Live updates will appear below after 12:30.
Celtic team to play Hearts: Gordon, Gamboa, Simunovic, Boyata, Tierney, Brown, Armstrong, Roberts, McGregor, Sinclair, Griffiths
Celtic v Hearts, Live updates
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HAPPY HOOOOOPY BIRTHDAY to
Mrs CORKCELT!!!!!
Here we go 10 in row HH
..
Any Team News..Weather..?
TIA
001
Nae slip ups please Celtic.
Team for today Simpson Craig Gemmell Murdoch McNeil Clark. Johnstone Wallace Chalmers Auld Lennox HH
6-0 the hoops HH
What an atmosphere outside on the Celtic Way, as we speak
I wanted 7
CELTIC (4-2-3-1) Gordon; Gamboa, Simunovic, Boyata, Tierney; Brown, Armstrong; Roberts, McGregor, Sinclair; Griffiths
Subs: De Vries, Toure, Bitton, Rogic, Sviatchenko, Forrest, Kouassi
BROGAN ROGAN TREVINO AND HOGAN on 21ST MAY 2017 10:57 AM
Still not well enough to make the game so staying at home.
Folk going to Lisbon should hopefully have received some e-mails this morning with some details.
*************
Sorry to hear about your illness over the last few days. Haven’t received an email re. Lisbon for a while now. Should I, and youngest daughter, be concerned? Really hope you make a quick recovery and you’re fighting fit for Tuesday after all the hard work you’ve put in.
Steward waiting for his wager to come good will have the whole crowd roaring him on….. plus all us internet bampots, of course. Thanks in advance for all the updates….hope the pages rattle along, a sure sign that we’re pumping the minis.
Come on you unbeaten bhoys in green!
7-0 is 50-1 with bet 365….. sounds like karma…
it’s written in the stars…
or worth a quid!! HH
Strong strong team. Similar scoreline as last seasons ender please Celtic :)
Pleased to see Brendan is putting football before sentiment.
HH
Come on Celtic (obviously), Partick Thistle and St Johnstone, in that order.
Normanstreet,
80’s with bet Victor.
Cyber pint winging it’s way to you if it comes in :)
HH
GM
My last tip of Celtic Chelsea and Everton stoated….. a cool 34-1…..
HH
No sentiment, no Kris. No Lustig either he must have a knock.
Brendan picked his strongest team & strongest bench of available players.
A pure driven Professional, we are so lucky to have him.
COYBIG. 3 points & plenty of goals, win the League playing football The Glasgow Celtic way.
5 nil will do me.
Black plastic for my wee bit of the Tifo. Nice atmosphere around the drizzly stadium. Strong team, Mon the Invincibles!
The Lisbon Lions: 50 years on from their day of glory
Hugh McIlvanney meets four members of the first British side to lift the European Cup as they recall the day that Celtic made footballing history
Hugh McIlvanney
May 21 2017, 12:01am,
The Sunday Times
This week brings the 50th anniversary of a triumph in football that took the local-lads-made-good storyline close to the category of minor miracle. Where in the entire history of major club competitions at international level is there anything comparable to Celtic’s victory over Inter Milan in the 1967 European Cup final when fielding 10 players born within a dozen miles of their Glasgow stadium and completing their team with an outlier from roughly 30 miles away on the Ayrshire coast?
Across the decades, the concentrated sense of regional identity implicit in the feats of a warm Portuguese evening has imparted a lasting communal vibrancy to memories of what was done by the Lisbon Lions, even when those memories exist only as an inheritance for people who weren’t alive at the time.
Of course, given that the natural antagonisms of club supporters are traditionally and notoriously intensified in the Celtic-Rangers rivalry by sectarianism, it would be foolish to suggest there was absolute unanimity of joy in either the immediate or the long-term reactions throughout Scotland to that distant night of glory.
The Lisbon experience bound the Celtic players together as a band of brothers for life
Yet ample evidence supports the belief that resistance to taking national pride in the achievement has been confined to only the most diehard harbourers of partisan prejudice. For the vast majority of Scots (including, obviously, many Rangers fans), Lisbon nourished the long-held but often fragile conviction that their country’s honoured place in the annals of football could rest on more than its pioneering and evangelising contribution to the early development of the game or its capacity for producing generations of great players.
