No World Cup, but a champions’ contest
There was no World Cup in 1967. The men’s national-team tournaments were held in England in 1966 and Mexico in 1970. What 1967 did have was the nearest thing to a “tournament of champions” in club soccer: the Intercontinental Cup, a two-leg tie, with a deciding match if needed, between the champion club of Europe and the champion club of South America. The 1967 edition paired Celtic of Scotland with Racing Club of Argentina and became one of the most notorious matches in the competition’s history.
How the competition worked
The Intercontinental Cup had been played since 1960. The winners of the European Cup met the winners of the Copa Libertadores, the South American club championship. It was widely described as a contest for the world club championship, although it involved only two continents. It continued, under different formats and sponsors, until the Club World Cup replaced it in the early 2000s.
Racing Club’s road
Racing Club, from Avellaneda near Buenos Aires and nicknamed La Academia, had won the Argentine league title in 1966. That put them into the 1967 Copa Libertadores. They won the competition, beating Nacional of Uruguay in the final after a deciding match played in Santiago, Chile. It was a major triumph for a club that had waited many years for success at that level.
Racing’s squad was strong and combative, and the manager was Juan José Pizzuti. A few names stand out in accounts of the period, including the forward Juan Carlos Cárdenas.
Celtic’s road
Celtic had become European champions in May 1967 by beating Inter Milan 2-1 in Lisbon, the victory that gave the Lisbon Lions their name. They were the first British club to win the trophy, under manager Jock Stein, and the whole squad had been born within a short distance of Glasgow. They arrived at the Intercontinental Cup as favourites in the eyes of the British press.
The three matches
The first leg was played at Hampden Park in Glasgow in October 1967, and Celtic won 1-0. The second leg was in Avellaneda, Argentina, in front of a large and hostile crowd, and Racing won 2-1. Because the competition at that time did not count goals scored, a third match was needed to decide the winner. It was held at the Estadio Centenario in Montevideo, Uruguay, on 4 November 1967, the same stadium that had hosted the final of the 1930 World Cup.
Racing won the play-off 1-0, with Cárdenas scoring the only goal. The match is remembered less for the play than for the conduct. Reports describe a series of fouls, fights and dismissals, with six players reportedly sent off in all, from both sides. Celtic’s Jimmy Johnstone was one of those dismissed. After the match there was criticism of both teams, and of the referee, who was thought to have lost control. Accounts of what happened on the field differ, and each side has blamed the other, so it is hard to give a neutral account of every incident.
Why it mattered
The result made Racing the club champions of the world, as the title was then understood. For Celtic, the tie was a bruising end to a historic season. The tie left a sour memory in Scotland, where it was widely seen as a poor end to the celebrations of Lisbon.
The 1967 tie was not the last violent chapter. Later editions, including the 1968 tie involving Estudiantes of Argentina and Manchester United and the 1969 tie with AC Milan, also drew accusations of brutality. Over the following years some European champions declined to take part, and the fixture’s reputation suffered.
The setting in South America
The matches came in an eventful season in South America. On 9 October 1967 the Argentine-born revolutionary Che Guevara was killed in Bolivia, a story that filled newspapers in the days before the first leg. Argentina was then under a military-led government, and football success carried a lot of national pride. There is no suggestion that politics decided the match, but it helps explain the atmosphere.
The title
To readers expecting a World Cup, the answer is that 1967 had no such tournament. It did have a global club contest that, for all its flaws, gave the year an international champion. That title belonged to Racing Club of Argentina.