The history of the club is important to me as well, to a degree - as it defines what we as a club have always tried to aspire to - as long as the management of the club choose to adhere to it. If the next owners choose to model us around the butchery of Estudiantes, then its not going to mean a damn thing though.
Having a marginally better or slightly worse trophy count means absolutely nothing to me when it comes to the outcome of the next FA Cup final though, I support 2 teams, as the old joke goes - Spurs and anyone playing Arse***
History is obviously a part of the club, and to you the Benfica result might mean something, in the same way as it did to the 13 year old Mick Cooper who left WHL in 71 in tears after witnessing the loss to the goons - but I would definitely say that the loss to them was far more bitterly recalled or recounted than losing to some Portuguese collective of hackers and cheats. Whilst it might have the same kudos points as todays CL, the reality is that the European cup back then was Texaco cup stuff in comparison, in the same way that the 61 squad would struggle in todays top flight amateur leagues.
As for flights of fancy about what happened back in 78 - who's to say that had we stayed down, we might not have been taken over by a conglomerate of venture capitalists who had invested heavily in the club and we had gone on to dominate the game in the way that Liverpool did around that time. "Ifs and buts" are worthless about what may or may not have happened back then. Not as worthless as what did happen, but just as irrelevant as to where we are going as a club in the future.
Its good that we have a past, but meaningless to wallow in it. Its like hanging on to a pair of old trousers that were your favourites before your waistline and fashion ran out of sight of them, you can hang them in your wardrobe as long as you like, but you'll never wear the damn things in public again.
