Celtic FC - FC Internazionale Milano

Le finali di Coppa dei campioni

25 maggio 1967, Estádio Nacional do Jamor, Lisboa


Dal resoconto di Rodolfo Pagnini dettato a L'Unità (26 maggio 1967)
"Il miracolo non si è avverato, poiché davvero soltanto un miracolo avrebbe potuto far vincere all'Inter la terza Coppa dei Campioni. L'Inter non è più l'Inter: è una squadra che vive di ricordi e che trascina stancamente i suoi muscoli logorati da troppo battaglie verso la fine di una stagione che, cominciata a spron battuto, rischia di trasformarsi in una Waterloo. Nello stadio di Lisbona i nerazzurri hanno offerto uno spettacolo sconsolante. Se si esclude la difesa, che si è battuta sempre con grande coraggio e con grintosa determinazione, specie in Sarti e Picchi. autentici sfortunati eroi di questa finale, l'Inter non è praticamente esistita. Il crollo dei nerazzurri si è manifestato soprattutto a centro campo, dove Corso ha offerto una fedele riproduzione di una statua di marmo, trascinando nel caos e nella confusione 1'innocente Bicicli e Bedin. L a prova deprimente di Corso, secondo noi, è stata determinante, poiché ha consentito a Murdoch di agire liberamente in fase di attacco e di costituire con Gemmell (un terzino che Domenghini non ha mai saputo controllare) una coppia pericolosissima, dalla quale sono scaturite quasi tutte le azioni degli scozzesi. L'Inter ha avuto, tra l'altro, molta fortuna all'inizio, allorché l'arbitro le ha concesso un rigore su cui in Italia normalmente i direttori di gara sorvolano. Il fallo d McNeill su Cappellini non è parso infatti passibile della massima punizione. Eppure, nonostante si fosse trovata in vantaggio dopo solo sette minuti, l'Inter non è stata mai capace di darsi un contegno tecnico-tattico, né di far respirare la propria difesa attraverso un intelligente lavoro di disimpegno e di alleggerimento. L'iniziativa è passata immediatamente nel!e mani del Celtic che ha condotto dal momento del gol dell'Inter fino alla fine senza soluzione di continuità. L'Inter non ha mai saputo produrre neppure una parvenza di contropiede e si è dovuta limitare a subire la pressione degli avversari.  I quali  — a maggior disdoro dell'Inter — non è che siano dei padreterni: tecnicamente sono alquanto modesti, se si escludono Murdoch e Johnstone. Ma gli scozzesi hanno avuto dalla loro una preparazione atletica esemplare e una determinazione costante verso la vittoria ...
E' questa la prima volta che una squadra britannica si fregia del tiiolo continentale. Dobbiamo dire che si tratta di una vittoria assolutamente meritata. Per quanto riguarda l'Interr possiamo dire che è stato meglio cosi,  cioè che la vittoria scozzese sia arrivata durante i novanta minuti regolamentari anziché nei supplementari. Non vogliamo assolutamente pensare allo spettacolo che avrebbero offerto i nerazzurri qualora ci fosse stato bisogno di un'appendice di altri trenta minuti ..."  

Da Jonathan Wilson, Inverting the Pyramid (cap. 10)
"Celtic had dabbled with a defensive system, away to Dukla Prague in the semi-final, but although they got away with a goalless draw, that game had made clear that their strength was attacking. Their basic system was the 4-2-4 that had spread after the 1958 World Cup, but the two centre-forwards,
Stevie Chalmers and Willie Wallace, took turns dropping deep, trying to draw out Inter’s central defensive markers. The two wingers, Jimmy Johnstone and Bobby Lennox, were encouraged to drift inside, creating space for the two attacking full-backs, Jim Craig and Tommy Gemmell. If Inter were going to defend, the logic seemed to be, Celtic were going to attack with everything in their power.
And Inter were set on defending, particularly after Mazzola gave them a seventh-minute lead from the penalty spot. They had done it against Benfica in 1965, and they tried to do it again, but this was not the Inter of old. Doubts had come to gnaw at them, and as Celtic swarmed over them they intensified.
‘We just knew, even after fifteen minutes, that we were not going to keep them out,’ Burgnich said. ‘They were first to every ball; they just hammered us in every area of the pitch. It was a miracle that we were still 1-0 up at half-time. Sometimes in those situations with each minute that passes your confidence increases and you start to believe. Not on that day. Even in the dressing room at half-time we looked at each other and we knew that we were doomed.’
For Burgnich, the ritiro had become by then counter-productive, serving only to magnify the doubts and the negativity. ‘I think I saw my family three times during that last month,’ he said. ‘That’s why I used to joke that Giacinto Facchetti, my room-mate, and I were like a married couple. I certainly spent far more time with him than my wife. The pressure just kept building up; there was no escape, nowhere to turn. I think that certainly played a big part in our collapse, both in the league and in the final.’
On arriving in Portugal, Herrera had taken his side to a hotel on the sea-front, half an hour’s drive from Lisbon. As usual, Inter booked out the whole place. ‘There was nobody there, except for the players and the coaches, even the club officials stayed elsewhere,’ Burgnich said. ‘I’m not joking, from the minute our bus drove through the gates of the hotel to the moment we left for the stadium three days later we did not see a single human being apart from the coaches and the hotel staff. A normal person would have gone crazy in those circumstances. After many years we were somewhat used to it, but by that stage, even we had reached our breaking point. We felt the weight of the world on our shoulders and there was no outlet. None of us could sleep. I was lucky if I got three hours a night. All we did was obsess over the match and the Celtic players. Facchetti and I, late at night, would stay up and listen to our skipper, Armando Picchi, vomiting from the tension in the next room. In fact, four guys threw up the morning of the game and another four in the dressing room before going out on the pitch. In that sense we had brought it upon ourselves.’
Celtic, by contrast, made great play of being relaxed, which only made Inter feel worse. In terms of mentality, it was catenaccio’s reductio ad absurdum, the point beyond which the negativity couldn’t go. They had created the monster, and it ended up turning on its maker. Celtic weren’t being
stifled, and the chances kept coming. Bertie Auld hit the bar, the goalkeeper Giuliano Sarti saved brilliantly from Gemmell, and then, seventeen minutes into the second half, the equaliser arrived. It came thanks to the two full-backs who, as Stein had hoped, repeatedly outflanked Inter’s marking. Bobby Murdoch found Craig on the right, and he advanced before cutting a cross back for Gemmell to crash a right-foot shot into the top corner. It was not, it turned out, possible to mark everybody, particularly not those arriving from deep positions.
The onslaught continued. ‘I remember, at one point, Picchi turned to the goalkeeper and said, “Giuliano, let it go, just let it go. It’s pointless, sooner or later they’ll get the winner,”’ Burgnich said. ‘I never thought I would hear those words, I never imagined my captain would tell our keeper to throw in the towel. But that only shows how destroyed we were at that point. It’s as if we did not want to prolong the agony.’
Inter, exhausted, could do no more than launch long balls aimlessly forward, and they succumbed with five minutes remaining. Again a full-back was instrumental, Gemmell laying the ball on for Murdoch, whose mishit shot was diverted past Sarti by Chalmers. Celtic became the first non-Latin side to lift the European Cup, and Inter were finished".