1986.
When men were men. When shorts were short. And when a grocer's daughter from Grantham was lord and master of all she surveyed.
Younger readers might also need some reminding that back then Scotland played in World Cup finals. All the ruddy time.
A simple but surprisingly effective formula of having decent players in a smaller footballing world won us a regular seat at football's grand jamboree.
Once there we would mix incompetence with bravery before falling agonisingly short. But we damned well got there.
25 years ago we were in Mexico under the guidance of Aberdeen manager Alex Ferguson OBE. We were but 48 hours away from a clash with Uruguay that would decide our fate.
A predictably cruel fate.
More on the 1986 World Cup campaign here.
And below some snippets from a pre-tournament magazine.
Seriously, take a look at some of those shorts. Minimal.
Showing posts with label 1986 World Cup. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1986 World Cup. Show all posts
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Friday, September 10, 2010
Jock Stein
10th September 1985.
Scotland clinch a draw with Wales to get to the play offs for the 1986 World Cup final. A typically Scottish story. Needing a point we go behind, lose a goalkeeper when he loses a contact lense and need a late penalty to get the job done.
And then the world seemed to collapse.
I was only five. In Primary Two.
I watched the game and went to bed.
It was the next morning that I found out that Jock Stein had died.
I remember it clearly although I was too young to understand it.
But the memory of Stein lingers still. Maybe at times like this, times of early European exits, of a last gasp win over Liechtenstein, the memory of his achievements haunts our current travails.
A Scottish Cup win and a European quarter final with Dunfermline - building a foundation at that club would see another cup win and a Cup Winners Cup semi final before the 1960’s were out.
A short spell at Hibs saw him guide them into contention for a double, tellingly that challenge fell away as soon as Stein left to join Celtic. At Hibs he also managed the wayward, fleeting genius of Willie Hamilton. Stein saw the potential of the footballer and backed himself to control the temperament that came with it.
And then to Parkhead. We all know the rest. A club that remained huge but was apparently unable to turn their size and history into success on the pitch. A club he reinvented as the dominant force in Scottish football.
With each passing year the 1967 European Cup triumph seems more remarkable, more detached from our current reality.
Like stories of the British Empire stretching to cover the globe, it seems unreal that the Scottish champions, a team drawn from the environs of Glasgow, could somehow reach the summit of European football.
It was, and remains, a remarkable achievement and Jock Stein’s role in it deserves to be celebrated still.
As a Protestant manager of Celtic he was a trailblazer. As a football man he saw only a club that had the potential to be a European giant. He never hid his disdain for some of the more unsavoury aspects of the Old Firm rivalry - although nor could he hide his pleasure at beating Rangers.
Like Bill Shankly he was also a trailblazer in promoting the cult of the manager. If the Rangers manager was due to address the Ibrox crowd on the issue of sectarianism then Stein would choose that day to jump in amongst his own crowd and berate them on their own behaviour.
An important point made and the front page coverage guaranteed. The aura continued to grow. Brian Clough wasn’t the first to cultivate an image. Jose Mourinho isn’t reinventing the wheel with his behaviour.
And the essential decency of the man who knew that football was a game to be celebrated and enjoyed but was not everything. His work to unite the Glasgow fans in mourning for the Ibrox Disaster in 1971 was a measure of both the man and how he hoped the rivalry should be conducted.
He held on to his roots as well. Alex Ferguson recalls a ticking off for not donating to a collection for the miners during the strikes of the mid-1980s: “I’m surprised at you of all people forgetting these lads.”
Maybe in Ferguson we see the last of the breed that gave football Shankly and Stein. Certainly in the Old Trafford manager we see the last of the managers that learnt their business through watching Stein. Big Jock, it turns out, wasn’t that bad a teacher either.
Finally Scotland. The 1982 World Cup and the disappointment of another first round exit. And the push to Mexico in 1986. The final push that proved too much for even this larger than life man.
Bill Shankly, perhaps alone amongst leading English managers in recognising what Stein was on the brink of pulling off, travelled to support his friend in Lisbon for the European Cup final.
“John, you’re immortal” he said after the game.
He wasn’t. But his unique achievements and his memory will live with us as long as the game is played.
* Extensive coverage in today's Record. I had a chuckle at Alan Rough's quote:
"As I walked out of the dressing room Big Jock was standing near the door. His last words to me were, 'Good luck, ya fat b*****d'."
Scotland clinch a draw with Wales to get to the play offs for the 1986 World Cup final. A typically Scottish story. Needing a point we go behind, lose a goalkeeper when he loses a contact lense and need a late penalty to get the job done.
