Last week’s Europa League swansong between Spurs and Manchester United?
Well, maybe. But also, throw it back 53 years, to the first ever UEFA Cup Final, between Tottenham and Wolves.
When, having traversed the continent to take on all-comers in the competition’s inaugural tournament, two familiar foes in the upper reaches of the First Division at the time went toe-to-toe across a two-legged finale.
“When I saw all the publicity surrounding the final, it brought back memories of our game all those years ago,” Wolves legend Kenny Hibbitt recalled this week.
But Hibbitt and fellow Molineux icon John Richards admitted they didn’t even watch the competition’s denouement last week. Richards was, however, pleased to see Spurs win, given his boyhood affiliation of having Jimmy Greaves as his hero. But the game itself? It didn’t really appeal.
And that also perhaps took them back to the May of 1972, when facing another English team in the final took a fair bit of the polish away from such a memorable run through the competition.
Big Phil Parkes, Wolves’ goalkeeper throughout that UEFA Cup run, is currently recovering in hospital after a serious accident.
When talking previously about facing Spurs in the final, he was typically forthright.
“The biggest letdown ever,” Parkes reflected. “To reach the UEFA Cup final and play two legs against another team from England just felt like two normal games.”
The rest of the team, although mindful it was a final, with a lucrative competition to try and win, harboured similar thoughts.
“We probably felt exactly the same as Manchester United feel now,” says Richards.
“Losing a European final against another English team just feels like another domestic fixture. Had we played and lost to AC Milan, who Spurs beat in the semi-final, I think it would have been a bit more positive in defeat.
“We had beaten so many top teams on the way to the final, the likes of Juventus and Ferencvaros, and then we get there, and it was Spurs!
“Even the medal was a bit of an anti-climax.
“It’s a bit like one of those tokens you collect from the petrol station, just with UEFA on it.
“All in all, it was an anti-climax after such an incredible run to play another English team in the final, and took a lot of gloss off it as far as I was concerned.”
What then, of that run? The string of games that took Wolves across Europe and into the final. Variety was certainly the spice of life.
Portugal, the Netherlands, East Germany, Italy and Hungary stood in Wolves’ way as they progressed through two-legged ties all the way to the final. Thousands of miles spent on planes, trains and automobiles for the away trips. And then Tottenham!
There was pretty much a story in every port.
Wolves, who played the away leg first all the way to the final, started with a comfortable two leg win against Academica Coimbra during which John McAlle scored in both legs, two of only three goals the defender registered in 508 games for Wolves.
An equally comfortable success against Den Haag in round two included a 4-0 Molineux success in which Derek Dougan was the only Wolves’ goalscorer. He grabbed one – the rest were all own goals!
Round three saw a trip behind the Iron Curtain, to Carl Zeiss Jena in East Germany, Richards getting the only goal of the away leg in which Parkes recalls a feeling of ‘being watched’, everywhere they went.
Into the quarter finals, and the challenge stepped up a level, with a tie against Italian giants Juventus.
Boss Bill McGarry produced a masterstroke for the away leg, taking across John Charles, the Welshman who became a legend with ‘The Old Lady’ following his spell playing for the club, which took the sting out of any supporter animosity and help Wolves settle.
Bill McGarry was the Wolves boss at the time
They drew 1-1, future England manager Fabio Capello, then a Juventus player, was so ruffled that he spat at Parkes, and Charles said that the Italian team’s star names wouldn’t bother coming across for the second leg. He was right.
Big centre forward Helmut Haller did make the trip, and then disappeared to a local hostelry with Wolves’ Danny Hegan after the Molineux men’s second leg triumph, to the extent that a search party was dispatched to help him make the flight home.
Dougan and Hegan provided Wolves’ goals in the 2-1 second leg victory that took them to the cusp of the final, namely a semi-final showdown with Hungarian’s finest of the time, and the current home of Robbie Keane, Ferencvaros.
After a 2-2 draw in the away leg, Wolves prevailed 2-1 in the return, thanks largely to a penalty save from Parkes in each game, and a ridiculously early goal in the second from a young Steve Daley.