“ROTTERDAM GAVE THE SIDE SO MUCH CONFIDENCE AND HELPED HUGELY FOR FUTURE SUCCESSES”
Brian McClair and Mike Phelan were walking to the dressing room to continue Manchester United’s celebrations. The Red Devils had just beaten Barcelona 2-1 in the 1991 European Cup Winners’ Cup Final, and 24,000 travelling fans in rain-lashed Rotterdam were singing Always Look on the Bright Side of Life and Sit Down by Manchester band James, when McClair and Phelan were called for a random drug test.
“There were several drinks on the table, including beer,” McClair tells FFT. “Txiki Begiristain and another Barcelona player were there, too. They were downcast but had to sit in the same room as Mick and me, so I decided to knock some chat out of them with my O-Level Spanish. I’ve no idea what they were thinking as I asked them if they were Madrid or Catalonia, but my intentions were friendly. I think they were disgusted and wanted to go. I was genuinely trying to be nice, though.”
McClair provided his test. Phelan could not.
“I left the room with Mick still trying to pee,” continues McClair. “That wasn’t a particularly socialist thing to do as his team-mate, but I thought, ‘F**k this’ – I wanted to get to the after-party in [nearby] Amsterdam. That party is still the best I’ve ever attended, and I was fortunate to be involved in a number of them. We had the whole hotel to ourselves. Mick eventually turned up an hour later with his tracksuit on – he’d drunk the rest of the beer in the drug room.”
