PART THREE: Travelling Europe
Lyn Oslo FK played 28 games in European competitions, since 1963-1964 season, starting in European Cup against Borussia Dortmund, in the early days of this competition. They were the second Norwegian team to participate, after three entering in a row for Fredrikstad. Oddly enough, both Lyn and Fredrikstad weren’t country league champions to enter European Cup.
Andreas Morisbak remembers well of the games around Europe:
🎤AM
“We were all amateur players with full time work or studies besides the football playing. During those years and due to our championships both in the league and cup, we played against different professional opponents in European tournaments – such as Borussia Dortmund, Germany in 1963 (2-4 and 1-3), Reipas Lathi, Finland (1-2 and 3-0), DWS, Netherlands (0-5 and 1-3) in 1964, Derry City, Northern Ireland (5-3 and 1-5) in 1965, Bologna, Italy (0-2 and 0-0) in 1967, Altay, Turkey (1-3 and 4-1), Norrköping, Sweden (2-0 and 2-3) in 1968, Barcelona, Spain ( 2-3 and 2-2) early 1969, Leeds United, England (0-10 and 0-6) late 1969, Sporting CP, Portugal (0-4 and 0-3) in 1971, Tottenham Hotspurs, England ( 3-6 and 0-6). I stopped playing early in 1971 and in 1972 I was the coach of our team.”
⚽ The first victory of Lyn happened in 1964, against Finnish team Reipas Lathi and it was the first time that they achieved second round.
🎤AM
“In 1969 we had our biggest losses against Leeds United which probably was one of the, if not the best, team in Europe at that time with all their well-known stars as Jack Charlton, Billy Bremner, Peter Lorimer and others. 10 – 0 at Elland Road and 6-0 at home were the ugly results in the two matches. Before the match in England we talked about the importance to hold them away the first 15 minutes, but it took only 15 seconds before the first ball smacked into the back of the net! After the match we could hear about it on the radio, and got in a way some comfort in spite of the bad result when the reporter cried out at the end of the match: “The Norwegians are still running and fighting – they don`t give up!”
⚽ Game against Leeds United: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tROHWk4kJn0
⚽ Andreas Morisbak coached the team in 1972-73, when they played against Tottenham Hotspur, the winners of previous season UEFA Cup. Interestingly, after Morisbak quit coaching Lyn, the club only participated again in European competitions in 2003 and in 2006 for UEFA Cup, playing against Faroe Islands Runavik, Greek PAOK and the last match until today was against Estonians Flora.
🎤AM
“A little story connected to our matches against Tottenham: One of the star players in the club at that time was the scot Alan Gilzean who scored two times against us in the 3-6 match at Ullevaal, which we thought was a quite good performance from us. Two years ago I happened to go to London with my son and two grandchildren to look at a Tottenham match at White Heart Lane. When we came to our ticket place in the stand, I showed the guard a newspaper from the match in Oslo and asked if any of the players from that team were present and if it were possible to get in touch with them. The answer was yes –and soon after Alan Gilzean popped up, he was one of the hosts at the stadium. We got a nice chat together, he looked at pictures from the match and remembered very well that he scored those two goals – and of course we got his signature on the paper. He looked well when we met him, and it was sad to get the news that he died in July 2018.
To get the experience to meet such big teams as Tottenham Hotspurs and Leeds United at that time was exciting and inspiring in one way, but on the other hand it was a bit frustrating to see the difference in quality although we were pure amateurs against professionals.”
⚽ In total, Lyn won 6 games in European competitions and may be proud of playing against powerful teams, mainly FC Barcelona.