On the face of it, a strike from point-blank range involving more shin than boot does not scream classic goal. In the gilded hall of showpiece fame, you will likely see the imperious leaps of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, the gravity-defying acrobatics of Gareth Bale and, of course, the moment Zinédine Zidane made time stop (all given their due elsewhere in this issue). You are perhaps unlikely to spy the flash of horror that gripped Peter Withe when, stood before a gaping net, he watched his effort briefly flirt with the upright before bouncing in.
“The big centre-forward almost made a hash of it,” Jeff Powell wrote in the Daily Mail, “his shot from barely a yard hitting the inside of a post before entering the net. But at moments like that, it doesn’t matter how you score them, as long as they go in.” And that timing was key: midway through the second half of the 1982 European Cup final, against all expectation and pretty much everything that had come before on a balmy late spring evening in Rotterdam, Aston Villa led Bayern München.
The German team arrived in the Netherlands as roten hot favourites. English clubs may have lifted the previous five European Cups, but hopes of a sixth rested on a Villa side playing like a shadow of the team that had won the championship 12 months earlier. Their title defence simply never got going, manager Ron Saunders paying the price. Former assistant Tony Barton stepped in for the last few months of the campaign, guiding them to 11th and, more memorably, past Dynamo Kyiv and Anderlecht into the European Cup final.
Bayern too had fallen short in domestic competition, but theirs was a squad full of names as feared by opponents as they were by tongue-tied international commentators. Wolfgang Dremmler, Klaus Augenthaler, Paul Breitner, Dieter Hoeness, two-time Ballon d’Or winner Karl-Heinz Rummenigge. “I vividly remember one moment,” Villa right-back Kenny Swain recalls. “This ball flew over me and I saw Karl-Heinz Rummenigge – he looked like an acrobat. He jumped and did this overhead kick. I just watched it flash past the post. Nigel and I were looking at each other thinking, ‘This is different gravy.’”
If you are wondering who Nigel is then you are not alone – many did four decades ago too. There were just nine minutes gone at De Kuip when Villa goalkeeper Jimmy Rimmer, who had been on the Manchester United bench in the 1968 final, was forced off with a neck injury. On came 23-year-old Nigel Spink for a first senior outing since Boxing Day 1979. “I wasn’t nervous,” insists Spink, who had geared up for the match by listening to a Billy Connolly cassette on one of the Sony Walkmans the Villa players were gifted for reaching the final. “I didn’t think I’d get on, so there were no nerves to be had.”
On the face of it, a strike from point-blank range involving more shin than boot does not scream classic goal. In the gilded hall of showpiece fame, you will likely see the imperious leaps of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, the gravity-defying acrobatics of Gareth Bale and, of course, the moment Zinédine Zidane made time stop (all given their due elsewhere in this issue). You are perhaps unlikely to spy the flash of horror that gripped Peter Withe when, stood before a gaping net, he watched his effort briefly flirt with the upright before bouncing in.
“The big centre-forward almost made a hash of it,” Jeff Powell wrote in the Daily Mail, “his shot from barely a yard hitting the inside of a post before entering the net. But at moments like that, it doesn’t matter how you score them, as long as they go in.” And that timing was key: midway through the second half of the 1982 European Cup final, against all expectation and pretty much everything that had come before on a balmy late spring evening in Rotterdam, Aston Villa led Bayern München.
The German team arrived in the Netherlands as roten hot favourites. English clubs may have lifted the previous five European Cups, but hopes of a sixth rested on a Villa side playing like a shadow of the team that had won the championship 12 months earlier. Their title defence simply never got going, manager Ron Saunders paying the price. Former assistant Tony Barton stepped in for the last few months of the campaign, guiding them to 11th and, more memorably, past Dynamo Kyiv and Anderlecht into the European Cup final.
