When thinking of the history of the mighty Liverpool FC no one date pops up quite like May 25th – The Reds have won the European Cup/Champions League twice on this date. In 2005 in Istanbul, and for the first time ever in Rome 1977. We take a look at the latter here.
On May 25th 1977 the Reds were in Rome and the Stadio Olimpico to take on Borussia Monchengladbach, the German outfit they beat 4 years earlier in the 1973 UEFA Cup final. That game was played over 2 legs with Liverpool winning 3-0 at Anfield in the first and losing 2-0 in Germany in the second leg. The European Cup final in Rome would be a one shot affair, however, with Liverpool having their first chance to win the big one.
Back in those days clubs would kick off their European Cup campaign’s essentially in the last 32 and they would have to navigate 4 two-legged ties in order to reach the showpiece final. This article is focusing on May 25th so I’ll just print the results of Liverpool’s games below:
| First Round | Liverpool 2-0 Crusaders 0 (h) Crusaders 0-5 Liverpool (a) agg: 7-0 |
| Second Round | Trabzonspor 1-0 Liverpool (a) Liverpool 3-0 Trabzonspor (h) agg 3-1 |
| Quarter Final | St Etienne 1-0 Liverpool (a) Liverpool 3-1 St Etienne (h) agg 3-2 |
| Semi Final | FC Zurich 1-3 Liverpool (a) Liverpool 3-0 St Etienne (h) agg 6-1 |
So the final would be contested by the current English and German champions. Liverpool, managed by Bob Paisley, were also UEFA Cup winners the previous year, Borussia had won that competition in 1975. Paisley had just won the league title again making it a record 10 times – beating Man City by 1 point!
Liverpool were a truly class outfit during this time and despite Borussia Monchengladbach hitting the post on 24 minutes the Reds would take the lead a few minutes later when winger Steve Highway drifted in from the right to play a perfect pass that cut open the Borussia defence and allowed Terry McDermott to fire home into the corner. A lovely goal and the Redmen were on their way. The Reds would go in ahead at half time but Borussia would equalise 7 minutes into the second half. Allan Simonsen was gifted the ball outside the box, one touch to the right hand far corner of Liverpool’s area and he smashed it home beating Ray Clemence at his near post. The ball was hit hard but the Liverpool goalkeeper would probably have been disappointed.
Around the 60th minute the Reds would regain their lead, Tommy Smith jumping high and powering a header home from a Highway corner. The Reds had multiple penalty shouts waved away before a superb run from the brilliant Kevin Keegan was cut short in the centre of the penalty area by a rather embarrassed looking Berti Vogts. Phil Neal converted the resulting penalty and Liverpool won their very first big ears! A good highlights video is posted below along with a video of the entire game.
