'I spit on the ground' - returning AS Roma added to Dundee Utd-Rangers axis of hatred as 1984 revisited

Where AS Roma are concerned, when it comes to their relationship with Scotland, it’s always 1984. Walter Smith, the legendary Rangers manager, is now immortalised in bronze outside Ibrox, where the Italian club take part in a Europa League tie on Thursday night.

It’s an overdue return to Scotland for Roma. Remarkably, the last time the Italians were in competitive action in this country, they were all that stood in the way of Dundee United reaching the final of the European Cup. The wolves were circling Jim McLean.

Smith was an assistant and sometimes bodyguard for the United manager when the teams were drawn together in the last four. The two matches stirred up enough controversy to last, well, 41 years and counting and produced an iconic Scottish football photograph. McLean was confronted by taunting Roma players as he walked disconsolately towards the tunnel alongside Smith and reserve ‘keeper John Gardiner following the 3-2 aggregate loss.

One of the gleeful, mocking Italians is Sebastiano Nela, who is captured giving McLean what is colloquially known as the finger. Smith and Gardiner helped protect McLean in what the former Rangers manager told me in 2014 turned out to be “a bit of a brawl”.

One upshot is that the image of Nela sticking the middle finger up at McLean is now seen from time to time on a banner taken by Dundee fans to games. The Sebastiano Nela Dark Blues they call themselves.

It's evidence of Scottish football tribalism. A more recent feud has developed between Dundee United and Rangers. Some date the acrimony to the Tannadice club’s failure to reimburse Ibrox fans when a game between the clubs was abandoned due to a waterlogged pitch in 2009. Another very large factor is the perception that Stephen Thompson, the former United chairman, displayed unnecessary zeal amid events leading to Rangers starting off life again in the fourth tier in 2012.

United fans can’t abide Rangers, Rangers supporters can’t abide United. Which makes it interesting when AS Roma are introduced into the equation. Who will Arabs be rooting for? Can both teams not lose?

‘Reminder of the sick side of soccer’

Having not played a competitive fixture in Scotland since April 1984, AS Roma now face two visits inside five weeks. The Italians have another Europa League assignment next month against Celtic, where they played a friendly in 1997.

The idea they would ever be invited back to Tannadice for something described as “a friendly” is unthinkable, despite the significant position they occupy in United’s history. If beating the Italian champions 2-0 in Dundee was one of Dundee United’s finest nights, then losing 3-0 on a broiling afternoon in Rome two weeks later might be regarded as one of the worst.

“In my home in Broughty Ferry there is a video of the second match in Rome when we played the Italian champions,” McLean writes in Jousting with Giants, his autobiography published in 1987. “It sits there gathering dust because it has never been watched…It is there as a reminder of the sick side of soccer, a side I never want to see again.”

The tales, conspiracy theories and allegations resulting from this European Cup semi-final are legion. Although three of the 24 players who took part in Rome have since passed away, including AS Roma captain Agostino Di Bartolomei, who shot himself ten years on from the date of the European Cup final defeat to Liverpool, controversial referee Michel Vautrot is still alive. The Frenchman turned 80 last month.

Such was the ferocity of the United performance in the first leg, Roma president Adino ‘Dino’ Viola accused them of being on drugs. McLean’s tongue-in-cheek response was, well, if that was the effect, he wished they were on them every week. The United manager was also accused of shouting abuse at Bruno Conti when the winger retrieved the ball at a throw-in.

Pelted with oranges in the warm-up

Writing in the Turin-based La Stampa, sportswriter Bruno Perucca observed that “the post-match controversies have poisoned relations between the two clubs and now there’s bad blood between the players”. In an illuminating piece for Nutmeg in 2023, Italy-based journalist John Irving considered McLean’s alleged ‘Italian so-and-so’ jibe towards Conti: “The inference was that an uncouth Pict from the farthest outpost of the Empire had dared to insult the Eternal City, Caput Mundi”.

Those Scots who travelled to the so-called capital of the world for the second leg were always likely to get it in the neck, fans as well as staff. The players were pelted with oranges as they warmed up.

McLean, though, was the principal target. Remarkably, considering nearly all the 70,000 supporters in the stadium had never heard of him until a couple of weeks earlier, he found himself name-checked on banners. “Rome hates McLean,” said one. Another carried more than a hint of menace for travelling fans, “Dundee be careful: wolves are still hungry”.

One of these visitors was Neil Smillie, now 65. He was 24-years-old at the time and working for travel company AT Mays. “They had two shops in Dundee,” he tells me. “I managed one, my pal Andy managed the other. We were both Dundee United fans. When we won the first leg 2-0, there was not real appetite to go because everyone was waiting for the final against Liverpool!”

He was quoted the price for a bus, at special rate given the identity of his employers. “I needed just 24 people to break even, and I think that’s all I got. We set off for Rome. We drove during the day and parked up at night, in Brussels and another night in Munich.

“We had one night booked in Rome,” he continues. “It was the days before the internet. I had a big brochure. I looked through it and chose the cheapest hotel. When we arrived in Rome, it turned out it was a nunnery!”

‘The Carabinieri had to come in to rescue us’

From convent to colosseum. The Stadio Olimpico really did seem like a bearpit for United fans. They were shown towards their seats, which were long wooden benches, and then were quickly escorted from them as things threatened to turn ugly. “We were amongst the Roma fans and started singing,” Smillie recalls. “I have never been so frightened for my life. Everyone turned on us and wanted to beat us up. The Carabinieri had to come in to rescue us and took us way up to the top of the ground, where the posher fans were. We were safer there.”

Nothing about the afternoon – the game kicked off at 3.30pm, local time, in the searing heat – felt comfortable, either off the pitch or on it. Although there continues to be understandable distress about the extent of the skulduggery that went on, nearly all United players I have spoken to involved that afternoon concede they were well beaten on the day.

Of course, subsequent revelations about Roma trying to bribe the officials have perhaps put a different slant on these assessments.

They have certainly not helped soften United fans’ views. “I spit on the ground when I hear the name AS Roma mentioned,” says Dundee United historian Tom Cairns expressively, sounding like he might hail from Rome himself.

“When Roma lose a big game, to Lazio for example, a lot of United fans are a lot happier. It hasn’t been forgotten.”

Which brings me to the question posed near the start of this article. Who does Tom want to win on Thursday at Ibrox? “There’s little love towards either camp,” he says. “I really don't like Roma at all for what they did to my club at a real crossroads in United’s history. So if you really want to push me….I will go for Rangers.”