The Bhoys from Seville

by Paul Fisher

I’d bet the majority of you would remember 2003 with relative ease. I was only 11 years old when the football season came to an end, but it was one of my most vivid memories of that year. I started secondary school in 2003, the same year as the start of the war in Iraq and when Australia won the Cricket World Cup.

Living in the west coast of Scotland I was brought up supporting Celtic Football Club and 2003 was a successful year for the club, in European terms at least. They missed out on the SPL title to bitter rivals Rangers by just one goal. The Ibrox side also clinched the League and Scottish Cups. They defeated Celtic 2-1 in the first Cup Final of the season, with first-half goals from Claudio Caniggia and Peter Lovenkrands before Henrik Larsson’s effort after 57 minutes. They then clinched a famous treble following a 1-0 victory over Dundee thanks to a goal from defensive stalwart, Lorenzo Amoruso.

So Celtic, domestically, had a season to forget, but the UEFA Cup run that the squad put together was simply fantastic. We actually got knocked out of the Champions League Qualifying Round by FC Basel, on away goals I might add. But this turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

The first match of the run was against lowly opponents FK Suduva. The Lithuanian outfit travelled to Glasgow and I remember thinking how strong a team we had out on that day. It proved just that as Celtic thrashed the minnows 8-1. They followed that result with a 2-0 away win, meaning they progressed into the pot for the second round with a 10-1 aggregate victory.

It wasn’t such a happy time for Celtic’s rivals, Rangers. They waved goodbye to any chance of European glory with defeat on away goals versus the unheard of – in Scotland anyway – Viktoria Zizkov.

Round two saw the ‘Battle of Britain’ with Blackburn Rovers the opponents for Celtic. Many predicted this would be when Celtic would be knocked out but the Bhoys had other ideas. After a hard fought 1-0 home victory, Henrik Larsson popped up with his fourth and fifth goals of the tournament at Ewood Park, to add to his hat-trick in the first round. A 3-0 aggregate win was good but made even sweeter by the fact that the Blackburn manager at the time was Graeme Souness, a former Rangers player and manager. He said before the second leg that if Celtic scored one goal, Blackburn would score three. That worked out well for him.

Next up were the Spanish side, Celta Vigo. For me, this was our hardest tie en route to the final. Celtic managed a 1-0 victory at home and lost 2-1 away, qualifying under the away goals rule which is just about what they deserved.

The last 16 saw Celtic come up against five time German champions, Stuttgart. It was around about this point we actually thought we were in with a chance of doing something in the competition. We mustered a 3-1 home win after going one down to a Kevin Kuranyi goal – remember him? Then, when we went 2-0 up in Stuttgart and 5-1 up on aggregate we thought we were into the quarter-finals, no bother. We proceeded to lose three goals and give every Celtic fan in the world the fright of their lives. A 5-4 win overall was enough to set up a second ‘Battle of Britain’. This time, Liverpool awaited.

For me, the best two things about that cup run came against Liverpool. The way in which both sets of fans came together to sing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ was magical. Nearly as magical was John Hartson’s piledriver at Anfield, which propelled Celtic toward a semi-final clash against Boavista.

The Portuguese opponents were not well known to us, and what ensued was a nervy affair in both legs. Henrik Larsson once again proved to be the difference, scoring the winner in Portugal. The dream had become reality: We were going to Seville and the UEFA Cup Final.

There isn’t much I would like to say about the final as it was such a heartbreaking game. We went behind twice and fought back twice. The game went to extra-time, but disaster struck when Dianbobo Balde received a red card. Porto scored and we lost 3-2. That was that. We had fallen at the final hurdle but that Porto side were excellent (cheats) and went on to lift the Champions League the following year under the guidance of a certain Jose Mourinho.

This is such a distinct football memory for me that shaped my love for the game. It shows why we all love this game so much. For that group of players not to win a single trophy was a disaster, but then, they remain heroes to many of us. That’s football. Three of the starting 11 are back at Celtic now with Neil Lennon in charge and Alan Thompson and Johan Mjallby his coaches. Paul Lambert has led his Norwich side to the English Premier league and Jackie McNamara is at the helm of Partick Thistle.

This side will go down in Celtic history, somewhere close to the Lisbon Lions perhaps.

Just to let you all know, the only time I used the internet during the writing of this post was to check spellings of teams and player names I was unsure of. I also checked who scored the goals in the two cup finals. The rest is purely from memory and will always be there even though I was only 11.

This is what football does to you.

Paul is a sports journalist and co-ordinator at Ayr United’s youth academy. Follow him on twitter @steakheed