Creating a great Scottish team — whether in the club or international sphere — was always the problem: melding native talents and temperaments into a unit so spectacularly effective that the mightiest foreign opposition could be overcome. How hard that is can be seen in Scotland’s miserable record in the World Cup. Jock Stein’s chance to oversee improvement as national team manager came too late in his career, after his inner resources had been diminished by heart trouble and an appalling car crash, but the accomplishments of his magnificent prime in charge of Celtic represent the pinnacle in Scottish football’s efforts to demonstrate its best qualities to the worldwide game.
Even in the old insular battle for prestige in Britain, when Celtic (showing several changes from the Lisbon line-up but retaining most of that team’s key players and all of the attacking verve) defeated the powerful English champions Leeds United in both legs of a 1970 European Cup semi-final it was a statement likely to embarrass the neighbours more than any Scotland win at Hampden or Wembley.
Perhaps Celtic themselves read too much into the outcome, for in the final at San Siro in Milan they were unrecognisably sluggish and ineffectual in going down 2-1 after extra time to Feyenoord opponents who, as the losing captain Billy McNeill freely acknowledged, wouldn’t have been flattered by a four-goal margin of victory. Feyenoord were superb, harbingers of the prolonged surge of brilliance with which Dutch football would earn global acclaim, but they were given improbable assistance.
Its source was best explained to me in the aftermath by the late, great midfielder Bobby Murdoch. Having poured tributes on Feyenoord, he said wistfully: “Maybe complacency isn’t something you can think out of your system. Maybe it gets right into your bones. No matter how much we tried to talk ourselves out of it, there’s no doubt that after we hammered Leeds we believed deep down we had won the European Cup.”
The contrast with the psychological edge they had carried into the Lisbon final was stark. In Portugal, they were the upstart challengers with parochial roots in a small working-class enclave of a small country, virtually a Glasgow and District Select, trying to become the first British club to gain the championship of Europe.
They were confronting an Internazionale team who had won the title in two of the previous three seasons and were feared all over the continent for the negative sophistication of the defensive tactics orchestrated by their Argentinian-born coach Helenio Herrera.
But whereas Celtic’s self-assurance in 1970 would be of a slow-pulsed kind that had a dulling influence, the version they displayed in 1967 was vigorously assertive and menacing as a blade.
They had captured every domestic prize they contested that season and had a faith in their abilities and in the strength of their comradeship that made them unfazable. In the tunnel at Lisbon’s National Stadium, they astonished the opposition with a raucous rendering of their supporters’ songs that couldn’t be mistaken for a bellowing equivalent of whistling in the dark.
On the field, in spite of conceding a penalty after only seven minutes and providing Inter Milan with a lead that was a perfect context for their smothering negativity, Celtic didn’t let belief in their superiority waver even momentarily and they applied ceaseless aggression, disconcerting switches in tempo and an unnerving variety of skills to play the Italians to the brink of helplessness.
Ultimately — after an equaliser had been blasted in by Tommy Gemmell, an athletic marauder from left-back whose impressively true striking of the ball gave a thrilling deadliness to his finishing, and a purposeful drive across the box by Murdoch was turned into the net by Stevie Chalmers with a smooth efficiency which endorsed the players’ insistence that such moves were repetitively practised in training — the result really did have to be defined as a 2-1 slaughter.
Celtic’s commitment to adventurously positive football had shredded the case for Herrera’s batten-down-the-hatches philosophy, underlining the obvious truth that style and substance needn’t be separate concepts. Sitting in the stands, I felt I had seen the flesh and blood fulfilment of the vow Stein made in one of our conversations in the days before the match. “Inter will play it defensively,” he had said.
“That’s their way and it’s their business. But we feel we have a duty to play the game our way, and our way is to attack. Win or lose, we want to make the game worth remembering. Just to be involved in an occasion like this is a tremendous honour and we think it puts an obligation on us. We can be as hard and professional as anybody, but I mean it when I say we don’t just want to win this cup. We want to win it playing good football, to make neutrals glad we’ve done it, glad to remember how we did it.
