Football’s greatest ‘Battles of Britain’ ranked

When Rangers host Tottenham on Thursday in the Europa League, it will be the 38th time a Scottish club have encountered English opposition in European competition. And every time, the matches have come freighted with additional meaning. National rivalries are routinely imposed on the clubs as these games become a scrap for cross-border pride, an opportunity to establish internecine supremacy, a Battle of Britain. Here are six of the best:

6. Coventry vs St Mirren, Anglo Scottish Challenge Trophy, 1987

In truth, more a mild altercation than a full-scale reconstruction of Bannockburn, the 1987 Anglo Scottish Challenge Trophy nonetheless delivered a unique entry to the football annals: its scheduled second leg has still to be played. This remains the one-legged football match. Coventry, after winning the FA Cup the previous May for the only time in the club’s history, had seen their hopes of European football in the Cup Winners’ Cup dashed by the continuing post-Heysel European ban on English participation.

To fill the gap in their ambitions, a hastily arranged challenge was set up with the Scottish Cup winners, St Mirren, who were available having been quickly evicted from the Cup Winners’ Cup by the Belgian side Mechelen. As a concept, it was not one to cause much in the way of public stir, not helped by the fact the first leg at Highfield Road was shoe-horned into the schedule on a Tuesday night three days before Christmas. A crowd of just 5,331 (including Brian Clough, whose Nottingham Forest were due to play Coventry in a Boxing Day league game) turned up to watch.

The evening got off to a formal start when the respective captains led out the teams carrying the two oldest football trophies in the world game. That, though, was the end of the excitement. A dull 1-1 draw (with the St Mirren goal scored by Billy Davies, later Clough’s successor as manager at both Derby and Forest) fizzled out with little sound or fury. Still, there was always the second leg, fixed for a midweek in March the following year. Or so everyone assumed. But it never happened, largely due to financial reasons. Without a tournament sponsor and with television showing little inclination to screen the event, Coventry reckoned it would have cost them more to travel to Paisley than they would make from the gate. So the game was scratched. And the Anglo Scottish Challenge Trophy remains yet to be lifted.

5. Rangers vs Wolves, European Cup Winners’ Cup semi-final, 1961

This was the first meeting between English and Scottish clubs in European competition. And, in the ensuing scrap to establish supremacy, the English side seemed blindsided by their opponents’ passion and commitment. The first leg was held at Ibrox. In front of 79,000 roaring fans (just 1,000 had made the trip up from Wolverhampton) Rangers were dominant from the start. Unexpectedly wearing a change kit of hooped shirts (albeit that the Celtic-style stripes were in red and blue) they won 2-0, with goals from Alex Scott and Ralph Brand. According to The Scotsman’s account the following morning, Wolves were “sent whimpering home, their tails between their legs”.

The second leg at Molineux was played four days after the annual England v Scotland encounter, which England had won 9-3. Seeking retribution for that humiliation, thousands of Rangers fans made the journey south, joining up with those who were still in England after the Wembley defeat. Before kick-off they took over Wolverhampton town centre, singing derogatory chants about the hapless Scottish keeper at Wembley, Celtic’s Frank Haffey. Three members of the Rangers side, including Jim Baxter, had also played for their country and found revenge in a 1-1 draw which took them to the final. Such was the scale of the unfettered celebrations by the invading army of Scottish fans, it inspired a song called When The Rangers Came To Wolverhampton Town. It includes a line about local astonishment at “a sight I’d never seen when they sang God Save the Queen”. Sadly, Rangers could not reproduce that fervour in the final, which was lost to Fiorentina.

4. Newcastle vs Rangers, Inter Cities Fairs Cup semi-final, 1969

Eight years on from that opening skirmish, this was the encounter that truly put the battle into the Battle of Britain. In the first leg at Ibrox, Rangers were the better side and had a late penalty saved, but Newcastle held on for a goalless draw. The 10,000 Geordies who travelled north, however, were unable to celebrate the score as they came under sustained assault from the home supporters after the game. Bricks, bottles and lumps of concrete rained down on the visitors’ heads from the blocks of flats around Ibrox as they made their way back to their coaches. Welcome to Glasgow.

A week later, 12,000 Rangers fans headed south for the second leg. After spending the day enjoying the delights of the Bigg Market, they filled the Gallowgate End of St James’ Park, many climbing the floodlight stanchions to escape the crush. Twice in the first half play was held up to clear Rangers followers who had spilt on to the pitch. At half-time over the Tannoy came an announcement that the referee would stop the match if there was another invasion. It didn’t work. Indeed, it had the opposite effect. After Jimmy Scott and Jackie Sinclair had scored for the home side, the visiting fans decided to pour on to the pitch en masse in an attempt to get the game abandoned. It took the overwhelmed police 20 minutes to push the crowd back into the stand. But the referee did not fulfil his threat and the game was concluded.

Some Rangers fans seemed not to take the defeat well. At the final whistle, they poured into the city centre, smashing windows, overturning cars, ransacking shops and pubs. Police reinforcements were called in from as far away as Lancashire, but it took six hours for a semblance of order to be restored to the Toon. Though there was some local compensation as Newcastle went on to beat Ujpest Dozsa in the final to secure the last trophy the club have won.

