In Wilson’s words, Manchester United’s two meetings with Estudiantes “picked up where Racing’s clash with Celtic had left off”. Bobby Lennox left the pitch only when ordered to do so by a policeman with a drawn sword while Bertie Auld somehow managed to stay on and complete the match, which the South Americans won by the only goal. A bloodbath of a play-off in Montevideo saw six players dismissed, four of them Scots. Ronnie Simpson, the Scottish goalkeeper, was hit by a missile and put out of the second leg in Buenos Aires before it had even started. There had been a warning a year earlier when Celtic faced another Argentinian team, Racing Club, in the same competition. It was the beginning of a long mutual misunderstanding, confirmed in the minds of the average English fan two years later when Manchester United met Estudiantes de la Plata in the two-leg final of the Intercontinental Cup. “On this occasion he seems to have been relatively restrained.” But those English fans who were watching, either in the stadium or on television, will remember the sense of disbelief that a sportsman could bring a match to a standstill by refusing to accept the rule of authority. “Rattín was, without question, one of the great moaners of the 60s, forever pleading with referees,” Jonathan Wilson writes in Angels with Dirty Faces, his new history of Argentinian football.
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