Until at least 9.40pm on Wednesday evening – or perhaps a little later – only a couple of Scots can claim to have sampled the sweet taste of success in the City of Manchester Stadium. Okay, so you could count Paul Dickov, though his best spell wit
h Manchester City was when they played at Maine Road, or you could include Scots who have come with other teams and beaten City, but they will have encountered a hostile reception.
Lee McConnell, on the other hand, was cheered to the rafters – albeit sleek, shiny rafters – on the evening of 28 July 2002, when she claimed a Commonwealth Games silver medal over 400 metres; and so was Jamie Quarry, whose bronze medal in the decathlon came on the same night as McConnell's silver.
Though she has competed in other major arenas – among them the 70,000-capacity Olympic Stadium in Athens and the 100,000-capacity MCG in Melbourne – McConnell's favourite memories are of that night, in front of 38,000 people in the comparatively dinky City of Manchester Stadium.
"It's an amazing stadium," she says. "It really holds the sound in. I don't know if it's the shape or something, but the sound of the crowd really comes back at you. It isn't the biggest but it's the best stadium I've competed in.
"There was an incredible atmosphere that night – I'm not sure if it's because there were a lot of Scots there. I think there was a lot of support for everyone from the Manchester people – it was a really friendly games."
McConnell is unlikely to watch Wednesday's game, however. "I'm not very happy that football got in," she says. "They came in immediately after the Commonwealth Games and tore up the athletics track. It was a bit of a shame."
Another Scot who sampled the atmosphere of the City of Manchester Stadium in 2002 was Craig MacLean. Though the cyclist was in competitive action in the neighbouring velodrome – which, with the stadium, forms part of the SportCity complex – he enjoyed a night he describes as one of the highlights of his career at the opening ceremony, acting as flag-bearer to the Scottish team. To judge from his frenzied behaviour as he led the team around the track he didn't so much 'taste' the atmosphere as drink it in.
"Electric," is his description. "It was special and I got a bit carried away it," he adds. "The Queen was there and the protocol was that you were supposed to lower the flag as you passed her. But I was waving it like a claymore and completely forgot. I was caught up in the moment. You could put that down to the atmosphere. But I have no idea what the stadium's like for football – it's next door to the velodrome, where I train just about everyday, but I haven't been back in the last six years."
As McConnell says, following the games the stadium was adapted for football, at a cost of £35m. The capacity was increased to 47,726. But, in an unusual and imaginative arrangement, other sports continue to benefit. It is still owned by the City of Manchester Council, the football club has a 250-year lease, and their gates – as well as concerts and other events – subsidise "community and grassroots sport" in the city. It amounts to a substantial legacy of the 2002 Commonwealth Games, which to date has been worth in excess of £8 million.
"It's not worth a fixed amount," says a council spokeswoman, "there's a range of factors from the size of the attendance to car parking to other things, but it has provided a good income stream and all that money is reinvested in community sport. It's quite an unusual arrangement and I'm not aware of any other projects like it; but it works well.
"Since the 2003/04 season (when City became tenants] more than £8m has been paid to the council by Manchester City Football Club, which has been re-invested in developing sport in the city."
In fact, the stadium – at a time of spiralling Olympic costs, and with the horrendous Wembley project a recent memory – stands as a great, and rare, example of a successful capital project. It was originally conceived in 1990 as the centrepiece to Manchester's planned bid for the 2000 Olympics. When that bid didn't materialise it was scaled down and built for the Commonwealth Games instead – at a cost of a relatively paltry £110m. In other words, you could have four City of Manchester Stadiums for one Scottish Parliament. And you'd probably take that.
It is interesting to speculate about what kind of stadium Manchester would have ended up with had their bid for the Olympics been successful. It would have been on the same Eastlands site, but with a capacity of 80,000. And although Manchester's loss was Sydney's gain, there was still, as late as 1996, a chance that a stadium on this scale would be built anyway, with Manchester vying with London to host the new national football stadium.
In the end, of course, Wembley got the nod, and in 1999 work commenced on the smaller stadium. It wasn't quite finished for the Commonwealth Games, with a temporary stand at the east end.