And then the world seemed to collapse.
I was only five. In Primary Two.
I watched the game and went to bed.
It was the next morning that I found out that Jock Stein had died.
I remember it clearly although I was too young to understand it.
But the memory of Stein lingers still. Maybe at times like this, times of early European exits, of a last gasp win over Liechtenstein, the memory of his achievements haunts our current travails.
A Scottish Cup win and a European quarter final with Dunfermline - building a foundation at that club would see another cup win and a Cup Winners Cup semi final before the 1960’s were out.
A short spell at Hibs saw him guide them into contention for a double, tellingly that challenge fell away as soon as Stein left to join Celtic. At Hibs he also managed the wayward, fleeting genius of Willie Hamilton. Stein saw the potential of the footballer and backed himself to control the temperament that came with it.
And then to Parkhead. We all know the rest. A club that remained huge but was apparently unable to turn their size and history into success on the pitch. A club he reinvented as the dominant force in Scottish football.
With each passing year the 1967 European Cup triumph seems more remarkable, more detached from our current reality.
Like stories of the British Empire stretching to cover the globe, it seems unreal that the Scottish champions, a team drawn from the environs of Glasgow, could somehow reach the summit of European football.
It was, and remains, a remarkable achievement and Jock Stein’s role in it deserves to be celebrated still.
As a Protestant manager of Celtic he was a trailblazer. As a football man he saw only a club that had the potential to be a European giant. He never hid his disdain for some of the more unsavoury aspects of the Old Firm rivalry - although nor could he hide his pleasure at beating Rangers.
Like Bill Shankly he was also a trailblazer in promoting the cult of the manager. If the Rangers manager was due to address the Ibrox crowd on the issue of sectarianism then Stein would choose that day to jump in amongst his own crowd and berate them on their own behaviour.
An important point made and the front page coverage guaranteed. The aura continued to grow. Brian Clough wasn’t the first to cultivate an image. Jose Mourinho isn’t reinventing the wheel with his behaviour.
And the essential decency of the man who knew that football was a game to be celebrated and enjoyed but was not everything. His work to unite the Glasgow fans in mourning for the Ibrox Disaster in 1971 was a measure of both the man and how he hoped the rivalry should be conducted.
He held on to his roots as well. Alex Ferguson recalls a ticking off for not donating to a collection for the miners during the strikes of the mid-1980s: “I’m surprised at you of all people forgetting these lads.”
Maybe in Ferguson we see the last of the breed that gave football Shankly and Stein. Certainly in the Old Trafford manager we see the last of the managers that learnt their business through watching Stein. Big Jock, it turns out, wasn’t that bad a teacher either.
Finally Scotland. The 1982 World Cup and the disappointment of another first round exit. And the push to Mexico in 1986. The final push that proved too much for even this larger than life man.
Bill Shankly, perhaps alone amongst leading English managers in recognising what Stein was on the brink of pulling off, travelled to support his friend in Lisbon for the European Cup final.
“John, you’re immortal” he said after the game.
He wasn’t. But his unique achievements and his memory will live with us as long as the game is played.
* Extensive coverage in today's Record. I had a chuckle at Alan Rough's quote:
"As I walked out of the dressing room Big Jock was standing near the door. His last words to me were, 'Good luck, ya fat b*****d'."
Wednesday, June 09, 2010
Scotland In 1986: Another hard luck tale
Scotland's trip to Mexico in 1986 would be their fourth World Cup in a row. We might have been hopeless when we got to the finals but we were proving astonishingly consistent at qualifying.Our route to the 1986 World Cup was, as we all know, steeped in tragedy. Jock Stein's death on a tense night in Wales as Scotland clinched a play off place cast a long shadow over the whole 1986 campaign.
It fell to Alex Ferguson, still at Aberdeen and Stein's part time assistant, to take the reins and negotiate the double header against Australia. A 2-0 win at Hampden put Scotland firmly in control of the fixture as they prepared to travel to Melbourne. A 0-0 draw got the job done but, as if to prove that Scotland players could still mix it with the best of them went it came to extra-curricular antics, a couple of incidents involving booze, birds, Maurice Johnston and - inevitably - Frank McAvennie left Ferguson mulling over the possibility of leaving Johnston out of his final squad.
As part of his preparation Ferguson travelled to Ipswich and sought Alf Ramsey's advice. Sir Alf was only too happy to oblige, although Ferguson was incredulous that no England manager had ever approached Ramsey as part of their big tournament build up.
