Inter City Fairs Cup 1966: Forget draws, just toss a coin

Losing football matches is always difficult to take however imagine losing one by the toss of a coin. This is exactly what happened to Chelsea’s opponents in the last 16 of the Inter Cities Fairs Cup in 1966.

Having played two legs that ended in stalemate and a playoff that ended 1-1 it was decided that with no option of a further replay and penalties not part of the format the game the tie would be decided by coin toss.

Tie History

The first leg was in Milan at the San Siro stadium. Chelsea lost this game 2-1 with George Graham scoring a last minute consolation to keep Chelsea in the tie.

In the return leg Chelsea scored two early goals with Graham joined on the score sheet by Peter Osgood with the Italians scoring just before half time and with no further goals the game went to a play off in Italy.

The play off at the San Siro saw Chelsea take an early lead and hold it until the last minute of normal time the Italians equalised and the game was famously progressed to the quarter finals courtesy of the toss of referee Herr Baumgartner’s German deutschmark.