Today I'm going back 38 years to 1983 and Tottenham's UEFA Cup 3rd Round 2nd Leg game against the German titans Bayern Munich played at White Hart Lane in front of a crowd numbering 41,977.
Spurs went into the game a goal down from the first leg played in Bavaria and had to wait until the second half to level scores on aggregate following a Glenn Hoddle free kick which was nodded by Graham Roberts into the path of Steve Archibald who finished from close range. Hoddle was heavily involved in the second goal of the game too with an exquisite chip into the area which Mark Falco rolled into the net off the far post with deadly accuracy to win the game for Spurs on aggregate.
Tottenham's prize for beating one of Europe's Superclubs was a Quarter Final against Austria Wien (Austria Vienna) the following Spring. Spurs were on the march and went on to beat both the Austrians and then their Semi-Final opponents Hajduk Split to reach the 1984 UEFA Cup Final (as featured on my blog). Spurs won the Final against the Belgian side Anderlecht on penalties after a 2-2 draw on aggregate. The Final should have been an all-English affair that season but Anderlecht came back from a two goal defeat at the City Ground, Nottingham to beat Forest 3-0 in the second leg. Depressingly, whilst it looked like a plucky performance by the Belgians, what we didn't know at the time was that the Anderlecht owner had used a local gangster to bribe the Spanish referee on the night in a disgraceful match fixing incident. Anderlecht took the lead in their Semi-Final on aggregate with only two minutes remaining and then Paul Hart headed what appeared to be a perfectly good equaliser but which was mysteriously ruled out by the referee.
Thankfully Anderlecht did not win the UEFA Cup Final but one wonders whether their owner similarly attempted to bribe the referee for that game too? The truth about the bribe in that 1984 Semi-Final eventually emerged in 1997 and Anderlecht's punishment was a pathetic one-year ban from European competition. There is evidence to suggest that UEFA knew about the bribe as early as 1992 but took four years to address the issue. One is left wondering about the state of the game since match fixing and bribery surely cannot be have been confined just to one Anderlecht game in 1984. I have always said that if evidence emerges of widespread corruption such that you cannot trust what you are seeing as being honest competition then I would walk away from the game for good. Perhaps Spurs were actually lucky to play Anderlecht rather than Forest back in 1984? Forest were certainly the stronger side in the League that season and finished 3rd, thirteen points ahead of Spurs in 8th place. We'll never know now however and I find that sickening.
CRB Match No. 275
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