'Aberdeen savour the most perfect game ever played'

Yahoo

24-05-2025

At the end, the pent-up frustration of 35 years came tumbling out, three and a half decades of waiting. It takes its toll.
The Aberdeen fans, 20,000-strong and deafening, blasted out their joy while midfielder Ante Palaversa approached a live radio microphone.
How do you feel, Ante? A swear word! Followed by another, followed by a hastily abandoned chat. "Apologies to the listeners. You can understand the emotion. Back to you in the gantry."
Another attempt soon after. Jack Milne, heroic at the heart of an Aberdeen defence that performed a miraculous metamorphosis from mistake-ridden chumps to hugely resilient champs.
What does this mean to you, Jack? A swear word! Milne apologised, but you could understand the agricultural language amid the merry bedlam. Raw emotion. Nothing like it.
There was delight and shock in his voice, there was an air of surreality. There was noise thumping in his ears and a beaming smile on his face. If you wanted to know what happiness is then Milne defined it in that moment.
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This was a day of days for the Dons, a seismic occasion for the club if not a stunning final. It was scrappy, it was sloppy, it was incredibly tense. It was gloves off, bare-knuckle stuff in all its ugliness.
Looked at through a prism of red, it was just about the most perfect game ever played.
Aberdeen had the kind of courage that few thought they had, they had belief that nobody could have detected beforehand, they had bottomless fitness levels.
It was a win that very few saw coming and it was riotously celebrated because of that. There was a visceral aspect to it, a power that only comes when something momentous has happened.
Aberdeen have won plenty of trophies over the years, but looking at their fans it almost felt like a first. For some, of course, it would have been. For many, a first Scottish Cup final win, that's for sure.
Willie Miller was in the twilight of his career when Aberdeen last won this trophy.
At the end, you looked to him to see if there was any emotion. A grin was the extent of it. On their biggest day in 35 years, Miller kept his shape.
When club chairman Dave Cormack joined him on radio, Miller gently chided him about his poor technique when lifting the trophy. "You need a bit more practice, Dave." Win a few more was the happy jist.
Not that it was uppermost in their thoughts at the time, but this was a £6m win for Aberdeen - maybe more - for it is they and not Hibs who are now guaranteed European football until December.
Of course, the portents of doom were written all over it for Aberdeen. They were outlandish underdogs.
Celtic, with their 5-1s and their 6-0 in games against the Dons this season, were seemingly invincible.
Their capacity to score quickly and often against Jimmy Thelin's side was flagged; two in three minutes in one game, three in 11 minutes in another, two in six minutes in a third meeting this year, three in nine in the most recent debacle.
Celtic had the scent of a treble in their nostrils and Brendan Rodgers had the air of invincibility in his demeanour. Played 14, won 14 at Hampden. The abnormal had become normal, as he put it.
Aberdeen only had vibes. The year of the upset. Crystal Palace, Bologna, improbable finalists in the German Cup, Hibs women winning the league.
Maybe there was another shock in the offing, but how many shocks have we actually seen in Scottish Cup finals in the last half century and more. Two. Dundee United beating Rangers in 1994, Aberdeen beating Celtic in 1970.
The magic of the Cup rarely stretches to the denouement.
There were mutterings about Thelin. Another shellacking and where would he stand? Since the end of November, Aberdeen have been statistically the worst team in the Premiership.
If Celtic did what most expected them to do - win in a relative or complete canter - then Thelin would have lost the faith of many fans. He needed something different and he found it in his formation and in his psychology.
A back three for the first time. Milne into the defence after only three starts all season. An end to the Graeme Shinnie at left-back experiment, the veteran having being turned inside out in the tempest of Celtic's attack in recent weeks.
None of the tweaks would have made a blind bit of difference had Aberdeen not brought with them a resilience, a concentration, a discipline and a work-rate that was unending. Their organisation frustrated Celtic.
Rodgers said later that his team were too safe, lacked speed, slickness, precision and personality. What they also lacked was the wit of Reo Hatate and Jota.
They were not themselves, but even still they hit the Aberdeen woodwork twice and failed with a glorious one-on-one when Dimitar Mitov, a hero on an afternoon of heroes, saved from Daizen Maeda seven minutes from the end of moral time.
Celtic had 21 shots to Aberdeen's five, 81.5% possession to Aberdeen's 18.5%, 15 corners to Aberdeen's four.
None of it meant anything, not when Thelin's defence was in the mood to defend with their last breath. You lost count of the number of blocks they had, each one chipping away at Celtic's karma.
It wasn't supposed to be like this - and it rarely is. Celtic hadn't lost to Aberdeen in 30 matches.
Having conceded an unlucky goal, the Dons then scored one of their own. Two own goals reflected the flawed, madcap nature of this final.
There was little shape, little rhythm, little accuracy. There was chaos, there were bodies colliding, players on the floor, coaches going bonkers.
In chunks, it was like an under-eights game. Everybody running about with abandon. And it was hard to take your eyes off it.
When it went to penalties, the odds were still stacked in Celtic's favour. They don't mind a penalty shoot-out at Hampden. They've won a couple in recent times. Even at that late stage, they were favourites to pull off the treble.
Then Mitov saved from Callum McGregor and everything changed. Celtic's brilliant leader laid low. Their aura not the same anymore.
One by one the Aberdeen men held their nerve, not just scoring but rifling in their penalties with an authority. Kasper Schmeichel, on a grim day, went the wrong way for the first three of them.
Mitov was the man in the end. In recent months he's been criticised for some of the weaknesses in his game, but he's an immortal now, along with the rest of them.
Open top bus tour now. European football to come. Hope where before there was dread. The phoenix has risen from the flames. And the party will last a while.