The 1974 FA Charity Shield was the 52nd FA Charity Shield, an annual English association football match played between the winners of the previous season's Football League First Division and FA Cup. The match was contested by Leeds United, the champions of the 1973–74 Football League First Division, and Liverpool, the 1973–74 FA Cup winners. It was held at Wembley Stadium on Saturday, 10 August 1974. Watched by a crowd of 67,000 and televised (although not live as has often been claimed), the match ended in a 1–1 draw and was decided by a penalty shoot-out which was won 6–5 by Liverpool.
The game was the first in which Bob Paisley and Brian Clough managed Liverpool and Leeds respectively. In recognition of his services to the club, Liverpool asked their recently retired manager Bill Shankly to lead the team out onto the field.
The match is mostly remembered for Billy Bremner and Kevin Keegan being jointly dismissed from the field by referee Bob Matthewson in the 60th minute after they had a fight. Keegan, who claimed provocation, was furious about being sent off, and threw his shirt away. Bremner copied him, and the two players were afterwards charged with bringing football into disrepute. The FA Disciplinary Committee imposed tough punishments but were themselves heavily criticised by people in football who doubted their competence.
Background and pre-match
The FA Charity Shield was founded in 1908 as a successor to the Sheriff of London Charity Shield, and began as a contest between the respective champions of the Football League and Southern League, although in 1913 it was played between an Amateurs XI and a Professionals XI. In 1921, it was played by the league champions of the Football League First Division and the FA Cup winners for the first time. The 1974 match was the first Charity Shield game to be played at Wembley Stadium as the Football Association (the FA) tried to revive the status of the match as a traditional season curtain-raiser by moving it to the country's showpiece venue. Furthermore, the FA insisted that the League champions and FA Cup winners must both take part for the first time since 1970.
The 1973–74 Football League champions Leeds United and the 1974 FA Cup winners Liverpool had been two of the best teams in England for the last ten years, and there was intense rivalry between them with, as the Leeds United website says, "some bitter battles down the years, but it is doubtful whether there had ever been an angrier encounter than [the 1974 Charity Shield]". Liverpool had been managed by Bill Shankly since December 1959 and Leeds by Don Revie since March 1961. Both managers had lifted their clubs out of the Second Division (Liverpool in 1962, Leeds in 1964) and established them as leading members of the First Division. Since Liverpool were promoted in 1962, they had won the league championship three times, the FA Cup twice and the UEFA Cup once. Leeds since promotion in 1964 had won the championship twice, the FA Cup once, the Football League Cup once and the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup twice. The two clubs had previously met at Wembley in May 1965 when Liverpool won the FA Cup for the first time, defeating Leeds 2–1 after extra time in the final.
Having won the League championship and the FA Cup respectively in 1973–74, Revie and Shankly both left their clubs. On 4 July 1974, Revie was appointed as manager of the England national team in succession to Sir Alf Ramsey. Only eight days later, on 12 July, Shankly announced his retirement from football management in a press conference at Anfield. There was much speculation about how two such high-profile jobs would be filled. In one case, at Liverpool, there was a straightforward solution which resulted in their young team taking, in the words of Leeds United's own website, "a vice like grip on the English game". At Leeds, however, the succession to Revie could not have been more controversial, especially when, as the Leeds website itself says of the club's ageing team, "Leeds were on the wane".
On 26 July, Liverpool decided to seek continuity and appointed Shankly's assistant Bob Paisley as their new manager. Reserve team coach Joe Fagan was promoted to be Paisley's assistant, and the Liverpool success story continued into the 1980s and beyond.