Heroes & Villains, the Aston Villa fanzine
Heroes & Villains => Villa Memories => Topic started by: mal on February 21, 2012, 12:39:39 PM
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Please feel free to move this to memories:
Aston Villa beat the mighty Santos of Brazil, featuring the legendary Pele. This game was played on Monday 21st February 1972 at Villa Park and Villa won 2-1 with goals from McMahonan and Graydon.
Enjoy:
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Please feel free to move this to memories:
Aston Villa beat the mighty Santos of Brazil, featuring the legendary Pele. This game was played on Monday 21st February 1972 at Villa Park and Villa won 2-1 with goals from McMahonan and Graydon.
Enjoy:
McMahon - marvellous.
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oh I was there. Should have seen Pele warming up. Quite fantastic. What a good night
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I was there with Mum & Dad. We went straight to VP from school and stood underneath the floodlight at the bottom left of the Holte. 59,000 there if I remember correctly - either way it was bloody packed!
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Superb, nice post - thanks.
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I was there just about. Queued for ages, got crushed, had a police horse attempt to eat my hair but glad I seen Pele.
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Great night that was. I remember the Santos keeper having a hissy fit because as we were running off a generator due to a power strike only two floodlight were working. We swopped the lights at half time and so he had the lights facing him both halves!
I think the crowd was 'only' 54 thousand but someone on here will correct us I am sure.
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I wasn't there but my Dad and my Uncle were
There was a tannoy announcement that my cousin was born during the game and could he leave
He stayed to the end and then went to the hospital.................Legend
Thats reminded me I need to go and buy a card
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I was at it. Wouldn't have got in if I hadn't spotted a mate in the queue and sneakily shoved in! I have vivid memories of a police horse being used to move the crowd in towards the wall and the horse then shitting down on top of a poor bloke in front of me who was penned in between the horse and the wall. Hapy days!
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Great night that was. I remember the Santos keeper having a hissy fit because as we were running off a generator due to a power strike only two floodlight were working. We swopped the lights at half time and so he had the lights facing him both halves!
I think the crowd was 'only' 54 thousand but someone on here will correct us I am sure.
Yes it was 54,000, but it was reported at the time that another 20,000 were locked out (although that was possibly exaggerated a little) – I know we only just made it before the they shut up the turnstiles. I think because of it being a night game during the power cuts – and all the lighting was coming from a generator specially brought in – they shut the gates early for safety reasons.
We worked our way over to the Trinity Rd side of the Witton End and my main memory is the noise of the generator during the game.
My other memory is thinking this Pele geezer is over-rated. Let's be honest, he just toured the world playing exhibition matches for Santos and raking it in - and counts all his goals from these games in his grand total.
Not a patch on Cruyff, Maradona or Messi as far as I'm concerned.
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I was there too - we were in the trinity about level with Edu and on that side of the pitch which gave us an excellent view of the radio controlled ball he scored with. Until the Roberto Carlos one much later I never saw anything like it before or after. I seem to remember Pele ball juggling his way out of a crowd of at least 5 Villa players in the centre circle late on. The offical crowd was 57,000, 8,000 more than the official attendance for the Bournemouth game a few days before when by comparison Villa Park seemed half empty. The official receipts were £35,000. Ah those were the days!
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Not a patch on Cruyff, Maradona or Messi as far as I'm concerned.
Oh dear. Its a generational thing. For me Cruyff is the only one who can be compared to Pele. Messi has only just started. Maradona doesnt deserve it.
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Not a patch on Cruyff, Maradona or Messi as far as I'm concerned.
Oh dear. Its a generational thing. For me Cruyff is the only one who can be compared to Pele. Messi has only just started. Maradona doesnt deserve it.
Pele doesn't like anyone being compared to him either these days I gather.
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Didn't we play Bayern Munich as well that season?
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I was there too, on the Holte.
40 years ago you say? Seems like yesterday.
Well, not actually yesterday of course.
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I was there, i always thought it was 64k gate.
I was 9, and my main memory was Dere Dougan sitting behind me, and loads of people coming up asking for his autograph.
Don't remember much about the game tbh.
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I feared that I wouldn't get in at one stage. I took my brother and we got crushed in the queues outside the Holte End. We had almost given up but we managed to get in and sneaked through into the Trinity Road Enclosure. In those days, there was an atmosphere about the place that you really had to be there to appreciate.
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i had the program from this match with pele's autograph on the front cover but i gave it to my nephew. "wish i still had it ". he was a villa fan but i dont know if he still has it i have not seen him in years.
