MAY 1986 was a landmark month for Middlesbrough. Relegated to Division Three for the first time in their history, the club was placed into liquidation with spiralling debts approaching the £2m mark.

Later that summer, the water and electricity supply would be cut off, the gates at Ayresome Park would be padlocked and Middlesbrough Football and Athletic Company Limited would officially cease to exist.

May 1986 was also a landmark month for Steaua Bucharest, the side the Teessiders will face in the last four of the UEFA Cup this evening.

As Middlesbrough faced the receivers, Steaua became the first Eastern European side to win the European Cup. Clearly, a lot has happened to both clubs in the intervening 20 years.

Given the radical changes that have transformed Eastern Europe since the fall of Communism, it is easy to underestimate just how significant Steaua's 1986 success was.

Here was an Eastern bloc side, run by Valentin Ceausescu, son of Romanian president Nicolae, wiping the floor with a succession of capitalist opponents amid the backdrop of the Cold War.

Anyone who dismisses the link between sport and politics should examine the way in which their victory was treated on either side of the Iron Curtain.

In the West, Steaua's success was at best an anomaly and, at worst, an aberration. Ignoring a scintillating 3-0 success over Anderlecht at the semi-final stage, Western critics latched on to the Romanian side's relative lack of ambition in the final.

There is little doubt that Steaua's goalless draw with Terry Venables' Barcelona was one of the worst finals in European Cup history, but to blame the lack of excitement on Eastern European cynicism is somewhat unfair.

For a start, with the final taking place in Seville, Steaua were effectively asked to play an away game to win the trophy. Communist policy meant only 200 Steaua officials and 800 Communist Party members were allowed to travel from Romania for the game. Forty defected nonetheless.

The outcome might also have been different had Venables not made a series of tactical mistakes. Steve Archibald was recalled despite nursing a hamstring injury, while Bernd Schuster, Barcelona's talisman, flounced straight down the tunnel after being substituted by his clearly flummoxed boss.

With no goals from 120 minutes of inaction, the European Cup final would be settled on penalties. Inevitably, the spot-kicks were as bad as the game that had preceded them.

Staggeringly, Barcelona missed four from four, with Steaua's goalkeeper, Helmut Ducadam, winning the battle of mind games that always accompanies a penalty shoot-out.

"After the first kick it was a psychological battle," Ducadam told author Jonathan Wilson in "Behind The Curtain", his potted history of Eastern European football.

"I dived to my right twice and, for the third kick, I figured there was no way Pichi Alonso would think I would dive to my right again. I gambled that he would also place it to my right and he did.

"I wasn't sure if I should dive to my right again for the fourth one or go to the left. I reckoned Marcos would hit it to my left and, again, I chose correctly."

In the West, Steaua had gained an undeserved triumph. In the East, they were Communist crusaders spreading the state-sponsored message.

Eastern bloc regimes had long prided themselves on sporting success - at the time, East German doctors were systematically feeding their athletes hormones and steroids and the Olympic Games were a barely-disguised battleground for political dogma - and Steaua's victory was a feather in Romania's cap.

Ducadam returned a hero but, with Communist paranoia beginning to take hold as the Soviet Union inched ever closer to rapprochement, a hero was not always the best thing to be.

For the next five years, Steaua's match-winning goalkeeper was nowhere to be seen. Rumours abounded. He had been shot, or at least had his arm cut off, by one of Ceausescu's henchman who was jealous of the car he had received as a reward for his heroics. Members of the secret police had beaten him up after he complained at a dinner held in his honour that the aforementioned car was not good enough for him. He was simply held to ensure his popularity did not outstrip that of the president.

No-one is really sure, and you can possibly include Ducadam himself in that, but when Steaua's hero eventually resurfaced, he claimed a life-threatening blood disorder had required a course of transfusions.

In the meantime, Middlesbrough too had received new blood. Steve Gibson had been voted on to the board of Middlesbrough Football and Athletic Company (1986) Limited and the Teessiders had begun their steady ascent back to the big time. Today that ascent has taken them to Bucharest, a city that remembers 1986 with rather more fondness.

After parting company with Mark Petchey this month, Andrew Murray should be beating off potential coaches with a stick. Who wouldn't want to work with one of tennis' brightest young stars?

Well, plenty of people it seems and the reluctance of coaches like Brad Gilbert to associate themselves with Murray is a concern.

At the age of just 18, the Scotsman has revealed how he wants the coaching dynamic to work. "You tell me what to do and I'll just keep on doing what I want to do anyway. If you argue too strongly, I'll sack you and get somebody else".

It is hardly the approach of a Grand Slam champion.

With crunch time of the football season approaching, it seems appropriate to wish good luck to both Hartlepool and Darlington in their respective battles at the foot of League One and the top of League Two.

The two clubs trading places is a dream for Darlington fans and a nightmare for supporters of Hartlepool, but the chances of it happening remain slim. I hope I'm wrong, but I rather think it could be a case of two League Two derbies next season.