Tony Porter
Ed’s note: The current issue of The Gooner is still on sale outside the stadium for the games against Southampton and Marseille. In the issue, there is a five page special feature on Arsenal’s memorable home ties in Europe, inspired by the performance against Napoli. There was a little doubling up on submissions on certain games, so here’s a taster for the issue, penned by Tony Porter…
Arsenal 0 Ajax 1 - (1972 European Cup Quarter Final 2nd Leg)
Our first entry to the European Cup following our first double. The quarter-final, after comfortable wins in the first two rounds – just two rounds! The television pictures of the first leg in Amsterdam left me amazed that we were only 1-2 down to a wonderfully fluid, exciting Ajax, the best team in Europe by far.
Yet the scoreline meant that our resilience, along with home advantage, could actually get us into the final and 56,000 of us were prepared to believe. After all, we’d beaten Ajax 3-0 at home two years previously in the semi-final of the Fairs Cup (3-1 on aggregate).
Twice Marinello was sent scurrying through the centre of their defence with only the keeper to beat, and twice he fluffed it. There was still plenty of the first half remaining when an innocuous punt upfield from Ajax was neatly headed back to Bob Wilson by George Graham. With no-one near him our keeper found himself off-balance – perhaps there was a touch of frost that March evening - reacted despairingly, and the ball trickled into our net in front of a horrified North Bank.
After that, it was so easy for Ajax. They retained possession very effectively; nothing that Graham could conjure could redeem his error. Perhaps the absence of Radford was crucial, but we still had George, Kennedy and Armstrong. The Dutch deserved their victory and went on to win the Cup. Gooners left the stadium to rue our failings and had to wait many years for another such night.
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