But it was the West Stand that stirred up mild controversy once City had moved in. In a poll of Manchester City fans it was agreed that it should honour one of their all-time greats, Colin Bell. But a proposal to name it the 'Bell End' was rejected in favour of the less ambiguous, and less amusing, 'Colin Bell Stand.' Pity.
The UEFA Cup: a brief historyIf there's something unsatisfactory about the current format of the UEFA Cup it is entirely in keeping with the tournament's convoluted history. Nowadays, the complaints are about clubs parachuting in from the Champions League. Fifty years ago, the chief grouse was over the amount of time it took to complete the first competition – three years.
The UEFA Cup began life in April 1955 as the International Inter-Cities Fairs Cup. The brainchild of Ernst Thommen, a Swiss vice-president of FIFA, the tournament was devised for cities that held trade fairs, with the idea being that fixtures would be arranged around the fairs.
The inaugural staging saw composite city teams enter rather than clubs and in the first final a Barcelona select (made up of 10 Barça players and one from Espanyol) beat a London XI including Jimmy Greaves.
Hibs, continental pioneers, were the first Scottish club to enter in 1960-61. They received a first round bye then saw off Barcelona in the quarter-finals. A remarkable 4-4 draw at the Nou Camp in the first leg set them up for the return in Edinburgh. A packed Easter Road saw Hibs prevail 3-2, Bobby Kinloch scoring twice and Joe Baker netting the other. Hibs played Roma in the semi-finals, drawing 2-2 at home and 3-3 away, before a play-off in Rome. With the Scottish season long over, a ring-rusty Hibs were pulverised 6-0.
If Hibs blazed the trail, other Scottish clubs soon followed. Dunfermline reached the quarter-finals in 1966, losing to Real Zaragosa. A year later Kilmarnock went one better, falling in the semis to Don Revie's Leeds.
In 1968 Leeds, captained by Billy Bremner, became the first British winners, defeating Ferencvaros. Leeds beat Dundee in the semis.
Leeds' win was the beginning of a remarkable run of success for English clubs which saw them take a six-year stranglehold on the competition. Newcastle were victors in 1969, their last major trophy, and again they were captained by a Scot. Bobby Moncur was at the helm in the victory over Ujpest Dozsa. Newcastle had won through by beating Rangers in the last four.
The run of English winners continued with Arsenal in 1970 (another Scottish captain in Frank McLintock) who defeated Anderlecht, and Leeds in 1971.
As the competition grew in popularity the link to trade fairs soon became obsolete and in 1971 the Fairs Cup was renamed the UEFA Cup. The first winners of the new trophy were Tottenham after the first and only all-English final, against Wolves.
Liverpool won in 1973 and 1976 again, and Bobby Robson's Ipswich, with the free-scoring John Wark in the side, were winners in 1981. But their defence of the trophy was brought to abrupt halt the following season by free-flowing Aberdeen inspired by Peter Weir.
Dundee United became the first Scottish team to reach the final in 1987, defeating Barcelona and Moenchengladbach en route. They fell in the final to Gothenburg, losing 1-0 away and only managing a 1-1 draw at Tannadice in the return.
Hearts enjoyed their best ever European run two years later, reaching the quarter-finals where they defeated Bayern Munich 1-0 at Tynecastle in the first leg through an Iain Ferguson goal. A 2-0 defeat in the Bavaria ended their dream of semi-final clash with Diego Maradona's Napoli.
Spurs won again in 1984, beating Anderlecht, and Liverpool became the tenth and latest English winners in 2001, defeating Alaves 5-4. By this stage the finale was one game.
Celtic's finest hour in the UEFA Cup came in 2003 when Martin O'Neill's side's run to the final included wins over Liverpool and Blackburn. Jose Mourinho's Porto presented a more formidable obstacle and the Portuguese prevailed 3-2 after extra time in the final in Seville, Henrik Larsson scoring twice for Celtic.
The scrapping of the European Cup-Winners' Cup in 1999 added a new dimension to the tournament with cup winners now entering the UEFA Cup, and a group phase was added in 2004. But one thing remains unchanged: no Scottish side has won the competition and Rangers would be rewriting history if they were to triumph over Zenit on Wednesday.
The full article contains 1674 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
