The Fiver | That dentist who introduced the Beatles to LSD had a lot to answer for

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Given Ajax and Liverpool have won 21 European trophies between them, it’s slightly surprising that they’ve only been drawn together in continental competition once before. That was in the second round of Big Cup in December 1966, a point in history when half of the world was fried on stupidly strong acid. That, along with the flowering of a young genius called Johan Cruyff, may go some way to explaining a positively lysergic first leg in Amsterdam during which Ajax went 4-0 up in the first half, forcing Bill Shankly to run on the pitch under cover of thick fog to ask his men what the effing hell they thought they were up to. Shankly later blamed the eventual 5-1 defeat on Ajax, who were apparently “playing defensive football on their own ground”. There was only one Shanks, there’ll never be another.

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