Bayern too had fallen short in domestic competition, but theirs was a squad full of names as feared by opponents as they were by tongue-tied international commentators. Wolfgang Dremmler, Klaus Augenthaler, Paul Breitner, Dieter Hoeness, two-time Ballon d’Or winner Karl-Heinz Rummenigge. “I vividly remember one moment,” Villa right-back Kenny Swain recalls. “This ball flew over me and I saw Karl-Heinz Rummenigge – he looked like an acrobat. He jumped and did this overhead kick. I just watched it flash past the post. Nigel and I were looking at each other thinking, ‘This is different gravy.’”
If you are wondering who Nigel is then you are not alone – many did four decades ago too. There were just nine minutes gone at De Kuip when Villa goalkeeper Jimmy Rimmer, who had been on the Manchester United bench in the 1968 final, was forced off with a neck injury. On came 23-year-old Nigel Spink for a first senior outing since Boxing Day 1979. “I wasn’t nervous,” insists Spink, who had geared up for the match by listening to a Billy Connolly cassette on one of the Sony Walkmans the Villa players were gifted for reaching the final. “I didn’t think I’d get on, so there were no nerves to be had.”
Spink was outstanding, repelling all that Bayern could throw at him in the second of his 460 appearances for the club, helping lay the platform for a more recognisable figure to score the winner. Not that Withe’s route to glory ran smooth. Having helped Nottingham Forest win the First Division in 1977/78, he left after Brian Clough turned down his wage demand of an extra £10 a week. Barred from joining a top-flight rival, the forward pitched up at second-tier Newcastle, watching with a fixed grin from afar as his former team-mates twice lifted the European Cup.
Villa made their move in summer 1980, showing their commitment with a then record fee of £500,000. The return on investment was swift: Withe’s partnership with Gary Shaw was key as Villa won their first league title since 1909/10. The contrasting pair – commentator Gerald Sinstadt once said they “went together like bacon and eggs” – contributed 38 goals between them. Fitting then that the duo should be chief architects of the club’s biggest-ever goal in Rotterdam.
While the finish may not be one to hang in the Louvre, the move was rather lovely. Collecting a pass from Dennis Mortimer, Withe shielded the ball before laying it back to the Villa skipper. Then a moment of genius from Shaw on the left touchline lit the touchpaper, the youngster sending Dremmler to Amsterdam with a swing of the hips before threading a pass through to Tony Morley. The winger glided into the penalty area, span Hans Weiner as he jinked right and left, then drove a low cross into the unmarked Withe. The rest should have been a formality – it wasn’t. As the big No9 swung his right foot, the ball bobbled. “I half-hit it with my foot and half-hit it with my shin,” says Withe. It matters not. Villa had a lead they would not relinquish.
Withe lives in Australia these days, but on a poignant night when the club mourned Shaw, the 73-year-old journeyed back to Birmingham for Villa’s first home Champions League game this season. The opponents? Bayern, of course. If the visitors had forgotten about 1982, their hosts helpfully provided reminders. There was the incongruous sound of the Beautiful South’s Rotterdam in the warm-up, the subtle placing of the trophy in the tunnel. On 67 minutes, the camera panned to Withe and Mortimer and the crowd erupted in thunderous applause to mark the goal itself, immortalised in a banner displaying Brian Moore’s commentary opposite the dugouts at the top of the Doug Ellis Stand:
“Shaw, Williams, prepared to venture down the left. There’s a good ball played in for Tony Morley. Oh, it must be! And it is! Peter Withe!”
On the face of it, a strike from point-blank range involving more shin than boot does not scream classic goal. In the gilded hall of showpiece fame, you will likely see the imperious leaps of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, the gravity-defying acrobatics of Gareth Bale and, of course, the moment Zinédine Zidane made time stop (all given their due elsewhere in this issue). You are perhaps unlikely to spy the flash of horror that gripped Peter Withe when, stood before a gaping net, he watched his effort briefly flirt with the upright before bouncing in.
