‘We were robbed of a fairytale’: How Roma cheated Dundee United out of the European Cup final

Roma's semi-final with Liverpool is their first appearance at this stage of the competition since facing the then Scottish champions

It was so close to being one of football’s great stories, something genuinely grandiose enough to rival Brian Clough’s feats with Nottingham Forest, only to become something much grimmer with details to rival a spy novel.

Because on the night before Roma’s European Cup semi-final second leg against Dundee United in 1983-84, with the Serie A club desperate to overturn a 2-0 deficit in order to reach a final being played in their own stadium, referee Michel Vautrot was told to have dinner at a specific restaurant. The referee was also told to wait for a specific moment during the meal. That was when a waiter came over to say “telephone call for Mr Vautrot”. That would be the signal for 100m lire - £50,000 - to be handed over as a bribe.

These are the revelations of Roma director Riccardo Viola - son of the club’s late president Dino Viola - who said all of this on Italian TV company Mediaset Premium a few years ago, although it is claimed the attempt at a bribe failed.

“That is true and a shameful fact,” Viola stated. “All of this was done because we had a difficult game ahead of us against Dundee United. Going out of the competition would have had serious repercussions.”

Now that Roma have reached this stage of the competition for the first time since 1984, so much of the attention will be on the way Liverpool goalkeeper Bruce Grobbelaar bent his legs to deny them victory in the final penalty shoot-out. Just as much focus should be on how they tried to break the rules and spirit of the game to deny Dundee United something truly special, something historic. It is thereby the first time that Roma have reached this stage clean.

“We were robbed,” John Holt, veteran of Dundee United from 1973 to 1987, tells The Independent. “That’s right, we were robbed.”

If modern perceptions dictate it feels fanciful that Dundee United should have been in a European Cup final, the realities of the time make that very much the wrong way to think.

Jim McLean’s side were, along with Sir Alex Ferguson’s Aberdeen, part of “the New Firm” that had completely dislodged Celtic and Rangers from the top of Scottish football. Taking their lead from Aberdeen’s maiden 1980 title, Dundee United won their own first title in 1982-83. Aberdeen then won the next two, completing a three-year spell when Celtic and Rangers didn’t win the league.

That had never happened before, and has never happened since.

Dundee United’s own victory also came from football that had rarely been seen in Scotland - and also got them to the 1986-87 Uefa Cup footBll - thanks to the “visionary” work of the blunt but brilliant McLean.

With a fine team core that saw Richard Gough and David Narey at centre-half, Maurice Malpas at left-back, Eamonn Bannan and the late Ralph Milne on the wings and Paul Sturrock up front, manager McLean offered a genuinely elite-level nous. He may well be one of the competition’s most underrated ever managers.

“He was just before his time, to be honest,” Holt explains. “He played European football, the way we would approach games. It was how he prepared. He lived for football and was so organised. Jim would go around every player and made sure they were taking it in. He was a visionary, and would see things other managers. He was such a good tactician - although I wouldn’t say the best man-manager! He could be difficult. At the end of the day, though, there were 11 good players on that park given the right instructions.”

That was proved by how they surged through Europe, right up until that semi-final second leg. United put six past Hamrun Spartans and four past Standard Liege to no reply, with the latter involving a thumping 4-0 win at Tannadice at a time when Belgian football was among the best in Europe. They then overcame a 2-1 deficit to knock out a respected Rapid Wien on away goals, before trampling over Roma 2-0 in the first leg of the semi-final.

The Italians had made the mistake many had of underestimating them, and that against a manager so adept at undercutting such flaws.

“We played them off the park at Tannadice,” Holt says. “They just thought they were going to turn up at Tannadice and win the game, and they didn’t. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the best night.

“It had been raining, the ground was soft. It maybe suited the Scottish type of football more than the Italian, but we got through that game. Davie Dodds scored, then Derek Stark scored from 40 yards out.”

Roma lost the final on their own ground on penalties (Colorsport)

United were in full command, and fully confident of going through… but there was already a lot of suspicion between the sides from what had been a bad-tempered first leg.

“Their manager accused of us being on drugs!” Holt says, before joking. “I don’t know if I was on drugs! I don’t know if it was just trying to wind up McLean, possibly. But going into the second leg, we were quite friendly with an Italian chef, and we brought him with us to prepare all the food. Yeah, there was that much suspicion, there certainly was.”

In a hugely bad-tempered match, Roma won 3-0 at the Stadio Olimpico - with the third goal a penalty scored by the tragic Agostino di Bartolomei, who died 10 years later.

McLean railed at his team after the game, but the players already felt something wasn’t right during it, and the manager himself later revealed that former SFA secretary Ernie Walker demanded a Uefa investigation. It went unheard.

“The referee was giving free-kicks when we’d hardly touch a guy,” Holt says. “I felt the referee was more for them than us. I didn’t feel he was right down the middle. Every free-kick, I thought, and there were a lot. It just kept increasing the pressure. We all felt it at the time, no doubt.”

The United players ultimately missed the opportunity to play in one of sport’s great occasions, and maybe to offer one of sport’s great fairytales. Roma were ultimately beaten on penalties by Liverpool in a final held in their own stadium.

“We could have gone further,” Holt says. “We had the players.”

Those players were also greatly supporting Liverpool.

“Everybody was the same, we wanted Liverpool to win the final. Even to be in the game,” Holt now says, wistfully. “It’s one of the stories of your career, but you do think to yourself what would have happened… I could have got a medal As Jim McLean called it, ‘the wee supermarket’, that’s what we were, competing against the big names. Who knows what we could have done, had we got to the final against Liverpool.”