The night the Eagles soared: Benfica’s European triumph over Barcelona revisited | OneFootball

Tomorrow Benfica will attempt to overturn a 1-0 deficit in their Champions League last-16 tie against Barcelona. It is a tall order, but the Portuguese team have overcome the odds against the Catalan giants in the past.

Football historian and author Miguel Lourenço Pereira looks back at one of the greatest feats in Benfica’s storied history, when they became the first team not named Real Madrid to be crowned European football champions.

There were a few hours left in the day. June was around the corner, but nobody was checking their clocks. Their eyes were mesmerised by what was in front of them. There weren’t many, a few shy of 25,000 supporters, but they had been gifted one of the most incredible and surprising European cup finals ever. Few doubted FC Barcelona had landed in Switzerland to claim a sixth consecutive title for Spanish football after routing the five-time champions Real Madrid in the first round. Not even their rivals that night.

Guttmann knew

Two years before, while they discussed the terms on the contract for the newly appointed manager, Benfica’s board laughed out loud when the incoming coach requested a bonus if he brought back the European Cup to Lisbon. He asked for 100 thousand escudos, a small fortune, for a feat many believed impossible. The president, still smiling broadly, answered back that he should double the figure. The contract was signed, Benfica won the following league title and a year later here they were, fighting for the continent’s most prized trophy. That was what Belá Guttmann was all about. When the match ended and the Benfica players erupted in celebrations, he smiled back, knowing his bank account was about to get much bigger.

He had delivered the impossible task and, more incredibly so, he did it without a young player who was already a regular in training sessions with the first team but was yet to play his first match. A fast-skilled Mozambican by the name of Eusébio.

Benfica’s golden decade initiates without Eusébio

Benfica was the great football club of the sixties. The same as Real Madrid and Barcelona were for the fifties or Ajax, Bayern and Liverpool for the seventies. They played in five European Cup finals, won two, and dominated the national league like never before in their history.

Most of those incredible feats were in good measure thanks to the genius and talent of Eusébio da Silva Ferreira, a player so big that many at the time had no problem in comparing him to Pelé himself. He was the most decisive and all-round player in European football during that period, the first African, the first black man and the first Portuguese Balon D’Or winner – and all three distinctions tell much of how he was a revolutionary – but when he arrived at Benfica, during the 1960/61 season, Benfica were already on their way to making history. The difficult situation regarding Eusébio’s registration with the Federation, with Sporting protesting over the fact that he played for their feeder side in Mozambique and so should only be allowed to play for them, forced Eusébio to travel to Europe under the false name of Rita and then to spend weeks in hiding in an Algarve resort while the Benfica board sorted everything out. When he was finally allowed to train, Belá Guttmann was heard saying to his assistant that they had found gold, but Eusébio wasn’t allowed to play competitive football for weeks and thus was out of the European campaign.

Upon their return, half of Lisbon went to the airport and lined the streets to welcome back newly crowned European champions Benfica

Glória lays the foundations for glory

A campaign that had begun in September with a trip to Scotland and was about to end in Bern as May faded away. Yet there was more than met the eye behind the iconic run. Benfica had inaugurated their Stadium of Light in 1954, after decades of itinerant existence. Around the same time, Brazilian manager Otto Glória dedicated himself to lifting the club to the standards needed to compete at the highest level. He was the man responsible for the full professionalisation of Benfica, the inauguration of the Players’ House as well as improving the side’s training and tactical knowledge.

Glória planted the seed that was later nurtured to fruition by Guttmann, a Hungarian manager who had already an illustrious career back home, in Italy and even in Brazil, and who had arrived in Portugal to lead FC Porto to the league title in 1959. Still, Guttmann knew Porto weren’t able to pay him what he felt he deserved and were a sporting project full of limitations for the near future. Guttmann, who had lost every penny he had during the 1929 crash after a brilliant career as a footballer, had since become obsessed with money and glory and after surviving the Holocaust, every single decision during his managerial career had both aspects in mind. When Benfica representatives travelled north to persuade them to leave the rainy northern town for sunny Lisbon and sign for a club more fitted to fight for honours regularly, he never looked back.

Benfica midfielder Mário Coluna was man of the match

Portugal’s peripheral status

Guttmann’s greatest ambition, however, was to take a crack at the European Cup, a tournament that had taken place since 1955 and had transformed Real Madrid into continental royalty. No Portuguese side had ever gone beyond the first round since the first edition and they were seen as an extremely peripheral football nation by the day’s standard. Portugal had never played in an international tournament and despite Benfica’s win in the 1950 Latin Cup, they were disregarded as contenders for any European glory. Guttmann wanted to change that, so in 1960 he made the tournament his top priority.