“The big centre-forward almost made a hash of it,” Jeff Powell wrote in the Daily Mail, “his shot from barely a yard hitting the inside of a post before entering the net. But at moments like that, it doesn’t matter how you score them, as long as they go in.” And that timing was key: midway through the second half of the 1982 European Cup final, against all expectation and pretty much everything that had come before on a balmy late spring evening in Rotterdam, Aston Villa led Bayern München.
The German team arrived in the Netherlands as roten hot favourites. English clubs may have lifted the previous five European Cups, but hopes of a sixth rested on a Villa side playing like a shadow of the team that had won the championship 12 months earlier. Their title defence simply never got going, manager Ron Saunders paying the price. Former assistant Tony Barton stepped in for the last few months of the campaign, guiding them to 11th and, more memorably, past Dynamo Kyiv and Anderlecht into the European Cup final.
Bayern too had fallen short in domestic competition, but theirs was a squad full of names as feared by opponents as they were by tongue-tied international commentators. Wolfgang Dremmler, Klaus Augenthaler, Paul Breitner, Dieter Hoeness, two-time Ballon d’Or winner Karl-Heinz Rummenigge. “I vividly remember one moment,” Villa right-back Kenny Swain recalls. “This ball flew over me and I saw Karl-Heinz Rummenigge – he looked like an acrobat. He jumped and did this overhead kick. I just watched it flash past the post. Nigel and I were looking at each other thinking, ‘This is different gravy.’”
If you are wondering who Nigel is then you are not alone – many did four decades ago too. There were just nine minutes gone at De Kuip when Villa goalkeeper Jimmy Rimmer, who had been on the Manchester United bench in the 1968 final, was forced off with a neck injury. On came 23-year-old Nigel Spink for a first senior outing since Boxing Day 1979. “I wasn’t nervous,” insists Spink, who had geared up for the match by listening to a Billy Connolly cassette on one of the Sony Walkmans the Villa players were gifted for reaching the final. “I didn’t think I’d get on, so there were no nerves to be had.”
On the face of it, a strike from point-blank range involving more shin than boot does not scream classic goal. In the gilded hall of showpiece fame, you will likely see the imperious leaps of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, the gravity-defying acrobatics of Gareth Bale and, of course, the moment Zinédine Zidane made time stop (all given their due elsewhere in this issue). You are perhaps unlikely to spy the flash of horror that gripped Peter Withe when, stood before a gaping net, he watched his effort briefly flirt with the upright before bouncing in.
“The big centre-forward almost made a hash of it,” Jeff Powell wrote in the Daily Mail, “his shot from barely a yard hitting the inside of a post before entering the net. But at moments like that, it doesn’t matter how you score them, as long as they go in.” And that timing was key: midway through the second half of the 1982 European Cup final, against all expectation and pretty much everything that had come before on a balmy late spring evening in Rotterdam, Aston Villa led Bayern München.
The German team arrived in the Netherlands as roten hot favourites. English clubs may have lifted the previous five European Cups, but hopes of a sixth rested on a Villa side playing like a shadow of the team that had won the championship 12 months earlier. Their title defence simply never got going, manager Ron Saunders paying the price. Former assistant Tony Barton stepped in for the last few months of the campaign, guiding them to 11th and, more memorably, past Dynamo Kyiv and Anderlecht into the European Cup final.
Bayern too had fallen short in domestic competition, but theirs was a squad full of names as feared by opponents as they were by tongue-tied international commentators. Wolfgang Dremmler, Klaus Augenthaler, Paul Breitner, Dieter Hoeness, two-time Ballon d’Or winner Karl-Heinz Rummenigge. “I vividly remember one moment,” Villa right-back Kenny Swain recalls. “This ball flew over me and I saw Karl-Heinz Rummenigge – he looked like an acrobat. He jumped and did this overhead kick. I just watched it flash past the post. Nigel and I were looking at each other thinking, ‘This is different gravy.’”