3. Leeds vs Rangers, Champions League second round, 1992

This was the first time Europe’s senior club competition was run under its rebranded title the Champions League. Its format was new too: teams would attempt to qualify for a mini-league to see which sides made the final. But it was still, then, a competition open only to league champions. Leeds, who had won the last English championship before the arrival of the Premier League created an unbridgeable financial chasm between leading English and Scottish clubs, were to meet Rangers, who had won five of the six previous Scottish titles, in the final round of the knockout competition to decide who went into the play-off mini-league. Leeds should not have been involved. They had been eliminated on away goals by Stuttgart in the previous round, only for the Elland Road match, which Leeds had won 4-1, to be annulled and replaced by a 3-0 victory which conveniently matched their 3-0 defeat at the Neckarstadion after the Germans were found to have inadvertently breached Uefa’s three-foreigners rule. A play-off on neutral turf was hastily arranged, which Leeds won 2-1.

Perhaps recalling the events in Newcastle 23 years earlier, the clubs agreed that no tickets would be sold to away fans for either tie. So both games were played in a wholly partisan atmosphere. At Ibrox in the first leg, to huge home acclaim, Rangers won 2-1. In the return at Elland Road, Mark Hateley completely silenced the home crowd by opening the scoring. Leeds responded with vigour, Eric Cantona, just three weeks before he crossed the Pennines to join Manchester United, drawing four magnificent saves from Andy Goram.

Then Ally McCoist sealed things with a diving header, expressing his delight by bursting into tears as he and his team-mates celebrated in an eerie silence. It was only November, but it was already McCoist’s 29th goal of the season. Cantona eventually pulled one back for the English side, but it was too late: the Scots were victorious. The Daily Record the next day described it as “Rangers’ best performance in 20 years”.

Rangers progressed, only to come second in the group stage, behind Marseille, the eventual champions. But at least there was no question about this: they were the champions of Britain.

2. Celtic vs Liverpool, European Cup Winners’ Cup semi-final, 1966

Within this England vs Scotland contest, there was an intriguing subplot. It was also a scrap between the two finest Scottish managers of the time: Celtic’s Jock Stein and Liverpool’s Bill Shankly. And it was Shankly who came out on top. Celtic won the first leg 1–0 at Celtic Park, thanks to a goal from Bobby Lennox. But under Shankly’s shrewd guidance, Liverpool sent Anfield into a night of European rapture, winning the second leg 2-0. The club had reached the first of many a European final, which was to be played, much to the manager’s delight, at Hampden Park. But however close it was to his home, Shankly could not seize any advantage. Borussia Dortmund lifted the trophy. Celtic, meanwhile, licked their wounds and won the big one, the European Cup, the following season.

Thirty-seven years later, Stein’s successor Martin O’Neill got revenge of sorts in the 2003 Uefa Cup quarter-final. Gerard Houllier’s Liverpool, who won the trophy two years earlier in their treble season, looked to be in control after a 1-1 draw at Celtic Park. Unlike previous England-Scotland scraps, the second leg was played out in a festive mood of mutual admiration between the two sets of supporters. Even when Alan Thompson and John Hartson, who had missed a penalty in the last moments of the first leg at Celtic Park, scored to secure a magnificent 2-0 win, there was little animosity as Anfield turned temporarily green and white. Celtic went on to lose the final to Jose Mourinho’s Porto, a game 80,000 Celtic fans travelled to Sevilla to watch. Legend has it several of them are still there.

1. Celtic vs Leeds, European Cup semi-final, 1970

Without question the finest and most significant cross-border skirmish of them all. This was the first time the champions of England and those of Scotland had met in competitive action. And while subsequent meetings between title-winners have taken place in the group stage, this was at the sharp end of Europe’s senior competition.

At the time, both sides had proper European pedigree and really fancied their chances: Celtic had won the cup three seasons before, the first British side (and only Scottish one) to do it, while Leeds had picked up the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup in 1968. In truth, Celtic were lucky still to be involved: they had got through an earlier tie with Benfica on a coin toss. Leeds, by contrast, had beaten Lyn Oslo 16-0 on aggregate.

But Don Revie’s side, set a target by their manager at the start of the season of winning the treble, were in the midst of an unforgiving run of fixtures. They had just played an FA Cup semi-final against Manchester United that had required two ferocious replays. And at Elland Road in the first leg, while Revie worried about whether he was wearing his lucky suit, Celtic’s manager Jock Stein engaged in sly psychological warfare. Just before kick-off he approached the Leeds captain Billy Bremner and expressed his sympathy, pointing out that some of the Leeds team looked absolutely exhausted from all the games they had been playing. It proved a prophetic observation. Leeds were outrun. And with Jimmy Johnstone supreme, Celtic won via an early goal from the prodigy George Connelly.

For Leeds there was to be no let-up. The second leg was played just four days after their drawn FA Cup final at Wembley against Chelsea. Sensing the crowd could carry him to victory, Stein switched the tie to Hampden Park and 136,505 turned up, still a record for a European Cup game. Leeds took the lead with a Bremner screamer, a goal he celebrated with sustained vigour, as if to demonstrate to Stein he was not remotely tired. But the same could not be said of some of his team-mates. They could not hold on to the lead as Celtic applied remorseless pressure. First, Yogi Hughes got the equaliser, then Bobby Murdoch scored the winner.

But despite both teams’ pedigree, neither enjoyed a triumphant end to the season: Celtic would go on to lose to Feyenoord in the final while Leeds’ treble dream finished with nothing at all. Though as a riposte to those who claim today’s schedule is unworkably challenging, their failure may have been down to the fact that in the space of just 42 days at the climax of their season, they played three FA Cup semi-finals, two FA Cup finals, two European Cup semi-finals and seven league games.