Now, more than 30 years after his death from a heart attack at Ninian Park in Cardiff, where he was managing Scotland in a qualifying match for the 1986 World Cup, those words of Big Jock’s serve as well as any to sum up what football meant to him and what he meant to the game.
His huge intelligence, his analytical gift for making the complex simple, the reach of his imagination and the natural authority of his presence left me, and many others better equipped to judge, convinced that nobody anywhere in any era ever brought more formidable assets to the job of managing a football team.
Those words in advance of that Lisbon night also encapsulated its significance for his players. The experience bound them together as a band of brothers for life. Sadly, their ranks have been reduced.
The veteran goalkeeper Ronnie Simpson, whose 1930 birth date guaranteed that his teammates would call him “faither”, has gone and the three who were the youngest members of the team — Murdoch, Gemmell and Jimmy Johnstone, the little genius of a winger who mesmerised and demoralised countless defences — have also died.
Each passing has been like a loss in a family. But when four of the Lions joined me for lunch, though there were elegiac moments, the talk among them amid the art-deco furnishings of Rogano restaurant, a Glasgow institution, was generally rich in the irrepressible spirit that characterised the entire group 50 years ago.
Its most vehement expressions came, not surprisingly, from Bertie Auld, who was as combative as he was inventive when operating as a worthy ally to Murdoch in an outstanding Celtic midfield. “We were Glaswegians, we were gallus,” he said. “I was born in the tenements. I was breastfed until I was 14, that’s how hungry we were.” His fondness for hyperbole didn’t weaken his point about the streak of street hardness that ran through the best of Stein’s teams.
No one at the table demurred on that subject. But being designated Glaswegian brought light-hearted protests from the Ayrshireman Bobby Lennox and from John Clark, one of the five Lions born, like Stein himself, in Lanarkshire (there was another non-Glasgow man, the shrewd centre-forward Willie Wallace, who entered the world in Dunbartonshire).
They were, however, comfortable enough with Auld’s sweeping association of them with the wonderful city on the Clyde. He was referring to competitive mentality, appetite for challenge, and where that is concerned identification with Glasgow is a hefty compliment.
The most direct personal challenge of the Lisbon hour and a half was probably that imposed on the fourth former player in our gathering, Jim Craig, the full-back who brought down Renato Cappellini to give Inter the early penalty from which Sandro Mazzola scored.
To his credit, Craig, a university man destined to be a dentist, didn’t allow the burden of the possible consequences to prevent him from performing with zest and confidence but at lunch he recalled the private strain he endured: “I don’t think I was the only one who was thinking that we were making a lot of chances but the ball was not hitting the back of the net. I, for one, was getting a wee bit apprehensive until we did score.
“You do keep playing away but at the back of my mind there was that worry. My father told me afterwards that he was up in the stands and he was very worried, thinking to himself that he might go through the rest of his life as the father to the boy who had given away the penalty that beat Celtic in a European Cup final. I said: ‘With all due respect, Dad, I had a bigger problem. I was the guy who gave away the penalty.’”
Such anxieties were quelled in the best conceivable way when he proved to be also the guy who set up the chance for the Celtic equaliser after 62 minutes. Having adroitly infiltrated the opposing defence beyond the edge of the penalty area, he then rolled the ball back at an angle and with perfect weight to invite Gemmell’s thunderous response.
In the memories of others in the company, the final was, in terms of the demands made on Celtic over the 90 minutes, one of the easiest matches they had in that European Cup run. They recollect that they left Inter trailing not only with their football but with their fitness. “Our fitness was far superior to theirs, and that helped us a great deal,” said Lennox.
“We ground them down. If it had gone to extra time, undoubtedly we would have won by three or four. They looked really, really beaten. They looked dejected.” He is a good witness. Few players could do more to drain the stamina from opponents than he did with the extreme swiftness of his raiding and the technical finesse that enabled him to strike the ball to maximum effect at pace.
