Humble Hibernian, Brilliant Barça – part 2

Humble Hibernian, Brilliant Barça – part 2

Hibernian played Barcelona in 1960 / 61.

Just before they played Hibs, Barcelona had drawn 2-2 with Real Madrid in El Bernabéu. Then Barça won 2-1 in the Nou Camp in the second game, but that was in the European Cup, today’s Champions League. That year, strangely, Barcelona were playing in both European championships. This shows that Barcelona were a really good team at that time too, and that the European rules were very different.

The first game against Hibs was in the Nou Camp. It was in the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, today’s Europa League. The match was originally postponed because of fog, so they finally played at Christmas, on the 27th of December, 1960.

Maybe because it was Christmas, Barcelona thought playing Hibs would be a gift, a present, something easy. But it wasn’t.

Three days before in Scotland, on Christmas Eve, Hibs had beat Third Lanark 8-4 in a classic game. Third Lanark don’t mean anything now, but they were one of the first teams in Scotland, started in 1872. They sadly disappeared in 1967. They won a lot of titles.

Hibs weren’t scared by being in the enormous Nou Camp or of playing the mighty Barcelona. Hibs were winning 0-2 in the first half, then 2-4 in the second. At the end of the game it was 4-4, a spectacular result for Hibs. Sandor Kocsis scored a hat-trick for Barcelona, and Joe Baker scored 2 for Hibs. Joe Baker was one of the best ever players for Hibs. The Barcelona fans applauded Hibs at the end of the game.

Check this link for a wee clip of the game

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IimuBaMuej0

Then it got crazy!

I’ll tell you next time what happened in the return game in Edinburgh!