If you are wondering who Nigel is then you are not alone – many did four decades ago too. There were just nine minutes gone at De Kuip when Villa goalkeeper Jimmy Rimmer, who had been on the Manchester United bench in the 1968 final, was forced off with a neck injury. On came 23-year-old Nigel Spink for a first senior outing since Boxing Day 1979. “I wasn’t nervous,” insists Spink, who had geared up for the match by listening to a Billy Connolly cassette on one of the Sony Walkmans the Villa players were gifted for reaching the final. “I didn’t think I’d get on, so there were no nerves to be had.”
On the face of it, a strike from point-blank range involving more shin than boot does not scream classic goal. In the gilded hall of showpiece fame, you will likely see the imperious leaps of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, the gravity-defying acrobatics of Gareth Bale and, of course, the moment Zinédine Zidane made time stop (all given their due elsewhere in this issue). You are perhaps unlikely to spy the flash of horror that gripped Peter Withe when, stood before a gaping net, he watched his effort briefly flirt with the upright before bouncing in.
“The big centre-forward almost made a hash of it,” Jeff Powell wrote in the Daily Mail, “his shot from barely a yard hitting the inside of a post before entering the net. But at moments like that, it doesn’t matter how you score them, as long as they go in.” And that timing was key: midway through the second half of the 1982 European Cup final, against all expectation and pretty much everything that had come before on a balmy late spring evening in Rotterdam, Aston Villa led Bayern München.
The German team arrived in the Netherlands as roten hot favourites. English clubs may have lifted the previous five European Cups, but hopes of a sixth rested on a Villa side playing like a shadow of the team that had won the championship 12 months earlier. Their title defence simply never got going, manager Ron Saunders paying the price. Former assistant Tony Barton stepped in for the last few months of the campaign, guiding them to 11th and, more memorably, past Dynamo Kyiv and Anderlecht into the European Cup final.
Bayern too had fallen short in domestic competition, but theirs was a squad full of names as feared by opponents as they were by tongue-tied international commentators. Wolfgang Dremmler, Klaus Augenthaler, Paul Breitner, Dieter Hoeness, two-time Ballon d’Or winner Karl-Heinz Rummenigge. “I vividly remember one moment,” Villa right-back Kenny Swain recalls. “This ball flew over me and I saw Karl-Heinz Rummenigge – he looked like an acrobat. He jumped and did this overhead kick. I just watched it flash past the post. Nigel and I were looking at each other thinking, ‘This is different gravy.’”
If you are wondering who Nigel is then you are not alone – many did four decades ago too. There were just nine minutes gone at De Kuip when Villa goalkeeper Jimmy Rimmer, who had been on the Manchester United bench in the 1968 final, was forced off with a neck injury. On came 23-year-old Nigel Spink for a first senior outing since Boxing Day 1979. “I wasn’t nervous,” insists Spink, who had geared up for the match by listening to a Billy Connolly cassette on one of the Sony Walkmans the Villa players were gifted for reaching the final. “I didn’t think I’d get on, so there were no nerves to be had.”
Spink was outstanding, repelling all that Bayern could throw at him in the second of his 460 appearances for the club, helping lay the platform for a more recognisable figure to score the winner. Not that Withe’s route to glory ran smooth. Having helped Nottingham Forest win the First Division in 1977/78, he left after Brian Clough turned down his wage demand of an extra £10 a week. Barred from joining a top-flight rival, the forward pitched up at second-tier Newcastle, watching with a fixed grin from afar as his former team-mates twice lifted the European Cup.
Villa made their move in summer 1980, showing their commitment with a then record fee of £500,000. The return on investment was swift: Withe’s partnership with Gary Shaw was key as Villa won their first league title since 1909/10. The contrasting pair – commentator Gerald Sinstadt once said they “went together like bacon and eggs” – contributed 38 goals between them. Fitting then that the duo should be chief architects of the club’s biggest-ever goal in Rotterdam.