A prominent theme of the conversation was eagerness to praise the special talents of teammates. Auld drew no argument when he declared that Murdoch and Johnstone were indisputably world-class and that Gemmell might warrant the description. Of Murdoch, Auld said: “He had everything in his locker. Without fear of contradiction, he was the best player in our team.”
When it came to reflections on the mammoth impact of Stein’s arrival as manager in the spring of 1965, nothing was more compelling than the testimony of Clark. With Celtic, he was the ideal partner in the middle of defence for the towering figure of the centre-half and captain McNeill. Clark was capable of flourishes of penetrative skill but mainly he was the embodiment of reliability and solid playing values. Talk of integrity has never seemed over the top in relation to him, on or off the field.
In the restaurant, there was consensus that Stein’s innovative influence first showed while, as a recently retired player, he was coaching the Celtic reserves, introducing enlightened training methods that featured constant use of the ball.
There was similar agreement that when he returned as manager, after successful spells in charge of Dunfermline and Hibernian, beating Dunfermline in the 1965 Scottish Cup final was essential to cementing his control and that the building of collective morale on a five-week tour of North America in 1966 was crucial to transforming the team into a bunch of wonders.
Clark invested all of that with human dimensions: “We played the way he explained to you. It was his way of football. He is the one who made me the person I was as a footballer. Also, my father had been dead for some years, so I didn’t have anyone to help me out. He was more or less like a carer to me, making sure my mum and my family were OK. He was a big factor in my life back then.”
Less directly, Jock Stein has been a big factor in many lives. As the anniversary celebrations swirl around May 25 (it was a Thursday in 1967, too), I’ll be thinking of the romantic scale of the big man’s aspirations as he approached that Lisbon final. He was entitled to them. Neutrals do remember how Celtic won the European Cup — and are glad.
Lisbon Lions factfile
Why are they important?
The Glasgow side were the first British club to win the European Cup. All of the starting 11, who beat Inter Milan 2-1, grew up within 30 miles of Celtic Park. Their win prompted a wave of success for Scottish and English clubs.
In the first decade of European competition, the only silverware won by the British were Spurs’ and West Ham’s Cup Winners’ Cup triumphs in 1963 and 1965.
In the next 20 years, starting with Celtic’s triumph and until English clubs were banned in 1985, the British haul was phenomenal: European Cup — Liverpool (4), Nottingham Forest (2), Celtic, Man Utd, Aston Villa; Uefa Cup — Liverpool and Spurs (2), Ipswich; Cup Winners’ Cup — Everton, Chelsea, Man City, Rangers, Aberdeen
Where are they now?
Bobby Murdoch, Ronnie Simpson, Jimmy Johnstone and Tommy Gemmell have passed away. Four of the other seven are pictured above with Hugh McIlvanney: from left, Jim Craig, Bobby Lennox, John Clark and Bertie Auld. The other three are captain Billy McNeill, Stevie Chalmers and Willie Wallace
Watching the game via Now TV. Fantastic scenes of the team walking up the Celtic Way with the Lisbon Lions!
Good morning. Sunny but a trifle chilly here on the eastern seaboard.
Celtic TV with Tommy Callaghan. Show us the party.
Scaniel
drop me a line.
I have obviously lost your e-mail address somewhere in the system.
Sorry
I’m on Now TV too, so will probably be about half an hour behind live action on here, so gonna sign off and look in again later.
Enjoy everybody, especially those of you at the game.
This is how it feels to be Celtic :)
Lurkin Huns. Get used to this, oh and …….. GIRFUY!
Morning ‘gg
HH
GG
Lookin for a bet today. How many xorners today d’ye reckon?
;) HH
COYBIG,
This is how it feels to be Celtic.
Enjoy the special day everyone.
Mon the hoops!
Is lustig injured or just rested
Tommy Callaghan, a true Celtic gentleman…
CP full to the rafters.
Davidopolous
No crying. ..ya big baby
Happy birthday Mrs Cork Celt
Never mind the xorners it’s FOALS that count?
WHAT IS THE STARS
I’m just warming up with some light whimpering…
Great scenes
Mrs Corkcelt, have a wonderful birthday, I’m sure yer man will make sure you do, another Celtic gentleman and CQN legend!
HH
Stadium looks magnificent