The first away match in Edinburgh ended with an important 1-2 win against Hearts, with club captain José Águas scoring the first goal of the campaign. He added two more in the return leg as Benfica proved to be far superior to the Scottish champions than many expected. With Real Madrid now out of the competition, courtesy of their rivals FC Barcelona, it became clear to all that the Blaugrana were the major favourites to win the competition. With Juventus also surprisingly out, neither Burnley, Hamburg, nor Stade Reims were expected to put up a fight against the Catalans.

Final booked in Austria

Of course nobody even thought of Benfica. And that lack of pressure worked wonders for them. They thrashed Hungarian champions Ujpesti Dosza, the Danes of AGF and suddenly found themselves playing in the semis against the Austrians of Rapid Vienna while Barcelona were drawn against Hamburg. It would become an iconic moment in the history of the club. Benfica played brilliantly in the home leg, winning 3-0 with goals from Mário Coluna, José Águas and Mário Cavém, holding their opponents to a draw on their visit to the Prater stadium. At the end of the match, the furious local supporters attacked the team, who had to take shelter in the dressing room, before leaving with a police escort back home, not without some minor injuries inflicted on some members of the squad.

Beating Scots, Hungarians and Austrians – three key nations in the development of the game during the first half of the 20th century – was a declaration of intent. Portugal would become the beacon for the future, but there was one step more to be taken, and that seemed impossible to achieve.

DELIRIUM! More scenes of jubilation in the Portuguese capital as fans hail the European champions

Star-studded Barcelona

Barcelona was a supreme side, led by the combining genius of Ladislao Kubala and Luis Suarez. Kubala had been signed more than a decade before, with the crucial help of Franco’s political regime, as he had left the Communist Hungary to play in the West. Banned by FIFA on instances of the Magyar federation, he wandered in Italy for months playing friendlies, miraculously escaped the tragic Superga disaster because his daughter was sick and ended up in Barcelona. His leadership and talent allowed Barcelona to become the most important force in Spanish football and the club to build the Camp Nou. However, injuries, a bohemian lifestyle, the arrival of Alfredo di Stefano and Real Madrid’s rise to the top, proved a challenge.

Helenio Herrera, the man responsible for beating Madrid and delivering back-to-back league honours for the Blaugrana, didn’t trust Kubala’s commitment to the cause, much preferring the young Galician Luis Suarez, a former youth star for Deportivo La Coruña who was signed to perform as playmaker for Herrera’s team with great success. Yet, Suarez and Kubala became great friends and when Herrera was shown the door, after losing against Real Madrid in the previous season’s semifinal, the side found their way to finally reach the final match of the competition. They did so also with the decisive goals of the Hungarian Zoltan Czibor and Sandor Kocksis and the talented Brazilian Evaristo, the man who scored the decisive goals against both Real Madrid and Hamburg.

Barça strike first

Enrique Oriozola might not have been a tactical genius like Herrera. Still, he had given his players the freedom they needed to perform. When the final kicked off at the Wankdorfstadion, few imagined they could be on the losing end at the end of the ninety minutes, particularly when they drew first blood. Sándor Kocksis who, like Czibor, preferred to change in the hallway, as they wanted to avoid entering the same dressing room as when they lost the World Cup final against West Germany, seven years prior, netted the first of the night with a brilliant header. It was a dream start for Barcelona, with just twenty minutes of match played.

What the Catalans didn’t expect was such a quick reaction from the Lisbon side. Guttmann went to the match in full force, bar the still untested Eusébio. Veteran goalkeeper Costa Pereira was between the sticks and Germano, Ângelo and Mario João played in the back three of what was still, in theory at least, a WM system. Cruz and Neto operated from the middle with Coluna often dropping back, leaving Cavém, Santana, José Augusto and striker José Águas up front. And it was the team captain and Benfica idol who tied the match, just ten minutes later. The play started a minute earlier with Augusto moving from the right up into the middle of the park where he found Coluna. The player who would later be reconverted into a central midfielder to make way for Eusébio and who many believed was the best of his generation sliced a perfect forward pass towards Cavém. As the winger moved to goal, he saw how goalkeeper Ramallets had carelessly drifted out of goal so instead of taking a shot, Cavém crossed the ball with power finding Águas standing almost alone to nick it in unchallenged.

One of several pages of the special supplement published by A Bola to commemorate Benfica’s and Portugal’s first European Cup triumph

Three-minute turnaround

It would become Ramallets’ worst three minutes of his entire career, he who, a decade earlier, had been deemed national hero for his performance in the 1950 World Cup for Spain. As the game restarted, Benfica won the ball and Cruz crossed to the box where centre-back Gensana jumped to clear it away. However, his touch floundered and the ball went backwards instead of forward, tricking Ramallets who was too slow to follow its trajectory. Worse, he had the terrible bad luck that while dropping down, the ball touched the left post of his goal and went slightly over the line before spinning back again. Barça players tried to resume the play as if nothing had happened, but their rivals already had their hands up in the air, celebrating. In 180 seconds, Benfica had turned the tie in their favour and for the first time, but not the last, the square posts of Bern would take centre stage on the night.

