On This Day: CSKA Sofia end Ajax’s European Cup dynasty, 1973

One of the great European shocks.

Stefan Mihailov is a strange kind of hero. For all bar a few seconds of his career, he was a nobody. If you saw him at a table of European Cup legends, you might be inclined to call security. Yet he certainly belongs there. Mihailov only ever scored one goal in Europe’s premier competition, but it was one of the most important. It was the goal that, at club level at least, totalled Total Football.

Mihailov’s goal, for CSKA in second round of the 1973-74 season, ended Ajax’s dynasty. It also gave us the first sight of CSKA’s gianticidal tendencies. Only Real Madrid and Juventus have put the holders out more often, but stories of hot superpower-on-superpower action are for a later column. There were victories for CSKA over the defending champions Nottingham Forest and Liverpool in consecutive seasons at the start of the 1980s, yet their worthiest achievement was to end Ajax’s run of three straight European Cups almost a decade earlier.

This was still a monstrously good Ajax side. Ten of the team that played CSKA had appeared in the final the previous season; six would start the World Cup final eight months later. They had beaten CSKA 6-1 on aggregate a year earlier. But in the summer they had lost two managers: Stefan Kovács had been replaced by George Knobel and, more damagingly, Johan Cruyff had taken his ball to Barcelona.

For all that, there seemed little to fear from CSKA. In the six years since reaching the European Cup semi-final they had won only three matches in Europe, against Haka, Partizani Tirana and Panathinaikos. The last of those had come in bizarre circumstances in the previous round. Both sides had won their home legs 2-1, with the match going to a penalty competition – during which, the referee made a hideous error and declared CSKA the winners when they led 3-2, with CSKA having two kicks left and Pana one. The match was replayed and CSKA cruised through.

Then they got down to the real business. They were beaten 1-0 in Amsterdam, with the goal scored by Jan Mulder, Cruyff’s replacement. The scruffy and often filthy nature of the match – CSKA’s keeper Stoyan Yordanov had his arm broken – suggested all was not well. Ajax, frustrated by their unusually coagulated football, embraced their darker side.

It’s natural to assume that the hard man of a team is also its heartbeat, yet with Ajax that role fell to Cruyff, who was paternal even to those his senior. In times of trouble on the field, Ajax’s players could spot Cruyff and know that everything would be okay. Without him, they looked around and saw only the fear in each other’s eyes. That became even more acute when, in another grim struggle that Ajax‘s beautiful people struggled to comprehend, never mind deal with, Dimitar Marashliev’s header took the game to extra-time.

Then came Mihailov’s moment. He had been signed from the second division as cover for Petar Zhekov. He was approaching 30, and would soon return whence he came, having achieved nothing of note except this goal. He had only just come on the field when, with four minutes of extra-time remaining, he struck viciously past Heinz Stuy. Ajax appealed irrationally for offside, betraying their desperate confusion. Their era had ended. They would lose their domestic title to Feyenoord, and would not win the European Cup for another 22 years. They were never quite the same again. And nor – not that you would always know it – was the life of Stefan Mihailov.

This article originally appeared in The Blizzard. If you’re not a subscriber, you’re an idiot