The Immortals

Forty two years ago tonight in Lisbon, Celtic Football Club became the first British team to win the European Cup, the premier club football competition in Europe. Relative unknowns as they were at the time, they were viewed as the clear underdogs as they lined up against the giants of Italian football, the mighty Inter Milan.

In the event, Celtic came from behind and handed the Italians a comprehensive lesson in how to play imaginative, free-flowing, attacking football. As Celtic's legendary manager, Jock Stein, commented after the game, 'Winning was important, aye, but it was the way that we have won that has filled me with satisfaction. We did it by playing football. Pure, beautiful, inventive football.' (Oh, how we could have done with some of that this season...)

Football players and teams come and go but the eleven men who played that night in the green and white hoops - the Lisbon Lions, as they became known - have become the stuff of legend to generations of Celtic supporters. Some of the team have died and the remainder are getting on but no one who remembers that game will ever forget it or them.

The two items here are the programme from the game and a team photo, signed on the back by each of the team.

As footnote to this, Celtic's current manager, Gordon Strachan, resigned this afternoon. I wish him well.