ALONG Cathcart Street and up past the Mount Florida church, this part of Glasgow was choked with smoke-glassed people-carriers last night. And luxury coaches. And sponsors' cars. And men in fine suits. It seemed as if the sanitised, corporatised world of football had come back to taunt Glasgow one last time.
The city which once sent out 11 sons born within a 10-mile radius of each other to win the trophy would scarcely recognise what the game has become.
The programme for the 1960 European cup final in Hampden Park noted helpfully that the ball to be used on that storied night would be "the Thomlinson Improved 'T' ball". It would be "supplied by the Sportsman's Emporium, 103 St Vincent's Street, Glasgow". The T Ball, locally made and ever improving, was the ball "used in more international matches than any other football".
An ad for a local drapers on the back page of the programme promised that one could "dress the family out of income and leave the holiday savings intact". Innocent times.
Last night, on the hills above Hampden, large, white, temporary edifices appeared bearing the logos and brand names of the Champions League's array of sponsors. Those names have borrowed a little of the magic which once belonged solely to men like Zinedine Zidane and Luis Figo, they have filched a bit of the tradition of Puskas and Di Stefano. By making football bigger and bigger they have somehow made it smaller and more disposable. The local kids who gathered to watch the crowds, rather than be part of them, wore stickers on their shirts that said Mastercard and Amstel.
This week Alex Ferguson, reared in nearby Govan, spoke of attending the 1960 final as a young man a few years older than those barred from last night's spectacle. Ferguson was one of 130,000 to be shoehorned into Hampden that night, most of them from the working class districts that give this grey city its raucous character.
This week in Glasgow there was a lot of sentiment for the old days, and it can hardly have gone unnoticed that football has abandoned its people. A couple of taxi drivers told me that they would be bringing their children into the main square after the match because this, they felt, was a bit of history. They'd both stopped being able to afford to go to Celtic sometime ago.
One had brought his kids to the airport to see Real Madrid arrive on Monday. There were perhaps a thousand fans there, so Real Madrid escaped through a back entrance.
Had they no chance of a ticket for last night? A German had offered two for £500 and they'd put them in the way of a regular customer. Generally, though, tickets were as rare as hens' teeth.
Hampden itself has become diminished and corporatised. The closest Glasgow got to a people's game was the obligatory drollery of the half-time streaker who dribbled away with the match ball and slotted it past Butt in the Bayer goal.
In 1960, Eintracht Frankfurt were making their first voyage into Europe, having done the hard thing and actually won the German league the year before. Last night Bayer Leverkusen arrived unfestooned by the ribands of champions and played in the shop window.
Next year, barring a miracle, they will be a asset-stripped by the big boys and packed off to the sort of oblivion whereby a team becomes the answer to a trivia question.
Meanwhile, the G14, that occasional, self-interested gathering of Europe's top clubs, were meeting to discuss the issue of capping players' wages. Of course they should. They'll implode if not.
At the heart of the pomp and celebration, of course, was a football game. Still 11 against 11 and more skilful then ever, just disembodied now. When Zidane scored his perfect volley there was no kid in the house not yet imagining how they's explain it to their own kids.
A great night, but the smell of privilege cloyed.
