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Hart Lane that had six guest players including Stanley Matthews and finishing off with a 2-2 draw with Glasgow Rangers. You can see the very murky highlights of the Rangers match on YouTube. 271,000 fans witnessed those four matches and the myth of British footballing invincibility began to crumble.
This wasn’t our first floodlight game against European opposition that season as twelve days earlier we’d entertained First Vienna and had managed to let a 4-0 lead after thirty minutes slip to a 4-4 draw. In the previous two seasons we’d also played Racing Club de Paris (winning 2-0 and 5-1) and Borussia Dortmund (a 3-2 win for us). The 1955-1956 season also saw the first matches of the European Cup, which was soon dominated by Real Madrid.
Sunderland had limbered up for this match with a 4-4 draw at home to Burnley a couple of days before and on the night lined up in their usual 2-3-5 formation with Fraser in goal, Hedley and McDonald as full-backs, Anderson, Daniel and Aitken in the middle and a forward line of Bingham, Fleming, Purdon, Chisholm and Shackleton. Strange to say, we also had eight substitutes that night and these included Billy Elliott. Dynamo had in goal one of the greatest players of the century in Lev Yashin, known as the Black Spider or the Black Panther, who, amongst many other great achievements, is credited with saving one hundred and fifty penalties. In the programme there’s a photo of the team standing on the tarmac at Heathrow Airport shortly after
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