It’s often said that being beaten on penalties is the cruelest way to lose a football game; but as Cologne found out the hard way when they played Liverpool in March 1965, there are far, far worse ways as they were eliminated from the European Cup on the toss of a coin.
Having won the league title the previous season this was Liverpool’s first foray into Europe’s elite competition with Bill Shankly, the man who had taken the club from second-tier obscurity to top-flight table toppers, at the helm.
The campaign couldn’t have got off to a better start for the Reds as they eased past Icelandic underdogs KR Reykjavik 11-1 on aggregate in the first round but when they faced inaugural Bundesliga champions Cologne it was a very different story.
After two goalless draws in both legs of the tie a replay was arranged in Rotterdam on March 24, 1965, in the days before extra-time and penalty shoot-outs to decide a stalemate but even a third game couldn’t separate two of the best sides in Europe at the time.
Liverpool took an early two-goal lead in the third match in Holland and looked to be sailing through to the next round thanks to goals from Ian St John and then Roger Hunt but the German side hit back through Karl-Heinz Thielen and Johanns Löhr as the two sides found themselves level once more.
Penalties were still some five years away from being introduced into the competition so after 300 minutes of football, in three different countries, including an exhausting period of extra-time on a bog of a pitch and faced with the option of playing on and on until one team was victorious, it was left to Belgian referee Robert Schaut to settle matters by flipping a coin to decide who would progress to the semi-finals to face holders Inter Milan.
He took Liverpool captain Ron Yeats and the Cologne skipper Wolfgang Overath to the centre circle followed by a couple of cameramen with the rest of the two sides looking on, but to add to the drama, the heavy playing surface in the Netherlands that day would play havoc even with something as simple as a toss of a coin.
“I got in first to the referee and said 'I’ll have tails,” recalls Ron Yeats. “Lucky for me the referee said okay.” But as the coin came down onto the playing surface it landed at an angle which was impossible for anyone to see whether it had landed head or tails side up. “Ref, you’re going to have to re-toss the coin,” Yeats shouted at Mr Schaut and to his amazement, the Belgian official agreed.
“I thought the German captain was going to hit him. He was going berserk because it was falling over on the heads,” remembers Yeats. “He picked it up, it went up again, and this time came down tails.”
"We were coming off and who is standing there but Bill Shankly. I was first off the pitch and he said 'Well done, big man. I am proud of you. What did you pick?’ I said, 'I picked tails, boss.' I was waiting for the adulation but he just went, 'I would have picked tails myself,' and walked away."
So it would be Liverpool who advanced to play the holders and in a thrilling two-legged semi-final eventually had their 3-1 advantage from the home leg overturned in spectacular style losing 3-0 in Milan which finally knocked them out of the competition.
But in terms of drama it had nothing on the game with Cologne which local reporter Horace Yates described in Liverpool Daily Post as: “the most amazing finish I have ever seen or am ever likely to see in football.” Small consolation for the German champions who were eliminated in the most bizarre fashion having not lost a game in that season’s European Cup.
