Bill Shankly as my co-commentator, drinking champers out of the trophy in Paris and the rollickings of my life from Sir Alex! CLIVE TYLDESLEY'S top 10 Champions League moments

Clive Tyldesley will pick up the microphone and for the 30th time commentate live on the game to crown the champions of Europe. 

He will be calling Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund for the CBS network from Wembley Stadium where it all began for him with Radio City, and Liverpool against Club Bruges in 1978.

Here, Clive shares his most memorable moments with Mail Sport…

1. Bastion of Invincibility: 1978 Liverpool 1 Bruges 0 at Wembley

My first European Cup final commentating live for Radio City and what a start, with Bill Shankly on co-commentary when he delivered one of his most famous monologues about how he dreamt of building Liverpool into this ‘bastion of invincibility’.

Shanks had been a brilliant catalyst at Anfield, catching the mood of Merseyside when he arrived in the 60s, a time when there was no more exciting city to be on the planet with the Beatles and the whole cultural scene.

Liverpool developed under Bob Paisley into a more thinking, passing, European team, and that’s what we saw in those two finals, winning the European Cup for the first time in 1977 and retaining the trophy at Wembley a year later.

Shanks was like a proud father that night and it is wonderful to think I sat next to him as he delivered those words. Of all the people I’ve been privileged to meet in football if I could go back and spend some time with just one of them again it would be Bill Shankly with all that evangelical zeal and passion for the game.

2. Real Madrid: Eight times over

I was 13 when I first saw them play at Old Trafford in the semi-final in 1968 and I remember standing in the crowd searching for gaps between the heads of adults to glimpse that all-white kit shimmering under the lights.

My father would talk about the 1960 final as the finest performance he had seen, when Real Madrid beat Eintracht Frankfurt from behind and it was through him that I first heard of Ferenc Puskas and Alfredo Di Stefano and the club’s extraordinary association with the European Cup.

I have seen them win the trophy eight times and lose in the final only once, against Liverpool in 1981 in Paris, after which I was invited to the celebrations and drank champagne from the European Cup in the Lido Club on the Champs-Elysee.

3. Heysel: 1985 Juventus 1 Liverpool 0 in Brussels

A terrible accident waiting to happen. A combination of crumbling stadia, UEFA mismanagement and inability to administrate a major occasion of that kind, and the undercurrent of menace which accompanied every British team into mainland Europe both at club and international level.

It was always going to produce something awful one night and I just happened to be there when it did.

We were live on air at Radio City and I can see it now, the crush of the crowd and the wall collapsing. It wasn’t a huge stadium. We were in the main stand and it happened down in our bottom left corner, right next to the dressing rooms. I described what I’d seen happen.

Our reporter on the night was Richard Jardine, who came up to us in tears to describe how he had seen fatalities. Ian St John, who was on co-comms, went pale because his son was in the stadium.

I went to see what I could find out and I saw what Richard had seen. I didn’t look for long. I’d never seen a dead body before and haven’t really seen one since and there I saw them piled on top of each other in the dust beneath the grandstand at the Heysel Stadium.

4. ‘Name. On. The. Trophy’: 1999 Manchester United 2 Bayern Munich 1

I don’t believe in destiny or fate and whilst I think our commentary that evening with Ron Atkinson reflected as I said after the equaliser that Manchester United’s name was on the trophy and that this was somehow meant to be, I often recall something about the winning goal.

If you could choose anybody in world football at that time to take a corner it would be David Beckham and if you could choose anybody in British football, maybe even world football, to flick it on at the near post it would be Teddy Sheringham.

And if you could choose one forward who was used to coming off the bench and affecting a game and had the instinctive ability to adjust and angle his foot to direct a ball past a player on the line into the net, it would be Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. So, in fact, there was nothing at all fortunate about the winning goal.

5. Zizou: 2002 Real Madrid 2 Bayer Leverkusen 1

Denis Law was my hero but Zinedine Zidane is the player I have most enjoyed watching in my commentary career.

The Messi-Ronaldo debate goes on forever and I’ve been fortunate to see them play many times. Their Champions League records are extraordinary, and I wouldn’t argue Zidane was a better player than either but there was something about his presence.

There was an aura around him that made him a more appealing watch for me than anyone else I’ve seen and that goal at Hampden Park is probably the best I’ve seen in a final. It was his swinger and it won the Cup.

6. ‘Hello, hello, here we go’: 2005 Liverpool 3 AC Milan 3 in Istanbul

At half time I was with Andy Townsend thumbing through the records to check the biggest defeats. Liverpool were three down going on 33. They hadn’t really had a kick. And weirdly, even when they scored those three in seven minutes the pattern didn’t change and Milan continued to dominate.

Jerzy Dudek made that save, brilliant because he kept it out, but he had no idea how he’d made it. It was the most improbable victory and I had to find the words to describe it.

Fifth in the Premier League, the Steven Gerrard goal against Olympiakos, Sami Hyypia with his left foot against Juventus and the Ghost Goal against Chelsea. Liverpool played better against Milan two years later and lost.

7. Peak Barca: 2011 Barcelona 3 Man United 1 at Wembley

The definitive Pep Guardiola performance and as good as I’ve seen a club side ever play. And they did it on the main stage. 

I’m a romantic but I do like it when the best team wins. I like it when the number one wins Wimbledon or the Open. And, as with the Borg-McEnroe final or the Watson-Nicklaus shootout, sometimes the biggest occasions produce the very best from the very best. 

That’s what you want to see in the Champions League final and that’s what we saw in 2011. I went home and watched the whole game again.

8. Rollicking fun: Sir Alex Ferguson

I was lucky to inherit the microphone at ITV from Brian Moore, so quite apart from following a great commentator I was following a great man. I also inherited a lot of his relationships and one of them was with Sir Alex Ferguson.

He did give me the two biggest rollickings of my life, but he also knew there were 12 million watching the Champions League and he could reach his audience by briefing me on what he wanted Manchester United to do and trusting me to convey that.

For the original commentary charts from the two finals he won, he gave me a very healthy donation for the Bobby Moore Fund, which I’m a patron of. He had them framed and they hung in his office, and I was very proud of that.

9. ‘What about that’: 2012 Chelsea 1 Bayern 1 in Munich

Didier Drogba always scored in finals and it was his final Chelsea game – or so we thought at the time. I had all those facts and probably built him up to be the saviour if there was going to be one and his equaliser in the 88th minute was so very Drogba.

And as he peeled away, I just said: ‘what about that, what about that’. I was way off script.

Football is there to confound us and the finals in 1999, 2005 and 2012 were the height of drama. All extraordinary. If someone tried to pitch a movie with those storylines they’d be laughed out as too silly.

Chelsea without all those players injured and suspended beat Munich in Munich. You can only work with the material you’re given, and I had been blessed. As with Solskjaer and the Gerrard header, I didn’t score the goals but it’s nice to be a part of people’s recollections.

10. Hey Jude: 2024 Real Madrid v Borussia Dortmund at Wembley

Commentating for CBS, towards the end of Real Madrid’s semi-final win, I had already started to preview the story of Jude Bellingham leaving English shores on an adventure, maturing into an elite star in Dortmund and returning to play in the Champions League final at Wembley against the club that made him. 

He’s the star turn, isn’t he?

The Football Authorities with Clive Tyldesley and Martin O’Neill is available to listen to on Global Player or wherever you get your podcasts from Monday 3rd June

FYI: The 29 Clive Live finals so far are…

4 for Radio City, Liverpool: 1978, 81, 84, 85

22 for ITV from 1998-2019

3 for CBS 2020, 2022, 2023