reverted back to a half-hearted snarl.
Eventually she softened a shade and agreed to hand over the beer, giving us worthless Bulgarian currency in our change. It was during this what seemed interminable wait that I got into conversation with the articulate and erudite Blanchflower.
Chatting with the Northern Irishman over this dubious Bulgarian brew, we soon got round to chatting about Chelsea and Peter Osgood in particular.
‘So, you are his agent then,’ he said.
‘Yes, I’m doing my best to promote him,’ I responded nervously, for the pills I had swallowed to counteract my fear of flying were, in conjunction with the alcohol, making me extremely dopey. ‘Sometimes it’s not that easy because being in my early twenties, so many of the people I have to deal with are very sceptical about my qualifications.’
How different it was in 1970 to today’s society in which everything we listen to, read or watch is geared totally towards the ‘yoof’ market.
I then did my best to get away from all things Stamford Bridge, and asked him about his own career – he was extremely unassuming about it – and he told me of his early days as a player with Barnsley in the 1950s and how he had upset the Oakwell hierarchy with his forthright opinions.
It seems incredible to relate, but in those less-enlightened times, players were never given the ball in training. They were told in no uncertain terms that being deprived of this so-important sphere would make them hungrier for it on a Saturday afternoon! Danny expressed his dismay at such archaic training methods and opined his concerns to the coaching team. These concerns were met with cries of ‘we know best’.
When Danny went on to inform the manager that ball retention and technique were how it was done abroad, again his viewpoint was pooh-poohed.
He was man born before his time, that there is no doubt. A professional who displayed intellectual leanings and articulate thought in an era when these working-class heroes were essentially slaves to their clubs, earning a pittance even though week-in-and-week-out they would attract crowds in excess of 50,000.
All-told Danny won 56 caps for Northern Ireland, and he also managed the national side for three years between 1976 and ’79. His crowning moment came at Wembley in 1961 when he captained Spurs to a 2–0 victory over Leicester City, thereby becoming the first twentieth century club to complete the League/Cup Double.
In 1978, he had a short and unsuccessful go at managing Chelsea, but it was as the fulcrum of that great Tottenham team that will forever remain in the memory.
Clambering aboard plane number two at Sofia Airport, I was by this time out on my feet. ‘Are we ever going to get to Greece?’ was the question that kept running through my brain, which by this time had more than a touch of the scrambled egg about it. What I needed was a pick-me-up, and fast!
Arriving at Salonika Airport, two things struck me: firstly, the heat. Boy, was it intense! There I was dressed up to the nines in my new suit, complete with waistcoat, walking, or should I say staggering, like some out-of-condition zombie into this oven. Later, a local told me that even by Greek standards, the temperature levels were exceptional for the time of year.
The second thing that caused some alarm bells to ring was this posse of machine-gun-wielding soldiers of the junta, looking mean and obviously itching to shoot someone. It was with trembling hands that I approached the passport area. I’m no coward, but these gun-toting guys with their dead eyes gave me the creeps.
Arriving at the desk, I was confronted by this smiling official: well I say smiling, it was more of a leer. He looked at my unkempt hair and moustache and was about to demand from me, in his quirky version of the English language, the full SP about my political affiliations. Thankfully, before I could point out that I was here with Chelsea, someone in authority spoke to him sotto voce in Greek to tell him of my Chelsea affiliation, and with a friendly wave and a Cheshire cat-style grin he waved me through. However, before he did so he did tell me that I would have to hand over my passport at the hotel, and it would be returned to me upon departure.
Once I was ensconced in the coach to ferry me to the team hotel, I was informed by the driver – who spoke extremely good English – that essentially long hair and what were termed ‘Revolution Moustaches’ were a big no-no as far as the junta was concerned. I thanked him and made some quip on the lines of: ‘Well, more than half the Chelsea team resemble Che Guevara!’
Arriving at our hotel, I was impressed by its luxury. The bar in particular was outstanding, and needless to say, having handed over my passport at the desk as requested, found my room and unpacked at 100mph, I was soon sitting with a few of the players, imbibing tall glasses of gins and tonic.
To the sound of clinking glasses, I began chatting to Ossie. He smiled affectionately at me, as he did every time I had a glass in my hand. In a matter of minutes, a thirty-something English couple, obviously intent on talking to us about Chelsea’s chances in the game, sat down and joined us.
Soon it was bonhomie all round. The guy – he was one of those typical golf club blokes of old – and Ossie soon built up a real rapport; he was good like that with fans, he always made them feel special, a rare talent. After a while, the stranger and his wife disappeared and we were left to our own devices. Despite all its drawbacks and inconveniences, this was undoubtedly my favourite football excursion. I had more adventures in Salonika than were good for me – but what fun. Or as Joe Gargery put it so succinctly in Great Expectations – what larks!
Later I was to say to Alan Hudson, ‘How the hell did we fit all that ‘stuff’ into one night?’
He just chuckled and said quietly: ‘Well, we just did.’
Before talking about the game, let us look at the environs of the Harilaou Stadium. Walking jauntily to the entrance, I was struck first of all by the amount of police and soldiers on duty. These were grim-faced guys with the expressionless eyes of psychopaths. Each one had some kind of automatic weapon over his shoulder. Some even clutched machine guns. The stadium itself had the look of Stalag Luft 111 in the classic Brit
ish war movie The Wooden Horse: all Everest-high barbed wire and soldiers, and there was a moat as well – it was the eeriest football ground I had ever visited.
As for the game itself, it was a particularly poisonous encounter, which included some of the worst on-the-pitch behaviour I had ever witnessed. Without sounding too biased, I am, of course, referring to the ‘tactics’ employed by the Salonika players.
I’ll let Alan Hudson describe some of the Salonika ‘tactics’: ‘The Greeks weren’t smart at all. There was all this spitting, and the worst thing was when they lifted you up if you’d fallen down in a tackle and then they would pull the hair under your armpits.’
After the game, Ossie also condemned the Salonika players’ behaviour to me, as indeed did Ian Hutchinson, who as usual had been as brave as the proverbial lion.
The match was not one to savour in any aesthetic sense, but there was much admiration for the Chelsea players from the media, taking into account all the provocation they had to endure from first whistle to last.
Around 50,000 screaming Greeks (with the odd Chelsea fan) were packed into this fortress of a ground, and the noise was deafening when Alecos Alexadis put Aris ahead. Late on, Hutchinson deservedly levelled, and the verdict was that it had been a ‘thoroughly professional job’ in which Sexton’s men had displayed both patience and restraint, words that certainly could not be used about the hours that followed on this hot and sultry night in Thessaloniki.
Once the dust had settled and the Chelsea party was back at its hotel, it became like a scene from the Keystone Cops as player after player spruced himself up. Suitably suited and booted, they were ready to face their hosts at a banquet laid on by representatives of the Greek FA and Aris Salonika officials.
