ST Johnstone are European regulars these days but it is always nice to remind ourselves periodically of the night the plucky little Perth outfit gave the playboys of Monaco a run for their money. FK Trakai of Lithuania, in town tonight’s for a Europa League first round first leg qualifying tie, might offer little in the way of glamour but the same could hardly be said for the side Sandy Clark’s team had the misfortune to meet in the competition’s forerunner, the Uefa Cup, back in the 1999-00 season.
As creditably as St Johnstone had performed during the previous campaign - they had finish third and gone down in the League Cup final to Rangers - these high rollers from the tiny little tax haven could offer a pretty high-powered team in those days. In the opposite goal from Alan Main was Fabien Barthez, 12 months after winning the World Cup on home soil. David Trezeguet and Willy Sagnol would also play a part in France’s glory years, Italy’s Diego Simeone and Croatia’s future Rangers star Dado Prso weren’t bad either, as were Rafael Marquez, Ludovic Giuly and Marcelo Gallardo. While Claude Puel, just bagged by Southampton, deserves credit for moulding them into a cogent enough unit to win the French top flight, so bloated were the sums being spent that the club were first dispatched into Ligue 2 for taking on too much debt then President Jean-Louis Campora was forced to step aside.
As you might imagine this was all somewhat anathema to the modest, homespun running of affairs espoused by Geoff Brown, whose method has been quickly adopted by his successor in the post, his son Steve. While he believes he still has Trezeguet’s shirt somewhere in his collection, he knows he can’t have exhanged his club blazer for the privilege because he only got one in 25 years.
Brown, who would undergo a successful operation for prostate cancer in the summer of 2001, had actually missed St Johnstone’s 3-0 defeat at the Stade Louis II in the first leg. He was in Boston on a pre-booked family holiday, settling for phoning his son back home in Tayside and listening to the last grim few minutes over the wireless. It was a different matter in the second leg, though, as the Perth side raced into an early lead courtesy of a deflected Miguel Simao shot. While they went off into the night with a 3-3 draw and an undefeated European home record (it was finally lost to Spartak Trnava in 2014) it could have been better had the referee not ignored a penalty claim against Bartez for a foul on Simao which would have given them the lead again on the night at 3-2 with time to spare.
“We knew we were already down with the goals we had conceded away from home,” Brown told Herald Sport. “But it was a great experience. What were Monaco’s directors like? I would almost have put them down like mafioso. When the president moved everybody moved. We had played against VPS Vaasa in the round before, that was a members club, the hospitality was really good and they very nice people. But put it this way, they [Monaco] believed they were above our class, so we were treated that way.”
The lot of clubs like St Johnstone isn’t getting any easier any time soon. Only one out of 102 first round Europa League entrants reached the group stages last year, and Swedish league leaders Norrkoping may lie in wait should they get through. Domestically, they face being squeezed out of things by ‘big’ clubs like Rangers, Hearts and Hibs. But St Johnstone will just keep doing things their way. “I am proud of Steve because he has an economics head on him and clubs like St Johnstone can’t spend more than they earn,” he said. “Tommy [Wright] is a good guy who looks at things positively and organises very well. We don’t have star players, we have good players.But this year will be an even bigger test for us.”
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