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Went with my faithful Villa mate Dave....in the Holte End and loving it!
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Not a patch on Cruyff, Maradona or Messi as far as I'm concerned.
Oh dear. Its a generational thing. For me Cruyff is the only one who can be compared to Pele. Messi has only just started. Maradona doesnt deserve it.
I'd go with that.
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I wished I could have been there thanks for the post.
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i had the program from this match with pele's autograph on the front cover but i gave it to my nephew. "wish i still had it ". he was a villa fan but i dont know if he still has it i have not seen him in years.
I got my programme signed by the great man, and its safely stored away.
My main memory of the game was actually the Santos goal, scored by Edu, a unstoppable bending free kick at the Witton End.
(http://www.classicfootyprogrammes.com/image/cache/data/burton,leic%20exc%20014_opt-500x500.jpg)
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Not a patch on Cruyff, Maradona or Messi as far as I'm concerned.
Oh dear. Its a generational thing. For me Cruyff is the only one who can be compared to Pele. Messi has only just started. Maradona doesnt deserve it.
I'd go with that.
A total 1281 goals in 1363 games. That includes the even more impressive statistic of 77 goals in 92 appearances for Brazil.
Three World Cup Winners Medals in 1958, 1962, and 1970. Brazil may not have won any of those tournaments without Pele there. If he had been afforded 10% of the protection modern day players get - instead of being kicked off the park by the Bulgarians and Portugese in the group stages - who is to say he may not have won them the 1966 tournament too ?
All of this achieved with a style which screamed out the phrase `The beautiful game`.
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I was at the game, in our usual place in the old Trinity Road stand. Oddly, I recall Santos also played at Plymouth Argyle on that mini-tour of games, not sure which other team they played against (if any).
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I was at the game, in our usual place in the old Trinity Road stand. Oddly, I recall Santos also played at Plymouth Argyle on that mini-tour of games, not sure which other team they played against (if any).
Sheffield Wednesday two days later; Santos won 2-0.
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Just been speaking to my dad about this game (I went to it with him as I was just 12). The thing he remembered was someone in the offices at Villa telling him some time after that Santos had been told about (or had seen) the size of the crowd and demanded even more money (in cash) or they wouldn't come out the dressing room to play. Villa had no choice but to give in to the blackmail. It probably wasn't the only time Santos pulled this stunt.
They were the Harlem Globetrotters of football, playing as a many exhibition/friendly games as league games.
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An 11 year old me was sat in the Trinity for this game. Pele wasn't anything special on the the night to be honest but we saw a bit of Brazilian magic from Edu.
I think writing off Pele on the basis of one (or even a few) friendly games is a bit steep. The bloke played a major part in winning Brazil a World Cup when he was 17, then twice more. He proved time and time again he could do it when it mattered, on the world's biggest stage.
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That 1970 Brazil side could have won the World Cup with me in the number 10 shirt. And I was only a few months old at the time.
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I was there but never got in. Trinity Road was completely rammed with people. The police announced by megaphone that if you were on the pavement you were in the queue, If you were on the road you had to go to the back of the queue. I was on the pavement but of course everybody from the road was now trying to get on the pavement signalling a massive suffocating crush against the Holte End wall. Someone in front of me fainted and my mate jumped over him to the turnstile and got in. I am 6ft tall but at this point my feet aren't touching the ground and all around me folks are starting to have panic attacks as none of us can move or get out even if we want to. At this point the police drove horses into the queue to split it up into sections thus worsening the crush. So there I am with a huge police horse breathing it's foul breath straight into my face and head butting me to boot as it neighed and shook it's head as horses do. Well that was it, I'd had enough and managed eventually to get out of the queue even though I was only about 2 feet from the turnstile. I can laugh now but at the time it was absolutely terrifying.
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I love that footage, thanks for posting and I wish I could say I was there but I wasn't around then.
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Re Pelé and Brazil.
Pelé played only a minor part in the 1962 World Cup. He got injured in Brazil's second match and missed the rest of the tournament (his place was taken by Amarildo.)
As for the 1970 World Cup, Brazil had a shocking defence and owed it all to their midfield and attacking players. The reason they didn't let fewer goals in was certainly not due to their two truly abject apologies for central defenders, Brito and Wilson Piazza, nor their joke of a goalkeeper, Felix. The full backs weren't too clever either, although Carlos Alberto was very good going forward. Often though the sheer mass of Brazilian talent further upfield simply demoralized the opposition.
