Jock Stein

Jock Stein was the greatest manager in the history of Celtic and one of the most influential figures in the story of British football. In 1967 he led a team of players all born within about thirty miles of Glasgow, the ‘Lisbon Lions’, to become the first British club to win the European Cup. He went on to win nine Scottish league titles in a row, managed Scotland at a World Cup, and died at the side of a pitch in Cardiff in 1985, in the moments after his team had secured its place at another.

From the pits

John Stein was born on 5 October 1922 on Glasgow Road in Burnbank, Hamilton, the only son among the four children of George Stein, a coal miner, and his wife, Jane Armstrong. He left school in 1937 and, after a short spell in a carpet factory, followed his father down the Lanarkshire pits. Football was his escape. In 1940 he joined the junior side Blantyre Victoria, and in December 1942 he signed for Albion Rovers in Coatbridge. Mining was a reserved occupation during the Second World War, so he kept working underground during the week and played on Saturdays. A big, dependable centre-half, he made 236 appearances for Rovers.

In 1950 he became a full-time professional for the first time, signing for the Welsh non-league club Llanelli for £12 a week. It did not last. His family were unhappy away from home, the club had money troubles, and Stein told the Llanelli manager that he would probably give up football and go back to the mines.

Celtic’s captain

Instead, in December 1951, Celtic paid £1,200 for him on the recommendation of their reserve team trainer, Jimmy Gribben. He was signed as a reserve, but injuries pushed him into the first team, and when the captain, Sean Fallon, broke his arm, Stein inherited the captaincy. In 1953 Celtic won the Coronation Cup, beating Arsenal, Manchester United and Hibernian, and in 1953 to 1954 Stein captained the side to the league and Scottish Cup double, the club’s first league title since 1938. Persistent ankle injuries ended his playing career, and he officially retired in January 1957.

Learning to manage

Celtic gave him the job of coaching the reserves, and among his young players were Billy McNeill, Bobby Murdoch and John Clark, all future Lisbon Lions. According to his biographer Archie Macpherson, the chairman, Robert Kelly, told Stein that he could progress no further at the club because he was a Protestant; every previous Celtic manager had been a Catholic. In March 1960 he left to manage Dunfermline Athletic, then fighting relegation. His side won its first six matches under him, and in 1961 he led the Fife club to its first Scottish Cup, beating Celtic 2–0 in a replayed final. European runs followed, including a famous victory over Everton.

In March 1964 he moved to Hibernian, where he won the Summer Cup and beat Real Madrid 2–0 in a friendly in Edinburgh. His spell in Edinburgh was brief but statistically the most successful of any Hibs manager. Celtic, meanwhile, had gone almost eight years without a major trophy, and when Wolverhampton Wanderers approached Stein, he used the offer to press Celtic for the job he really wanted. Kelly first offered him the post of assistant, then joint manager. Stein refused both, and in the end he was given full control.

Back to Celtic

Stein returned to Celtic Park, in Parkhead, as manager in March 1965, the club’s first Protestant manager and only the fourth manager in its history. The effect was immediate. Within weeks Celtic had won the 1965 Scottish Cup, beating Dunfermline with a late headed goal from Billy McNeill, their first major trophy in almost eight years and their first Scottish Cup since 1954. The following season brought the League Cup, won against Rangers, and the league championship, Celtic’s first for twelve years. Stein had also taken charge of the Scotland team on a part-time basis in 1965, but stepped down after the side failed to qualify for the 1966 World Cup.

Lisbon, 1967

The 1966 to 1967 season was the greatest in the history of Scottish club football. Celtic swept past Zurich and Nantes in the European Cup, survived a tense quarter-final against Vojvodina thanks to a McNeill header in the dying seconds, and held Dukla Prague to a goalless draw in Czechoslovakia to reach the final. At home they won the League Cup, the Scottish Cup and, with a 2–2 draw at Ibrox on the last day, the league championship.

The final was played on 25 May 1967 at the Estádio Nacional in Lisbon, before a crowd of 45,000. Celtic’s opponents were Inter Milan, coached by Helenio Herrera and masters of the defensive system known as catenaccio, who had won the trophy twice in the previous three years. Sandro Mazzola put Inter ahead from a penalty after seven minutes, but Celtic attacked relentlessly. Tommy Gemmell equalised with a thunderous shot just after the hour, and Stevie Chalmers turned in the winner late in the game. Celtic had become the first British club, and the first from northern Europe, to be champions of Europe, and they had won every competition they entered that season. Bill Shankly, the Liverpool manager, told Stein that he was now immortal.

