Glenavon-Erzgebirge aue of Camion Cup played after 65

After the victory of the Northern title in the 1959-1960 season, the Glenavon FC, a team of the small city of Lurgan, south-west of Belfast, qualified at the Cup of Champions, at the time called the European Cup. The club was drawn against the Germans of the Erzgebirge Aue, a team at the time known as Wismut Karl Marx Stadt and who had just won the championship of the championship of the Germany Est. Return matches, however, did not play. The tensions related to the cold war and the iron curtain that cut Europe in two were several and the two countries denied the visa to the teams. Despite the authorization of UEFA to play in neutral countries, Glenavon retired from the competition for economic reasons.

Yesterday, 65 years later, the game was finally played and the double comparison completed: in Lurgan, Erzgebirge aue beat the Glenavon 2-0 in front of 1200 fans who came from Germany and many fans of the home team. Last summer, the Nordirlanders had traveled to Aue, thanks to the economic help of their fans, to play the first leg, finished 5-0 for the Germans. But the result matters little …

The idea was born from an Adam Carson tweet, Glenavon fan from all life and responsible for relationships with the club fans: “It is a missing chapter in the history of both clubs and it is fantastic to have finally played the challenge after all these years. At the beginning it was a joke, but three years ago some ERZGEBIRGE fans contacted me and the idea was very liked,” he said to the FP. The 750 tickets that the Glenavon had made available to the German fans ended immediately, convincing the club to grant another 500. Interviewed by the BBC, the sports director of the German team who plays in the third series told the emotions to experience a challenge that no one would have thought 60 years ago would have managed to play: “The final result is not important, the friendship, the story and the closure of this chapter are the real titles of this game”.