Source: Liverpool_Echo
Bill Shankly’s story by the man himself...
IN 1976, Bill Shankly's one and only autobiography went on sale to great acclaim and so to mark the 50th anniversary of his arrival at Anfield the book has now been republished. This exclusive extract reveals his feelings after they won the FA Cup in 1965 and he talks about the two famous Inter games:[LNB]I THOUGHT we should have been the first English club to win the European Cup. We were good enough to beat Anderlecht home and away and we had got through against Cologne on the toss of a coin, after the third game between us had been drawn 2-2 in Rotterdam following scoreless draws on our ground and theirs. And we had gone from there to reach Wembley by beating Chelsea and had won the FA Cup.[LNB]Three days after Wembley we thrashed Inter Milan, who were the champions of the world, 3-1 at Anfield in the semi-final of the European Cup.[LNB]We were without Gerry Byrne as well as Gordon Milne that night, but though they were missing from the team because of injuries, they still played their part. I asked Milan to go out early, but they kept hanging around the dressing room. I said, 'It's time to go now', and eventually they made a move and went out on to the pitch. That's just what I wanted, psychologically, because I then sent out Gordon and Gerry with the FA Cup, followed by the team.[LNB]Dear God, what an eruption there was when our supporters caught sight of that cup. The noise was unbelievable. The people were hysterical.[LNB]Herrera had been over two or three times to see us, but he had not seen us play the way we did that night and he gave us credit for it afterwards. 'We have been beaten before,' he said, 'but tonight we were defeated.' Milan were technically sound, but we beat them. Roger Hunt hit the ball when he was about four feet in the air to score one of the goals. He hooked it and slashed it into the net. 'That was not a British goal,' Herrera said. 'It was a continental goal.'[LNB]But the second leg of the semi-final was not a game, it was a war. We stayed at Lake Como, and we had trouble with the church bells. It wasn't so bad until about 11 o'clock at night, when the noise of[LNB]the day had ceased and there was nothing to hear but the bells. One in particular was like doomsday.[LNB]Bob Paisley and I went to see the Monsignor about it. We tried to get him to stop the bells ringing for the night so the players could sleep.[LNB]'It's not very fair,' I said to him through the interpreter. 'We didn't know about this noise and we've come here on the eve of the most important match in the world this year, Inter Milan versus Liverpool.'[LNB]That was right, because if we had won it, we would have won the European Cup.
