THE HOLY GRAIL OF CELTIC MEMORABILIA GOING FOR A SONG, MAYBE...
- BY LIAM CARRIGAN
- 13 minutes ago
- 4 min read
I’ve always been a bit of a collector. When I was a wee boy, it was Transformers toys and Superman comics. Then in my teenage years it was football shirts and Celtic memorabilia. Later on, when I was fortunate enough to meet quite a few celebrities through my work, I became a bit of an autograph hunter.
These days, I dabble in a little bit of them all. This is what happens when you suddenly have the income of an adult, but retain the mind of a 12-year-old!
However, there is one piece of Celtic memorabilia, going on sale tomorrow that is, unfortunately, just a wee bit out of my price range. It’s a pair of Adidas football boots worn by the late Stevie Chalmers, scorer of the crucial goal in Lisbon in 1967 that saw Celtic clinch the European Cup.
If These Are the Lisbon Boots, then we Truly Are Looking at the Holy Grail of Celtic Memorabilia
Now, I should perhaps invoke a wee bit of Latin here by saying “caveat emptor” or to put it in modern day terms, buyers beware.
Myself, ACSOM’s own Paul John Dykes and a few others have looked into the background of these mysterious boots going on sale tomorrow, and expected to possibly sell for as little as £1,000.
For comparison, a similar pair of boots worn by Tommy Gemmell, scorer of Celtic’s other goal that night, but 100% verified to be the ones worn on the pitch in Lisbon, sold recently at auction for £13,000.
However, we cannot say with absolute authority that these are the boots Stevie Chalmers wore on that fateful day in Portugal. There is a compelling amount of evidence to support this assertion though, so let’s go through it.
First of all the boots, listed here, are identical in appearance to those worn by Stevie for the final against Inter Milan:
However, he didn’t always wear Adidas boots, as evidenced by this picture from earlier in the 1966-67 season against Airdrie:
While it’s difficult to make out the exact branding, the famous 3 stripes are clearly absent. These are not Adidas boots. Indeed, at that time, Adidas footwear was not as ubiquitous in Scotland as it is today.
Celtic’s kit manufacturer was Umbro, and most of the players wore boots with brands such as Puma, Umbro, and even, on occasion, the legendary “Stylo matchmakers” made famous by the likes of George Best and later Kevin Keegan.
Adidas had gained a foothold in Europe by this point, evidenced by the fact that around 75% of the players at the 1966 World Cup are believed to have worn Adidas branded boots.
However, their presence in Scotland at the time was minimal. So, they struck a deal with Celtic, to have the players wear Adidas branded boots in the final in Lisbon. Each player would be paid the princely sum of ￡30 for doing so.
However, as anyone who has played football will know, breaking in a new pair of boots takes time. You certainly don’t want to be doing it on the night you play not just the most important game of your own career, but also of your club’s entire history.
So, a compromise of sorts was struck. Players would need to display the Adidas branding, but could continue to wear their preferred boots of choice. This led to the famous picture of Billy McNeill having opted to hand paint his own artistic interpretation of the “3-stripes” onto his usual boots of choice, Pumas:
So, to sum up, a pair of certified match-worn Stevie Chalmers boots will go on sale tomorrow at auction with an expected sale price of ￡1,000 to ￡1,500.
The boots look identical to those worn in 1967, and we can see from photographic evidence that Stevie Chalmers did not always wear Adidas boots at this point in his career.
All we know beyond this, is that Stevie, for reasons we’ll never know, since he’s sadly no longer around to complete the story, chose to keep this particular pair of boots in pristine condition for decades after he last used them.
Once again, just to be clear, neither myself nor anyone else at ACSOM is saying for certain that these are the boots Stevie wore when he scored that winning goal in Lisbon. All we know is that they are identical in every easily observable way.
So, if someone was willing to take a punt on them, and could later verify that they are, in fact the boots worn in Lisbon, then dare I say, they could easily get back 10 times their money. I don’t know exactly how one would do that, but I’m sure there are ways.
In any case, good luck to all those bidding tomorrow. Whoever wins, and whatever the origin of these boots turns out to be, you’re still getting a beautiful piece of Celtic memorabilia for a more than decent price.