In the Sixties the European Cup was the holy grail for Manchester United and any English club. The atmosphere that night at Wembley was surreal: of the 100,000 people there, probably 90,000 were United supporters.

It started with the magic of the tunnel at the old Wembley. You walked out of the dressing room and had a long walk to reach the end, before being stopped until it was time to enter the pitch. That was where the occasion could get to you. You had to fight those nerves because after walking out it was still a long, long way to the halfway line, as the tunnel was behind the goal. When we emerged it was to a wall of noise, absolutely incredible.

We had trained at Old Trafford on the Monday morning, then travelled down that afternoon to our hotel in Egham, Surrey, before going over a few tactical things the boss [Matt Busby] wanted sorting the next day. But there hadn't been a lot of training as it was the end of the season so you were already match fit. Did nerves affect our sleep? No. I always roomed with Paddy Crerand and Paddy is absolutely football, football, football – he just talked about the game and the players we were playing against.

On the day of the match we had a walk out, did the usual cup-final thing of doing television interviews at lunchtime, and then everybody went to watch the Derby on the television. There were a few bets flying around and it was quite relaxing.

United had beaten Benfica two years before, 5-1 in the quarter-finals of the European Cup, when George Best was christened El Beatle. But the last time we had actually played the Portuguese club was in Los Angeles, when we went on a world tour after winning the league in 1967. We got hammered 3-1 and it was a bit tasty – I think they were after revenge for that 5-1. Consequently, we knew what their team was about. There was Eusébio, they had a 6ft 5in centre-forward in José Torres, they had 11 internationals with Portugal, who had got to the World Cup semi-final two years before, so they were a very good team.

We knew we had a game on our hands and the first half proved a similarly feisty encounter, and at the break it was nil-nil. Then Bobby Charlton scored after 53 minutes. But like the great team they were Benfica weren't going to lie down, and they scored 15 minutes from the end.

Now, I managed to make a crucial save. The ball was played through the middle and I saw that everyone was marked apart from Eusébio – I don't know where Nobby [Stiles] was. Everyone was trying to get to him and at first it looked a 50-50 ball that I might win. But it held up on the lush Wembley turf, so I back-tracked a couple of steps and when he shot from around 10 yards out, fortunately it hit my chest so I grabbed the ball.

This took the final into extra time. It was 90 degrees in the stadium and with the atmosphere plus the Wembley turf, everybody was tired. We had the coaching staff massaging us while the manager tried to get a few words in but I remember Paddy saying: "We might look tired but look at that lot over there."

They were exactly the same, absolutely shattered, and we were about to score three times. For our first goal I took the ball from a cross and threw it to Tony Dunne [the United left-back] but he was so tired it came back to me. Then I saw Shay Brennan, the right-back, but he didn't want the ball either, so it was returned again.

All I could do was kick it down the pitch and it was the best thing I ever did because Brian Kidd somehow flicked the ball on and Best, who was very fit, was still running. He got to the ball, went around Mario Coluna, the captain, then round the goalkeeper, José Henrique, and scored. If there was one guy you wanted with the ball at his feet to do all that it was George, and you could see they were instantly deflated.

If you go back to 1999 when Ole [Gunnar Solskjaer] scored the winner, Bayern Munich fell to the floor. It was just like that for us. Brian then scored on his 19th birthday, Bobby scored and that was it. All before 10 minutes of extra time had been played: Benfica knew they'd lost.

No one at United ever spoke of 1958 and Munich. It seemed taboo. But in our side were Bobby and Bill Foulkes, and obviously Matt was the manager. But the feeling was there, it was within you, and when we got to the final we knew it was probably Matt's last chance, so when we won the emotions took over. Usually you go to the nearest player to celebrate but most of us went to Bobby and Bill. It was like: "Phew that's done [it]. That has got rid of everything." We were also thinking of the relatives of the lads who had died, because we knew they were in the stadium. Then, Matt came running on to the pitch.

You don't realise at the time, but you are part of history: the first English club to win the European Cup. A fantastic achievement.

Interview by Jamie Jackson