Heroes of the Nou Camp

JOHN FRASER

Barcelona 4 Hibernian 4

Fairs Cup, quarter-final first leg, December 1960

THE Easter Road club were Scotland's first-ever representatives in the Fairs Cup and after the Swiss side Lausanne Sport withdrew, their first outing in the competition just happened to take the form of a daunting trip to the Nou Camp. A ground that played host to some of European football's behemoths wasn't expected to be the scene of a great lesson from a Leith team. But that's the way it turned out.

"Barcelona were then what they are now," Hibs right-back John Fraser says of a Catalan side who would later the same season defeat Real Madrid in the Champions Cup. "In Czibor and Kocsis they had two of the Mighty Magyars who had whacked England 7-1 some years before. I was up against Czibor and it was some experience but we were a bigger name on the continent than Celtic and Rangers and could play."

Striker Joe Baker certainly needed defer to no one. A double from the man shortly to depart for Torino would have given Hibs a first-leg lead but for the loss of two late goals as Kocsis helped himself to a hat-trick. But the result paved the way for a 3-2 Hibs victory in front of a 50,000 crowd at Easter Road that sealed a semi-final against the Italian side Roma, which was lost 11-5 on aggregate after a play-off third match was quite controversially staged in Rome.

BILLY HAINEY

Barcelona 1 Dundee Utd 2

Fairs Cup, second round, October 1966

THE name Billy Hainey is writ large on a tie that saw United oust the Fairs Cup holders with remarkable ease in their first-ever outing in Europe. The groundwork for the success was laid in a soulless Nou Camp, when Hainey struck and won the penalty that brought a second goal. He also scored in the return, a 2-0 win in front of a record 28,000 crowd – 8,000 more than watched the Catalan leg.

"I suppose those games were the pinnacle of my career, but I don't dwell on them," Hainey says. "I rarely meet people who bring them up and I certainly don't think back that often. I remember playing well at the Nou Camp and being proud of my part in a great team win but football then wasn't what it is now. Even the Nou Camp wasn't the massive arena people now know it as. I think there has been another two tiers added since we played there."

Incredibly, Hainey's team-mate, Tommy Millar, the one part-timer at Tannadice, was sacked by the printing firm that employed him for travelling to Spain. Italian giants Juventus proved too strong for United in the next round, a 3-0 first leg deficit too much to claw back in a Tayside return they won 1-0.

JIM McINALLY

Barcelona 1 Dundee Utd 2

UEFA Cup quarter final, March 1987

A GAME that drips the fantastical, the Nou Camp return leg of one of the most unforgettable European ties played by a Scottish side allowed United to bring up a played four, won four competitive record against the Nou Camp club.

Astonishingly, Jim McLean's side did this after finding themselves a goal down in defending a 1-0 first-leg lead. With five minutes remaining, John Clark headed in from a free-kick won by the stupendous Paul Sturrock and then Iain Ferguson nodded in an effort minutes later for the cherry on top.

"We were 100 per cent set up by wee Jim to play in Europe with a studied approach and quick forwards, and had this mentality about us that we were never over-awed regardless of who we played," remembers Jim McInally, one of the few relative European novices in a United team then the most experienced British club in the continental arena, owing to the ban on English teams.

McLean's men made their mastery of a European approach tell by outfoxing the German outfit Borussia Moenchengladbach in the semi-final, only to come up agonisingly short in the two-legged final against IFK Gothenburg of Sweden.

DAVID MARSHALL

Barcelona 0 Celtic 0

UEFA Cup last 16, March 2004

THE heroic performances by youngsters David Marshall and John Kennedy colour all recollections of Celtic's terrific rearguard actions against Barcelona four years ago.

The 19-year-old Marshall had started only a handful of games for the club before Martin O'Neill pitched him in at the Nou Camp after Robert Douglas had been red-carded in a tousy first leg. Celtic won 1-0 against their illustrious visitors, who had Argentine striker Javier Saviola and Brazilian midfielder Thiago Motta sent off within the first 49 minutes.

Marshall produced a string of outrageous stops as Kennedy snapped into tackles to send Celtic through to a quarter-final against Villarreal that the Spaniards won convincingly. A week later Kennedy's knee was wrecked in a tackle while he was playing for Scotland against Romania, while Marshall moved on to Norwich having never recaptured his form of the Catalan evening. "I told David afterwards, though, that it's downhill all the way from now on and he might just as well retire right now, call it quits and go home," Celtic manager O'Neill said prophetically in the immediate aftermath of the greatest of all his European successes.