All in all though I'm of the opinion that Pelé was indeed a true giant.
Incidentally, I seem to remember that some electrician bloke actually died from a massive electric shock while helping to set up the famous generator.
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Reproduced from avfc.co.uk:
Wednesday February 23, 1972
By Geoffrey Green
Football Correspondent - The Times
Title: Over the claret-and-blue rainbow
The echoes of a great past are being raised again at Villa Park.
Even its historic portals suggest a glowing pride once more, a sturdy edifice of red brick redolent of a Victorian age when no wars threatened from without and when England, safe behind the shield of the navy, thought of life in terms of peace and security.
But in football, as in other things, there is usually a limit set to peace and security.
Once Aston Villa were at the top. In recent years, they have slipped down the depths.
But they are on the rise again after a period of crisis when ageing hands were prized from the tiller and a younger generation took over, realists whose eyes were not grown misty by heroic deeds of the past.
Under the driving chairmanship of Douglas Ellis and the managership of Vic Crowe - one of the modern tracksuited breed - the renowned claret and blue shirts currently lead the Third Division and look set fair for the promotion they nearly achieved a year ago.
Last season, however, had its compensation.
The voice of Aston Villa was heard again as they gained a great win over Manchester United in the semi-final round of the Football League Cup and then took Tottenham Hotspur in the final at Wembley.
The other day they gained a new feather in their cap by beating Santos containing the great Pele, an occasion that drew a 54,000 gathering on a night of power cuts defeated by the club's initiative in buying a £5,000 generator to operator their floodlights.
In spite of laying out that sum as an addition to the £12,000 guarantee paid to their Brazilian visitors, Aston Villa are sitting pretty in their parlour and counting out a £20,000 profit.
It was an astute piece of business in every way, heightened by the interesting fact that it was Santos who first broached Villa for this fixture.
Crowe revealed that, unwilling to overstretch his team, he had turned down several other attractive approaches from abroad, including Kiev Dynamo and the Russian national XI.
What has been abundantly revealed it that the soil of Birmingham is ripe for sowing and that the long tradition of loyalty to Aston Villa still lives on.
Crowds of 62,000 against Manchester United last season, 54,000 the other night and 48,000 recently for a Third Division game against Bournemouth are figures that would make many a First Division mouth water.
Within the last month, too, 40,000 people saw the two FA Youth Cup ties between Villa and their great rivals Birmingham City, across the way, which goes to show how deep are these Midland roots.
Having taken over the manager's hot seat from Tommy Docherty a couple of years ago, Crowe's immediate priority is promotion to the Second Division.
It will be a hard grind to the last yard, with key away matches to come at Notts County, Brighton and Rotherham, all close rivals who lurk in the top five places.
"Even our game this Saturday against Port Vale will be a tough examination," said Mr Crowe.
"Everybody plays us hard and there could be a let-down after the morale boost of that Santos win."
Mr Crowe understands the psychology of a player.
The wise manager is always looking over the rainbow and planning for the morrow.
"We've still got to get to the Second Division," he says.
But already he is grooming for the future. Having strengthened his hand by the acquisition of Graydon, a fast incisive winger from Bristol City, Cumbes, the Surrey cricketer and former West Bromwich Albion goalkeeper and Vowden from Birmingham, only 48 hours ago he laid out some £70,000 for Ian Ross, a useful all-rounder who has had many a run with Liverpool.
Bit by bit his first team pool of 18 players is being strengthened for the tasks ahead with an active policy of home grown youth as part of the overall blueprint.
With a home tie to come against Chelsea next Monday, Villa are on the edge of the FA Youth Cup semi-finals, with promising young players like Brian Little, John Gidman and Jimmy Brown as part of the insurance.
Aston Villa's real place of course is among the elite. Tradition demands it.
But the old cry of the Villa is being heard again ringing round Villa Park, which in its time has mounted World Cup matches and more internationals and FA Cup semi-finals than any other provincial stage.
Yet some 70 years ago here was the setting of a lake, the club offices and gymnasium were an aquarium, on the VIP car park there once stood a theatre and concert hall, and nearby was a rifle range.
Villa Park was once to Birmingham what Belle Vue is to Manchester and Battersea Festival Gardens is to London.
Here Athersmith once dribbled down the right wing holding an umbrella aloft in a heavy rainstorm, among the great passing cavalcade have been Sam Hardy, Billy Walker, Dorrell and York, heroes of my youth when the claret and blue shirt was the most respected and feared in the land.