ON THIS DAY

At half time at the Champions League final at the Atatürk Stadium in Istanbul AC Milan were leading Liverpool 3-0 - Liverpool were poor and were going to get hammered. In one of the most amazing turn-rounds though second half goals from Steven Gerrard, Vladimir Smicer and Xabi Alonso put Liverpool level. No more goals in extra time and so it went to penalties. And yep, Liverpool won 3-2 to complete what was genuinely The Miracle of Istanbul. ...

Celtic beat Inter Milan 2-1 in Lisbon to become the first British club to win the European Cup. The Italians - twice European Cup winners in the previous three seasons - took the lead from a Sandro Mazzola penalty after just seven minutes before Tommy Gemmell and Stevie Chalmers scored second half goals to take the trophy to Glasgow. The victorious Celtic team became known as the Lisbon Lions and given the international nature of players in the top European teams nowadays it's hard to believe that every one of those Lisbon Lions were born in Scotland. In fact every member of Celtic's 15 man first team squad was born with 30 miles of Celtic Park.

It normally takes clubs a full five months to win the FA Cup but on 25th May 1963 Manchester United set a record by winning the final just 82 days after playing their first match in the seasons' competition. Bad weather meant that they didn't play their Third Round match until March 4th rather than in early January and by the end of May they had beaten Leicester City in the final. Apart from 6 FA Cup ties United also played 17 League matches in those 82 days.

England beat Portugal 10-0 in Lisbon with Stan Mortensen scoring 4 on his debut. Tommy Lawton also scored 4, the first after just 17 seconds. I promise I haven't made that up - England did that sort of things in those days!