SOAR OF THE LION
Boy from Bellshill grew into captain who led the side to greatest victory
BILLY McNeill burst into the Celtic team as a teenager in an era when the club was struggling.
He was playing junior football in Blantyre, near his home town of Bellshill, Lanarkshire, when Celtic scouts came calling.
In the late 50s, he would have rubbed shoulders with some club legends such as Bobby Evans, Bertie Peacock, Charlie Tully and Bobby Collins.
But it was far from a successful side in terms of honours.
That changed with the arrival of Jock Stein from Hibs in 1965 and the manager immediately identified Billy as a man he could build his team around.
No one could have predicted how successful Celtic would be with Stein in the dugout and Billy as his on-field leader.
In 1965-66, the club won the league, the League Cup, reached the semi-finals of the European Cup Winners’ Cup and lost in the final of the Scottish Cup.
The players became immortal the following season.
With Billy as captain, Celtic won the domestic treble then became the first British team to win the European Cup, with a 2-1 win over two-time winners Inter Milan in Lisbon.
Images of Billy holding the most famous trophy in club football aloft will never be forgotten.
That season was the second of a nine-in-a-row run of league title wins that lasted until 1974.
Billy and Celtic were back in the European Cup final in 1970 but lost to Feyenoord.
A one-club man, Billy could graced the colours of any top European team.
But he spent his entire playing career at Celtic Park, scoring 37 goals, many with his head, including a famous last-minute winner against Yugoslav side Vojvodina on a foggy night in Glasgow that sent his club into the semi-finals of the European Cup in 1967.
He won nine Scottish titles, seven Scottish Cups and six League Cups during 18 years and 822 appearances at the club as a player.
In an era when international teams played fewer matches than today, Billy won 29 Scotland caps, and scored three goals for his country.
Born in Bellshill in March 1940, partly of Lithuanian descent, the family moved to Hereford, where he played rugby, when his father, a soldier in the Black Watch, was posted to England.
He returned two years later, finishing his education at Our Lady’s High School in Motherwell.
By then playing centre-half for junior team Blantyre Victoria, the 17-year-old impressed Stein, then Celtic’s youth coach, enough to sign him.
He made his debut for Celtic in a 2-0 win over Clyde in 1958, soon making his name as an uncompromising but skilful centre-half.
It was the start of a glorious playing career that ended when he retired in 1975, aged 35.
He moved into management with Clyde in 1977 before joining Aberdeen, two months later, succeeding newly-appointed Scotland manager Ally MacLeod.
The club did well under his management, laying the groundhave
work for Alex Ferguson but Billy was unable to resist when the call came to take over from Stein at Celtic in 1978.
The former captain’s team won the title back from Rangers in his first season, the first of three in a five-year spell in charge that also brought a Scottish Cup and a League Cup.
In Europe, and aged just 40, Celtic were narrowly put out of the European Cup in 1980 by Real Madrid at the quarterfinals stage, winning 2-0 at home but losing 3-0 in Madrid.
He brought through young players including Paul McStay and Charlie Nicholas but, frustrated by lack of resources to buy players and under pressure from Aberdeen and Dundee United, Billy left Celtic in 1983.
He took on newly relegated Manchester City and led them back into the top division before a spell at Aston Villa, which ended unhappily when they were relegated.
In 1987, he returned to Celtic as manager to challenge big-spending Rangers.
Like the Lisbon Lions, Billy deployed overlapping full-backs in a system that was designed to cut teams open.
He surprised many when his side won the league and Scottish cup double in his first season in charge, which was also Celtic’s centenary year.
It proved the high point of his second spell and he left in 1991 amid boardroom turmoil, having just one more stint at management in 1998 as a mentor to Hibs boss Jim Duffy.
Billy had just had heart surgery, but after Duffy was sacked, he stepped in as caretaker for one match in an act typical of a born leader.
Still in demand, he continued to appear at Celtic supporters’ events and made frequent appearances in the media.
In 2009, he became Celtic’s first official ambassador and the club and their fans showed just what they thought of their former leader in December 2015 when a bronze statue of him lifting that European Cup was unveiled.
With him that day were his wife Liz, who had appeared on the TV show the White Heather Club as a dancer. They married in 1963.
They had five children – Susan, Carol, Libby, Paula and Martyn – and eight grandchildren.