They were wearing gloves. I was slurping Lucozade as I sat beside my auld man in the main stand. The rest of the details are hazy.
The match programme - dug out of a heaving box in a dark corner of my flat - confirms that it was November 1990 and the visitors to Tannadice that evening, on UEFA Cup duty, were Vitesse Arnhem. This was to be my first experience of Dutch football at its finest.
Dundee United had narrowly lost 1-0 in the first leg and were confident ahead of the return; my first European tie in an era when such things meant more than just 180 minutes of sobering realism eviscerating weeks of excited anticipation. Yet one four-goal chasing later and Jim McLean, the United manager, was revising his entire footballing ethos.
Time has warped my memories of the goals but the image of two diminutive Vitesse attackers of Surinamese origin playing a series of one-twos before one delicately finishes sticks in my mind. It may not have been the greatest goal I've ever seen. It may not even have been anything like I've described. But, at the time, it seemed like football from a different planet.
Richard Winton, The Herald
Memory added on August 2, 2011
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