Coin toss won’t decide EPL, but Liverpool have winning history there

No one has suggested tossing a coin to decide the Premier League with Liverpool 25 points clear, but the Reds are unbeaten on that score.

The statue of Bill Shankly outside Anfield. The legendary Liverpool manager’s side won a European Cup tie in 1965 with a coin toss. Picture: Getty Images

There have been lots of proposals put forward on how to decide the destiny of the Premier League season with Liverpool sitting clear at the top by 25 points.

One idea that has not been mooted – with good reason – is to toss a coin, not that the club were complaining when it landed in their favour 55 years ago.

This was the method by which Liverpool’s fate was settled after three games and five hours of stalemate with Cologne in the quarter-finals of the 1965 European Cup.

After two goalless legs, Bill Shankly’s side went to Rotterdam for a playoff on neutral soil that ended 2-2 after extra time. This was in the days before penalty shootouts, or golden goals, and the referee Robert Schaut reached into his pocket and called the two captains into the centre circle.

Ron Yeats, the Liverpool captain, recalled the episode, saying: “I got in first to the referee and said, ‘I’ll have tails.’ Lucky for me the referee said, ‘OK. Liverpool tails, Cologne heads.’

“Up it went and, Christ, didn’t it stick in a divot? I was trying to blow it over one way, and the Cologne skipper was trying to blow it the other.

“I said to the referee, ‘Ref, you’re going to have to retoss the coin.’ And he went: ‘You’re right, Mr Yeats.’ I thought the German captain was going to hit him. He was going berserk because it was falling over on the heads.

“He picked it up, up it went again, came down tails.”

TV pictures show Yeats jumping for joy as their German rivals shook their heads.

“I was first off the pitch and Shankly went, ‘Well done, big man. What did you pick?’” Yeats said.

“I said, ‘Tails, boss.’ I was waiting for the adulation but he just went, ‘I would have picked tails,’ and just walked away.”

Shankly thought a fairer way to have settled the tie would have been a countback on corners, which, to no surprise, they would also have won. Liverpool’s luck ran out in the next round against Inter Milan.

THE TIMES