66 February 2016 FourFourTwo.com
Dinamo Bucharest. Liverpool were leading 1-0
with 20 minutes to go, but the Romanian side
were stubborn and awkward opponents. Their
captain, midfielder Lica Movila, was particularly
irritating and Souness – in the Cold War terms
of the period – decided to go nuclear.
Nicol, who was watching on the substitutes’
bench, takes up the story.
“The ball got cleared from Dinamo’s penalty
area and almost everyone followed it,” he said.
“I was watching the middle and just saw a red
blur, an arm swing and the Romanian go down.
You couldn’t see it clearly but I’d seen enough.
There was a punch. It was a beauty.”
The substitute knew the offender’s identity
without a second’s thought. “It was a classic
Souness moment,” said Nicol.
Movila’s jaw was broken. While the referee
and Dinamo team-mates gathered around
the stricken skipper, Souness was standing
30 yards away looking a picture of innocence.
“It was the best punch I ever threw,” he says
with pride in his voice.
As the players walked off, Movila was waiting
pitchside. “He was standing at the mouth of
the tunnel with a towel around his head and
his face packed with ice,” remembers Souness.
“There were two big fellas, one either side of
him. They looked like cops and were scowling.
It was all a bit of a laugh. Well, not for him...”
There was one problem, though: the second
leg. A lynch mob was waiting in Romania two
weeks later when Liverpool arrived to protect
their 1-0 advantage.
Souness’ detractors will point to the sucker
punch as his signature character reference, but
they would be wrong. The semi-final second
leg in Bucharest distilled Champagne Charlie’s
personality to its essence.
The reception in the Romanian capital was
hostile. “At the airport, people were screaming
hair and was about my size. He could easily
have been mistaken for me if you didn’t know
him. ‘That’s Souness!’ I was shouting at the
giant, shaking my head and directing him
towards Alan. ‘Not me, him!’”
The baiting continued at the hotel, with the
entire Liverpool team pointing at the captain
and enjoying his discomfort. There was no let
up at the stadium, either.
“There were all these daft banners saying
what they were going to do to me,” says the
Scot. “Alan Hansen worked out that whenever
the ball came to me in the warm-up, the crowd
would boo, so everyone kept passing it to me.
Every time it arrived at my feet, there was this
crescendo of noise.” To aggravate home fans
even more, Souness started stepping over and
dummying the ball.
“He was absolutely loving it,” said Kennedy.
Before kick-off, the Romanians made their
intentions abundantly clear.
“Their captain had played upfront at Anfield,”
says Souness. “He was of a similar shape and
size to me, and had curly hair as well. He was
aggressive at the coin toss and then dropped
deep to play in midfield. He pointed at me and
then at himself, as if to say, ‘This is between us
now’. I gave him the thumbs-up.”
There was only ever going to be one winner.
Within 12 minutes, Souness fed a delicate ballat us,” recalled Nicol. “It took us a little while
to realise it was all about Souness.”
The chance to have some fun at the captain’s
expense was too good to turn down.
“Once we’d twigged it was all about Charlie,
that was it,” continued Nicol. “We got on the
coach and were all pointing at him, directing
the angry mob to where he was sitting so they
could bang on the window. We were laughing
and pointing. It went on for the whole trip.”
Souness handled the stormy situation with
his usual aplomb.
“I was sitting there, and suddenly this fella
came up to the window and his face was level
with mine,” he says. “It must have made him
about 7ft tall. He was making gestures like he
was gouging out eyes.”
The Liverpool captain was always quick to
turn the banter on his team-mates. “I looked
around and then pointed at Alan Kennedy,”
he adds. “Alan also had a moustache, curly“MOST MIDFIELDS ARE MADE UP
OF A BUZZER, A CRUnCHER AnD
A SPREADER – HE IS ALL THREE”
58 September 2019 FourFourTwo
GRAEME
SOUn ESSAbove Leading the
Reds out in Rome –
his last appearance
in a Liverpool shirt