Peerless Coluna makes it three!

Barcelona went full force on Pereira and only a miraculous move by Ângelo prevented them from drawing level just before half-time. Few could believe what they had just witnessed and more so when Coluna made it 3-1 for the Portuguese champions. The man of the match dictated the play from the middle and after opening the ball to his left, where Cavém provided a cross into the box, appeared right outside of it to take the rebound, smashing the ball into Ramallets’ goal once more.

Translation of A Bola’s write-up of Mário Coluna’s performance in the final

The team’s best player because he was always good, from the first to the last minute. Remarkable fighting spirit. Physical capacity against which the Spaniards were unable to compete. Impetuous bursts forward that the public applauded enthusiastically, especially after his first goal, from when he had the crowd in the palm of his hand. In the second half, when the team dropped back to defend, Coluna, who had earlier stood out in attack, did not neglect aiding his teammates at the back. It’s amazing how he managed to play excellently in the first half, in a state of semi-unconsciousness. Remarkable automatization, which is incomprehensible to us. It’s worthy of psychoanalysis.

Benfica weren’t as dominant as the scoreboard seemed to dictate, but they weren’t being outrun by the favourites either. With half an hour left on the clock, all the players became aware that now it was the time to suffer and suffer they did. As expected, Barcelona threw themselves unmercifully at them. They had the quality players, and they eventually got the chances. What they didn’t have that night was luck. First it was Kocksis who floundered an open goal opportunity when Germano, much like Gensana had done in the first half, placed a headed back pass that fooled Pereira. The Hungarian forward had all the time in the world but still only managed to hit the post and the ball then bounced back.

Woodwork to the rescue

Minutes later it was Kubala who blasted a shot in a much similar position to Coluna’s goal but the ball hit the right post of Pereira before moving over the line to hit the left post and into the keeper’s hands. Barça’s players claimed a goal, but the referee deemed that the ball never crossed the line, something clear on the footage available. Czibor eventually scored the best goal of the night with a thunderous left-footed shot from outside of the box. There were still fifteen minutes to play but it wasn’t enough time for the Spaniards. Barcelona tried their best, but Benfica held on and when the Swiss referee Gottfried Dienst – who would later in his career become known for another final with a goal that might have not crossed the line – blew the final whistle, the Portuguese supporters could finally celebrate the impossible achievement.

The Bern defeat haunted Barcelona for more than three decades. It became known in Catalonia as “the square posts final” and for many the defeat was the reason the club went downhill from there. They had won two of the previous three league titles and yet would only win another two in the following thirty years, in 1974 and then in 1985. That meant they would only get a couple of chances to play in the European Cup. They became regular winners of the Cup Winners’ Cup and even the Intercity Fairs Cup over the following decades, and when they lost the 1986 final against Steaua Bucharest, many believed they were still suffering from the jinx of that Bern night.

Real Madrid laugh… before succumbing to Benfica the following year

For Czibor and Kocsis who had scored the side’s two goals, it was the most painful moment of their careers as they had been on the losing side yet again while playing in Bern after Hungary’s unexpected defeat in the 1954 World Cup Final. Real Madrid supporters, vexed by being out of the competition for the first time in its existence at the hands of the rivals, cheered Benfica’s triumph and laughed out loud as the Catalans had managed to lose the final against what was, for many, still an unknown side. What they couldn’t imagine is that it would be Madrid on the losing end of the following final against that very same rival.

Guttmann’s success made him a star in Lisbon along with all the players of that Benfica side and with Eusébio already part of the starting line-up, they cruised to the 1962 final where they blasted the perennial champions from Madrid 5-3 in Amsterdam. It was back-to-back wins for the Eagles as a new dynasty seemed to be established in European football.

Benfica 3-2 Barcelona 1961 European Cup highlights

However, all the luck Benfica had on that night in Bern disappeared over the following seasons. They lost the 1963 final against Milan when Coluna was taken out and had to limp through the match. Two years later it was their goalkeeper who was injured, forcing Germano to play in goal as Inter also won 1-0. They finally had a chance in the dying seconds of the 1968 final against Manchester United, but Alex Stepney stopped Eusébio’s shot and the Red Devils came out as the winning side in extra time. The Guttmann curse, a legend created long after by the press, had taken its toll on the club.

Still, everything that happened after that. The five European Cup finals lost in thirty years, the absurd number of leagues and cups won and the establishment of Benfica as the greatest footballing force in Portugal, definitely overcoming local rivals Sporting, had its origin in that night in Bern when the mighty Barcelona found themselves against the irresistible rising force of the Lisbon Eagles.