- Apologies for the lack of an MWM last week, holidays took priority!
In our very first instalment of this series, we looked at Celtic wearing orange socks against Leeds in 1970, having been given a choice between those or blue ones.
That wasn’t the first time they refused to wear garments in the colours of their rivals Rangers, however – and the compromise reached meant a break from a very strong tradition.
Like Arsenal (except in 2013 against Fenerbahce) and Liverpool (apart from their trips to Watford in the early 1980s), Real Madrid hold their classic look very dearly, and prefer to wear a change kit rather than messing with the all-white.
Notable deviations have been after winning the Champions League final in an alternative kit and putting on white shirts for the presentation, as in 2000 and last May. For Alfredo di Stefano’s testimonial 50 years ago, however, they paired white jerseys with dark shorts on the pitch.
Newly-crowned European champions Celtic were the opposition, and the sides actually emerged in both of their first-choice kits, but the referee sought differentiation in terms of a shorts change.
As the hosts, Real asked Celtic to wear their away shorts but as they were blue, Jock Stein point-blank refused, as he would three years later at Elland Road. With a minor psychological victory achieved, Celtic backed up their status as the best on the continent as Bobby Lennox scored the only goal in a 1-0 win.
Another plausible reason for Celtic refusing to change shorts to accomodate a clash was because their shorts were numbered, due to their tradition of not wearing numbers on the hoops. A change of shorts would have caused some player identity problems for the officials.