While the finish may not be one to hang in the Louvre, the move was rather lovely. Collecting a pass from Dennis Mortimer, Withe shielded the ball before laying it back to the Villa skipper. Then a moment of genius from Shaw on the left touchline lit the touchpaper, the youngster sending Dremmler to Amsterdam with a swing of the hips before threading a pass through to Tony Morley. The winger glided into the penalty area, span Hans Weiner as he jinked right and left, then drove a low cross into the unmarked Withe. The rest should have been a formality – it wasn’t. As the big No9 swung his right foot, the ball bobbled. “I half-hit it with my foot and half-hit it with my shin,” says Withe. It matters not. Villa had a lead they would not relinquish.
Withe lives in Australia these days, but on a poignant night when the club mourned Shaw, the 73-year-old journeyed back to Birmingham for Villa’s first home Champions League game this season. The opponents? Bayern, of course. If the visitors had forgotten about 1982, their hosts helpfully provided reminders. There was the incongruous sound of the Beautiful South’s Rotterdam in the warm-up, the subtle placing of the trophy in the tunnel. On 67 minutes, the camera panned to Withe and Mortimer and the crowd erupted in thunderous applause to mark the goal itself, immortalised in a banner displaying Brian Moore’s commentary opposite the dugouts at the top of the Doug Ellis Stand:
“Shaw, Williams, prepared to venture down the left. There’s a good ball played in for Tony Morley. Oh, it must be! And it is! Peter Withe!”
On the face of it, a strike from point-blank range involving more shin than boot does not scream classic goal. In the gilded hall of showpiece fame, you will likely see the imperious leaps of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, the gravity-defying acrobatics of Gareth Bale and, of course, the moment Zinédine Zidane made time stop (all given their due elsewhere in this issue). You are perhaps unlikely to spy the flash of horror that gripped Peter Withe when, stood before a gaping net, he watched his effort briefly flirt with the upright before bouncing in.
“The big centre-forward almost made a hash of it,” Jeff Powell wrote in the Daily Mail, “his shot from barely a yard hitting the inside of a post before entering the net. But at moments like that, it doesn’t matter how you score them, as long as they go in.” And that timing was key: midway through the second half of the 1982 European Cup final, against all expectation and pretty much everything that had come before on a balmy late spring evening in Rotterdam, Aston Villa led Bayern München.
The German team arrived in the Netherlands as roten hot favourites. English clubs may have lifted the previous five European Cups, but hopes of a sixth rested on a Villa side playing like a shadow of the team that had won the championship 12 months earlier. Their title defence simply never got going, manager Ron Saunders paying the price. Former assistant Tony Barton stepped in for the last few months of the campaign, guiding them to 11th and, more memorably, past Dynamo Kyiv and Anderlecht into the European Cup final.
Bayern too had fallen short in domestic competition, but theirs was a squad full of names as feared by opponents as they were by tongue-tied international commentators. Wolfgang Dremmler, Klaus Augenthaler, Paul Breitner, Dieter Hoeness, two-time Ballon d’Or winner Karl-Heinz Rummenigge. “I vividly remember one moment,” Villa right-back Kenny Swain recalls. “This ball flew over me and I saw Karl-Heinz Rummenigge – he looked like an acrobat. He jumped and did this overhead kick. I just watched it flash past the post. Nigel and I were looking at each other thinking, ‘This is different gravy.’”
If you are wondering who Nigel is then you are not alone – many did four decades ago too. There were just nine minutes gone at De Kuip when Villa goalkeeper Jimmy Rimmer, who had been on the Manchester United bench in the 1968 final, was forced off with a neck injury. On came 23-year-old Nigel Spink for a first senior outing since Boxing Day 1979. “I wasn’t nervous,” insists Spink, who had geared up for the match by listening to a Billy Connolly cassette on one of the Sony Walkmans the Villa players were gifted for reaching the final. “I didn’t think I’d get on, so there were no nerves to be had.”
