Jimmy Montgomery, the goalkeeper whose double save clinched the 1973 FA Cup final for Sunderland, has revealed that his gloves were stolen during the club's only previous European campaign, in a Cup Winners' Cup tie against Sporting Lisbon in 1973-74.
Montgomery, now 82, spoke to the Daily Mail from his home in Sunderland as Regis Le Bris' side prepare to face AZ Alkmaar in the Europa League, the club's first European campaign since that 1973-74 run.
"When we played in Lisbon against Sporting in the Cup Winners' Cup the next season, I put them in the back of the net with my cap as I always did. And somebody stole them," Montgomery said. "Ball boy? Cameraman? I have no idea. So that was one souvenir gone in a flash."
He said it hardly mattered because he barely wore the gloves anyway. "Not that it really mattered. I hardly wore them. When they were wet they were about as much use as a chocolate watch!"
Sunderland's first taste of Europe
Sunderland's run in the 1973-74 Cup Winners' Cup followed their FA Cup win over Leeds United while playing in the second tier. Montgomery said the side that started the first European tie away to Vasas Budapest, behind the Iron Curtain, was unchanged from the Wembley final XI. "I don't think that was sentiment. I think we deserved it," he said.
He contrasted the modest scale of the trip with the modern game. "These days the team will have a dossier on the opponents and take their own chef and staff with them. We had our manager Bob Stokoe, his assistant and maybe the club secretary. That was it." He said the players knew nothing about Vasas beyond what journalists on the plane told them. Sunderland won 2-0 in Budapest and also beat Vasas at home.
Sunderland's European run ended against Sporting Lisbon in the next round, in what Montgomery called "a strange night." He said Lisbon's players repeatedly threw match balls straight back into the crowd whenever ball boys brought them on, rather than restart play, and that the referee ignored Sunderland's protests. "I guess it was time-wasting. But I have never seen anything like it before or since," he said.
A stand named in his honour
Montgomery made a club-record 627 appearances for Sunderland, his hometown club, across 18 years. As a boy he watched matches at Roker Park with his father, and as an apprentice he swept the terraces and painted the seats.
The Stadium of Light stand has carried his name since the start of last season, and this year's goalkeeping jerseys carry his signature, his appearance total and an outline of his famous 1973 save. "It's hard to believe. I am just a kid from down the road," he said.
Montgomery has served the club as a player, goalkeeping coach and at its centre of excellence, and said he had been let go four times. "Different managers would want different things. So yeah I got kicked out. But I kept getting invited back again!" He also spent a year coaching at Newcastle United under Kevin Keegan, working with goalkeeper Pavel Srnicek, who he called perhaps the best he had worked with.
His verdict on Robin Roefs
Montgomery remains a regular visitor to Sunderland's training ground and talks football with Le Bris and goalkeeping with current No 1 Robin Roefs. "They sometimes bring the goalkeepers over for a chat. I think the young ones want to talk. That's very humbling and typical of the club now," he said.
He praised Roefs but voiced reservations about his tendency to play out from the back. "Robin is an excellent keeper, a brilliant keeper. Sometimes I just wish he wouldn't try to play from the back so much. I'm not a great fan of it. I get wound up." He said he would rather goalkeepers send the ball forward and push the team up the pitch, adding that once a goalkeeper has the ball, "he's in charge of it. He does what he thinks right."
Montgomery pointed to Arsenal goalkeeper David Raya's performance the previous Saturday as an example he admired, saying Raya "dictated everything" and "was fully in charge." He was far less complimentary about Arsenal as a team. "I have no time for them. Goodness I couldn't watch that every week. What is that type of football?" He also said Arsenal's manager had no grounds to complain about conceding a penalty, and criticised modern corner-kick tactics, recalling that in his playing days defenders such as Newcastle's Wyn Davies and Bolton's Nat Lofthouse would simply flatten him with no protection from officials.
Forest, Clough and that famous save
Montgomery ended his career with a season at Nottingham Forest under Brian Clough, having played against Clough on Boxing Day 1962, the day Clough broke his leg. Montgomery was understudy to Peter Shilton at Forest and, though he never played, was on the bench when Forest won the 1980 European Cup final in Madrid, earning him a medal. He rates Pat Jennings as perhaps the best goalkeeper he has known.
On the 1973 save itself, Montgomery said the famous photograph captures his stop from Trevor Cherry, while the follow-up header from Peter Lorimer, from five yards, was struck so hard that ITV commentator Brian Moore shouted "goal" before it hit the underside of the crossbar. The late Jimmy Hill later said it was the tips of Montgomery's fingers that had turned the ball onto the woodwork.
Montgomery jokes that he wishes he had caught the first shot so he would not have spent his life talking about the second, "but I don't mean it. I love what it still means to people." He said he only grasped its significance afterwards, watching replays with a pint of milk in hand, and noted he had made a save a few weeks earlier, for a player at Hull, that he rated even better.
