Justice for the team of 68 : Sat Apr 25, 2009 12:41 am
Quite bizarre you may say but what is good for the goose...........Hebblewaite the referee was later conficted of theft.
Never to this day was that a penalty try, still the only one ever given.
Plus we were the grand final winners the previous week and we would have been the first Yorkshire club since the war to do the double.
So if LUFC still feel agreived 36 years on so do we.
LORIMER: Justice must be done for United's '73 team
« Previous « PreviousNext » Next »View GalleryPublished Date: 24 April 2009
The petition created by MEP Richard Corbett to challenge the result of the 1973 European Cup Winners' Cup final in Salonika has already attracted around 12,000 signatures, and it has my full support.
Thirty six years is a long time, and people might argue that such matters are now irrelevant or better left in the past, but the 1-0 defeat that AC Milan inflicted on a Leeds United team of which I was part of was and is a disgrace.
Have people foADVERTISEMENTrgotten about it? Not in Salonika they haven't. The referee that night, Christos Michas, was from that neck of the woods and I'm not joking when I say that the locals are still ashamed of his biased performance. As I recall, it was a total embarrassment.
A few years ago, when Kevin Blackwell was manager of Leeds, I went back there with the playing squad and I spent the whole time listening to people apologising to me about the fact that Michas robbed us of a major trophy. Richard Corbett, like me, believes he may have been bribed by the Italians and I commend him for taking his fight to UEFA in an attempt to overturn the result.
Even before the match kicked off, all of the Leeds players were aware of doubts about the referee. Johnny Giles was injured at the time and was doing some work for radio or television, and when he arrived at the pre-match press conference, all the talk among the journalists there was about the fact that someone who desperately wanted Milan to win had got to the referee.
On the night, we got nothing from Michas – absolutely nothing. The only consolation was hearing Milan being booed as they attempted to do a lap of the pitch with the trophy after the final whistle. The stadium was packed with locals from Salonika and they were going ballistic, chanting aggressively in Greek. When I asked an interpreter what they were saying, he told me that they were shouting "shame" at the referee.
The average man in the street – especially if he's not a Leeds fan – might not care about any of this. It's done, it's dusted, so why start an argument about it? From the point of view of the players who were involved, it would be very nice to have a European Cup Winners' Cup trophy on our CVs, and I still believe that Milan should have been thrown out of the competition that year.
In a way, memories like that make me shake my head, not least because of all the recent attention on Brian Clough and his 44 days at Leeds. Clough thought we were cheats to a man – an attitude that was reiterated strongly by The Damned United
– but, as a squad, we were actually on the receiving end of some of the worst examples of cheating you will see. The European Cup final in 1975 was another time when dire refereeing cost us dear.
But beyond that, this is about fair play. When Olympic athletes are found to have broken the rules, they are stripped of their medals. No ifs, no buts. The same, in my opinion, should have happened to Milan. With hindsight, I don't know why we didn't make more of a fuss and attempt to change the result at the time, and perhaps back then we'd have had more chance of being more successful.
But the fact remains that the Italians do not deserve to have that trinket on their record.
Good luck to Mr Corbett, and I know the people of Salonika will be backing his campaign. Every single footballer and supporter has seen bad refereeing, and in general they get a bit of a hard time, but there's a big difference between honest mistakes and allegations of corruption. UEFA have a question to answer here and I hope they give it the attention it deserves.
Lorro's treble
Every week Peter selects a treble based on the William Hill weekend coupon. His selections are: Everton, Liverpool and Wolverhampton Wanderers.
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