1964-1973: The Early Years

Chris Lawler was very prolific in front of goal in European competition

Having failed to retain their domestic crown, Liverpool entered the Cup Winners' cup a year later and again enjoyed a marvellous run - all the way through to the final in fact. Juventus provided very tough opposition in the first round but first-half goals at Anfield from defenders Lawler and Strong overturned the narrow 1-0 defeat in Turin.

Lawler scored twice in the next round against Standard Liege and Peter Thompson adding the third in a 3-1 victory and the second leg was also won in Belgium in the face of extreme provocation on the pitch. A goal down at half-time, the players showed remarkable composure and strikes from the forward pairing of Hunt and St. John early in the second-half paved the way for a comfortable 5-2 aggregate victory.

The quarter-final was not played for another three and a half months and by now more used to the tactics of the European game, Liverpool quietened the crowd in Hungary and took a 0-0 score back to England with them before defeating Honved 2-0 with Chris Lawler again being on the score-sheet.

The two semi-finals with Celtic were played only five days apart yet Liverpool still had to fit a First Division fixture with Stoke City in between the two dates. The Celts came down from the North in their thousands, expecting to see their favourites progress through to the Hampden Park final but a blistering free-kick from Tommy Smith equalised Bobby Lennox's first-leg goal and then Geoff Strong, despite limping severely from an incident earlier in the game, somehow climbed to reach an Ian Callaghan cross and headed it past Ronnie Simpson to put the Reds into the lead on aggregate.

A late Celtic goal was disallowed and caused a bit of crowd trouble with several items (mostly empty bottles!) being thrown onto the pitch by the visiting fans but it was Liverpool who just went through to their first European final. Playing in Glasgow should have been an advantage but atrocious weather plus the fact that many Glaswegians shunned the event once Celtic had been knocked out kept the crowd down to under 42,000 in the vast bowl with enormous terraces that Hampden Park was at the time.

Giant Ron Yeats was unlucky to score an own goal in the European Cup Winners' cup final

Sigi Held, who would appear later that summer for West Germany in the World Cup final, gave the Germans from Borussia Dortmund the lead but another man who would also appear in that famous Wembley final of 1966, Roger Hunt, equalised midway through the second-half, even though it appeared that Peter Thompson had taken the ball over the goal-line before crossing for Hunt to turn and strike his goal. Coming from behind should have given Liverpool an advantage in extra-time but once again (as in Milan a year previously) Fate conspired to deny them their moment of glory in the most cruel way. Tommy Lawrence came sliding out of his goal to clear but the ball only fell to Libuda about 40 yards out. He tried a speculative lob seeing the opposition goalkeeper stranded and the ball hit the bar before glancing into the net off Ron Yeats who had rushed back trying to clear the danger. That proved to be the winning goal and once again the European season ended in great disappointment. But reaching a semi-final and then a final in the club's first two European campaigns was still a terrific achievement.