Ferguson's most controversial decision was to leave Alan Hansen out of his squad. A number of late withdrawals had left both Stein and Ferguson concerned about the centre half's commitment. He also lost Kenny Dalglish, a massive blow, blamed at the time on Hansen's omission although Dalglish has always insisted that his knee was just not up to another summer of football.
Squad selected, preparations made. Scotland were off to Mexico. Lying in wait were Denmark, West Germany and Uruguay. Displaying our usual knack of finding ourselves in the wrong place at the wrong time we had somehow pitched up in the tournament's group of death. Lucky us.
We would emerge without a win to our name, cursing our luck and somewhat battered. Yet again we were going home on the first plane.
Before the tournament we might well have considered Denmark to be rivals for second place behind West Germany. The Danes didn't exactly follow that script.
In an even first match Denmark beat us 1-0, although a Roy Aitken goal that looked legitimate was disallowed.
In the next match Gordon Strachan put us ahead against West Germany in the first half. Unable to hold out, Scotland went in all square at half time before a Rudi Voller goal early in the second half put the Germans ahead. There was much huff and no little puff as Scotland chased the game. As so often in the past those efforts came to nothing.
At times it seems that Scotland team was created to tantalise the support with the the promise that greatness is always just one step away. Amazingly we went into the Uruguay game with qualification still a realistic possibility.
We had to win to progress, Uruguay needed only a draw. It might have been realistic to assume that an astonishing 6-1 defeat to Denmark might have knocked their confidence. Needing only a draw, however, they were always going to be happy suck Scotland into a war of attrition. Even accepting that as a legitmate tactic does not mean there is any need to condone the brutality with which they set about the task.
In the first minute of the game Jose Batista was ordered off for an X-rated version of one of Ron Atkinson's early doors reducers, a cynical and blatant attempt to nobble Gordon Strachan. The tone was set.
Against a team displaying football's uglier side, Scotland were without answers. Yes, Uruguay were brutal and hard but Scotland were ineffectual in the face of it. They had come to defend deep but Scotland were unable to exert the pressure that would have made them doubt the wisdom of their tactics.
In the face of a cynical Uruguayan roar, Scotland meekly surrendered with a whimper. A win would have sent Scotland through in third place behind West Germany and surprise group winners Denmark. Instead we finished bottom with two defeats and a draw.
Again there were plenty of excuses. Stein's death left Ferguson with a job he didn't want and, by his own admission, wasn't ready for. We missed the aura of Dalglish. Graeme Souness, perhaps not fully fit, struggled in the altitude and heat. Roy Aitken's goal against Denmark should have counted. Uruguay were little more than cheats.
But. In six trips to the World Cup we'd won only three games. In Mexico we could only score one goal. Again players who should have done better failed to perform. Maybe by raging against the unfairness of it all we missed the point: our players lacked something - skill, nerve, fight? - on the biggest stage.
For Scotland just qualifying had become more than half the battle. At least, for now, we looked not too shabby at that.
More on Alex Ferguson's experience as Scotland manager in Managing My Life: The Autobiography.
Scotland squad at the 1986 World Cup
A curiosity to make Hibs fans weep: look at the three goalkeepers who made the trip. Makalamitys they were not.
Souness, listed as a Sampdoria player, had already agreed to take over as Rangers manager. The Ibrox revolution was drawing near and was much needed. Only Davie Cooper made the squad from Rangers.
When will another Scotland manager be able to call on players from Barcelona or Sampdoria?
Note that Mo Jo didn't make the trip. As far as Fergie was concerned that bridge was well and truly burnt.
Jim Leighton (Aberdeen)
Richard Gough (Dundee United)
Maurice Malpas (Dundee United)
Graeme Souness (Sampdoria)
Alex McLeish (Aberdeen)
Willie Miller (Aberdeen)
Gordon Strachan (Manchester United)
Roy Aitken (Celtic)
Eamon Bannon (Dundee United)
Jim Bett (Aberdeen)
Paul McStay (Celtic)
Andy Goram (Oldham Athletic)
Steve Nicol (Liverpool)
David Narey (Dundee United)
Arthur Albiston (Manchester United)
Frank McAvennie (West Ham United)
Steve Archibald (Barcelona)
Graeme Sharp (Everton)
Charlie Nicholas (Arsenal)
Paul Sturrock (Dundee United)
David Cooper (Rangers)
Alan Rough (Hibernian)
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