Messi or Rooney to lift the Cup?

Saturday will see the culmination of the European football season with the Champions League final at Wembley stadium in London. Since I was a kid I have looked forward to this final with the hope of seeing the best that football can offer. My first recollection of a final was in 1967. Celtic were taking on the champions of Italy, Inter Milan, in the biggest game on the planet! I spent the hours before the game playing outside on the street with all the other kids planning out who would score for Celtic and what it would be like to lift the "big cup". Of course, we didnt fully realise how much of an underdog Celtic were in this final. Inter were the best team in Europe at the time and Celtic were just a small Scottish team packed with players who had all been born less than 30 miles from Celtic stadium! We didn't know what a big ask this was going to be, all we knew was that we were all going crazy with excitement because Glasgow Celtic, our Celtic, were playing against the great Inter Milan in the final that day! I remember watching the game on a TV with grainy black and white pictures being beamed from Lisbon. There was no mistaking which of the black and white striped teams on show was mine.... the glorious hoops! They strode out into the Lisbon sunshine and into history.

The bare statistics of the game show that the mighty Inter, who opened the scoring via a Sandro Mazzola penalty after eight minutes before erecting an 11-man defence, did not win a single corner and forced the Celtic goalkeeper Simpson to make but one save; Celtic had two shots off the crossbar, and 49 other attempts on goal, 13 of which were saved by Italian goalkeeper Sarti, 17 were blocked or deflected, and a mere 19 delivered off-target. Celtic won the game 2-1 to become the first British team, in fact the first Northern European team to win the European cup.

I remember the excitement, I remember the joy, but most of all I remember how fantastic and awe inspiring the football was that day.

Let's hope Barca and Man Utd can deliver even a fraction of the fearless, open football that Celtic showed on their big day.

Barca vs Man United, Saturday May 28th, Wembley Stadium 2.45pm Kick Off (EST)