Every player in the side had been born within about thirty miles of Glasgow. Billy McNeill, Jimmy Johnstone, Bobby Murdoch, Bertie Auld and the rest became the Lisbon Lions, and Stein was named British Manager of the Year.

Nine in a row

The success continued. Celtic won another domestic treble in 1969 and reached a second European Cup final in 1970, beating Benfica and Leeds United on the way, before losing to Feyenoord in Milan. Manchester United tried to lure Stein to Old Trafford around this time; he turned them down, a decision he later told Alex Ferguson he regretted. He was appointed CBE in 1970.

Between 1966 and 1974 Celtic won nine consecutive Scottish league championships, equalling the world record of the time. Stein also brought through a new generation of players, among them Kenny Dalglish and Danny McGrain. In all, as Celtic manager he won the European Cup, ten league titles, eight Scottish Cups and six League Cups, a record that defined the club’s modern identity and sharpened the rivalry of the Old Firm for a generation.

The crash and the parting

On 5 July 1975, returning from holiday, Stein was seriously injured in a car crash on the A74 near Lockerbie. He nearly died, and Sean Fallon ran the team for most of the following season. Stein returned in 1976 and won one more league and Scottish Cup double in 1977, but he was never quite the same, and after a poor season in 1977 to 1978 he was persuaded to stand down. He chose Billy McNeill as his successor, but felt badly treated when Celtic offered him a role running the club’s pools operation rather than a seat on the board. After a testimonial against Liverpool in August 1978, he became manager of Leeds United, where he stayed only 44 days.

Manager of Scotland

Stein left Leeds to become Scotland manager, appointed on 5 October 1978, his 56th birthday. His first match, a 3–2 win over Norway at Hampden, drew a crowd of 65,872 despite a bus strike in Glasgow. He tried to replace the emotional, naive style of earlier Scotland sides with patient possession football. His team qualified for the 1982 World Cup in Spain, where it beat New Zealand, lost 4–1 to a brilliant Brazil and went out on goal difference after a 2–2 draw with the Soviet Union. In November 1984 a 3–1 win over Spain at Hampden, crowned by Dalglish’s 30th and last international goal, was the result Stein called the most satisfying of his time in charge.

Ninian Park, 10 September 1985

Scotland went into their final 1986 World Cup qualifier, against Wales at Ninian Park in Cardiff, needing at least a draw to reach a play-off. Mark Hughes gave Wales the lead, but with nine minutes left Davie Cooper scored a penalty to make it 1–1, enough to send Scotland into a play-off against Australia. Stein, who had been in poor health and under great pressure, collapsed at the end of the match and died shortly afterwards in the stadium’s medical room. He was 62. He had stopped taking medication for heart disease so that its side effects would not disrupt his preparations for the game, and although his death was reported as a heart attack, the cause was a build-up of fluid in the lungs.

His assistant, Alex Ferguson, then manager of Aberdeen, took charge and led Scotland to the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. Stein was cremated at Linn Crematorium in Glasgow, at a private service attended by many of the leading figures in the game.

Legacy

Stein was among the first of the ‘tracksuit managers’, out on the training ground with his players, and he replaced endless running round the track with work on the ball. His grasp of tactics and of the psychology of footballers was years ahead of its time, and his influence ran through a whole generation of managers, from Billy McNeill, Kenny Dalglish and Graeme Souness to Alex Ferguson, who regarded him as his mentor.

When Celtic Park was rebuilt in the 1990s, the traditional home end was named the Jock Stein Stand. Celtic supporters voted him the club’s greatest manager in 2002, he was an inaugural inductee to both the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame and the Scottish Football Hall of Fame, and on 5 March 2011 a bronze statue by the sculptor John McKenna, showing him holding the European Cup, was unveiled outside the stadium. He married Jean McAuley in 1946, and they had a son, George, and a daughter, Ray.

For a miner’s son from Burnbank who had nearly given up football for the pits, it was an extraordinary life. Glasgow has produced many great football men, but none has ever stood quite as tall.