Barcelona: 45 years after the Cup Winners’ Cup, its first international title

Today marks 45 years since the European Cup Winners’ Cup was won, the first international tournament that Barcelona won.

BARCELONA — At the time this Thursday the Barcelona Xavi plays in Almeria a match that can almost assure them the second final place in LaLiga will be fulfilled 45 years of the conquest of Cup Winners Cup, first major international title who celebrated the May 16, 1979.

He Barcelona had won the Latin Cup twice (1949 and 1952) and the Fairs Cup three times (1958, 1960 and 1966), both of which already disappeared in the 70s of the last century and whose significance and importance were far below the Cup Winners Cup, the UEFA Cup or, of course, the European Cup. And he didn’t have a single one of those trophies under his belt.

Very different from the present in which he has 22 international titles. And the nine years he has accumulated without winning one (in 2015 he linked the Champions League, the European Super Cup and the Club World Cup) seem like an eternity… And if then, at that time, celebrating a championship was almost an exception, winning one in Europe It was an illusion never seen before.

Semi-finalist first in the 1975 European Cup (eliminated by Leeds United) and then in the UEFA Cup (eliminated by Liverpool in 1976 and the PSV Eindhoven in 1978), Barça took part in the 1978-79 Cup Winners’ Cup as champion of Copa del Rey the previous year, having defeated in the final the The Palms in which it was the second and last trophy won by Johan Cruyff as a footballer.

He fell Shakhtar Donetsk Ukrainian (then unknown) in the first round and in the round of 16 the first big duel was played against Anderlecht, to which Barça overcame the 3-0 they received in Brussels, equaling the result at the Camp Nou and qualifying on penalties. In the quarterfinals they eliminated the English Ipswich Town thanks to the double value of the goals in the opposite field (they won 1-0 in the second leg after losing 2-1 in England) and in the semifinal they beat the Belgian Beveren, winning both matches by 1- 0.

In this way, they reached the final to be played in Basel on May 16, 1979 against Fortuna Düsseldorf, today in the German second division (they will play in the promotion play-off) and at that time one of the strongest clubs in their country. And that final, which marks the 45th anniversary, provoked the first large caravan of club fans accompanying their team to a final, with around 30,000 traveling to the Swiss city where, curiously, Hans was originally from. Gamper, the founder of Barça in 1899.

The final responded to the expectation and fulfilled the nerves that were evident since it was not decided until extra time, after Fortuna tied in the first half, almost immediately, the two times that Barça had advanced through Sánchez and Asensi.

Even Rexach (an accomplished specialist) missed a penalty before scoring the third goal in added time, prior to Krankl’s fourth which was already too much for Fortuna who shortened through Seel but remained at 4-3.

Barça won that first Cup Winners’ Cup and celebrated the success with an overflowing passion that made them forget a League in which they were relegated to the final fifth position (the worst classification since 1965) and which was the first of the continental successes that would come later.

Everything is very different today in the Barça club, where the need to win any competition in which it takes part is imposed and continental eliminations are received as resounding failures. Times as different as the surroundings of a Barcelona whose memory today takes him back to that distant 1979, when he enjoyed that title with all the joy.