SIR ALEX ON STEIN

‘Jock did something that had not been done before and will not be done again. He is one of the greatest managers of all time’

He is one of the greatest managers of all time

HE is a character who has studied greatness. Most would insist he has lived it. The matter of personality and achievement would be the specialist subject of Sir Alex Ferguson on a Celebrity Mastermind.

He consumes biographies of the greats with the appetite with which he pursued trophies. In his long and extraordinary career, he has worked with them, helped form them or pitted his wits against them.

He has no hesitation placing Jock Stein, his friend and mentor, in a pantheon of greatness that stretches far beyond the sporting field.

Ferguson has given considerable thought to the influence of the manager he worked under, the friend he trusted, the character who was both forceful yet understanding. The former Manchester United manager does not talk of greatness glibly. He sets out his parameters and finds Stein, under whom he was Scotland assistant, comfortably fits inside them.

‘One of the greatest managers of all time. Without question,’ says Ferguson when asked of his opinion of Stein, 50 years after the Burnbank native delivered the European Cup for Celtic as leader of the Lisbon Lions.

‘But greatness cannot be bestowed liberally,’ says Ferguson, who was recruited by Stein as assistant at Scotland in the build-up to the 1986 World Cup.

‘There has to be criteria. Jock meets the first rule. He did something that has not been done before and will not be done again. You cannot overstate that. This is what makes him unique.

‘It is what (Alexander) Fleming did when he discovered penicillin in a wee laboratory. It is what (Alan) Turing did when cracking the Enigma Code. That is one standard of greatness and Jock met it.

‘The Lisbon Lions were brought up within 30 miles. That was never done before Jock. It will never be done again.’

Ferguson also talks of the other ingredients of greatness: the ability to dismiss setbacks, a lack of bitterness about perceived slights, a humility and a professional generosity.

‘Great people are able to overcome disappointments, even injustices. You look at people like Nelson Mandela. He was determined to move past bitterness,’ he continues.

‘On another level, Jock Stein had absolutely no bitterness in any form about the Celtic situation,’ says Ferguson, of Stein’s departure from the managerial seat in 1978. ‘He was always a Celtic fan. He had nothing but good to say of the club and the fans.’

There was a humility, too. ‘If I was asking him about his tactics against Inter Milan or in any other big game then he would say: “Och, Wee Jinky was in such great form”, or “Wee Bertie (Auld) was running the midfield”, or “Bobby (Murdoch) was magnificent”. It was all about the players and how they had won the match.’

Stein, he says, was a man of ‘extraordinary intelligence — he knew everything. He made it his business to find out everything’.

He cites one afternoon as an example of how the former Celtic and Scotland manager covered every angle. ‘I was working with him with Scotland and he asked me to accompany him to the press conference,’ says Ferguson. ‘I told him I was taking one of the players to the gym. He said: “No, come to the press conference. You will learn something”.

‘Sitting outside the press conference, he would tell you something about each and every journalist: who liked the bookies too much or the drink or women, or whatever. He knew everything about them.’

This knowledge stretched into every area of football. Stein was the first, great networker.

‘You knew he knew everything,’ says Ferguson. ‘So you would tell him everything. You were frightened he would catch you out.

‘He would phone me every weekend. I would say something like: “I have made a bid for Billy Stark”. He would say: “Oh, that’s a good move, he will be a good signing for you, I like him myself”. Or I would tell him I thought one of my players was ready to leave and he would ask me what I was thinking in terms of replacing him, and would ask: “What are you thinking about and have you thought of this or that?”.’

Ferguson said he was always learning from Stein, but that the older man was considerate.

‘I always believed I should address matters straight after the game,’ says Ferguson. ‘But Jock was different. He always said it was better to leave it to the Monday, when everyone had calmed down a bit. He said: “You will have a clear mind yourself and that helps”.

‘He was right for most people but that was not my nature. My nature was to get it all out the road and start afresh the next day.

‘His advice was great to hear but he was very understanding of my character, too. He understood that people would like to do things their way and he would help individuals match their character to a good way of working.’

Ferguson transformed all the clubs he worked for but his major impact was, of course, with Aberdeen and Manchester United where he won a glut of European and domestic trophies.

He was a personality who extracted the very best from his players. He pays tribute to Stein’s immediate and dramatic impact at Celtic.

‘The size of the revolution was incredible,’ he says. ‘He took over a Celtic team in 1965 that were far from world beaters. Two years later — with the addition of Willie Wallace and Joe McBride — he took them to the European Cup final and victory against a very good Inter Milan side.

‘Think about it. It is astonishing. How did he do that in terms of changing not only the personalities of the players but the very character of a team?’

Ferguson was at Dunfermline

Jock did something that will never be done again

when Stein joined Celtic and both teams met in the final of the Scottish Cup in 1965. Surprisingly dropped from the Dunfermline team, Ferguson watched Celtic triumph 3-2 with a late goal from Billy McNeill.

‘You could see right away he had got the enthusiasm back into the team,’ he says. ‘Celtic got wired into Dunfermline. He brought a winning mentality into the team.’

It was Stein’s first trophy as Celtic manager, but nine-in-a-row, two trebles and a European Cup were to follow. Ferguson points out another of Stein’s attributes.

‘He recognised greatness when others could not. He saw potential when others missed it. For example, I played against Bobby Murdoch in reserve matches in the early 1960s and he was an outside-right. All of a sudden he is playing centre midfield. He was the fulcrum for Celtic, hitting those long diagonal passes, or the short incisive pass, or striking from outside goal.

‘Personally, I think Celtic had two world-class players, two players who would have graced any team at any time, club or international. One was Bobby, the other was Jimmy Johnstone.

‘Bertie Auld was nearly in that class, too. The rest were very, very good players but Jock transformed them into perennial winners.

‘Big Billy (McNeill) and John Clark were not the quickest but they never got caught out. They dropped off, never leaving space behind. Billy would win everything in the air, John would pick up second balls and cut off space. It was simple but very, very clever.

‘He basically always played with two wide. This left the opposition with a dilemma. In the cup final (of 1965) I remember thinking: “Do we push our full-backs right on top against their wingers? But if we do that, there is space behind our full-backs for such as Stevie Chalmers or Willie Wallace to exploit”.

‘They created a situation where you always had to think about how you would play against them. If you came up with one solution, something would develop as a result that left you exposed in another area.’

It was lesson learned for Ferguson. ‘I was never into over- complicating things,’ he says of his 27 years at Manchester United that yielded 38 trophies, including 13 titles and two Champions Leagues.

‘Everybody sort of knew how we played. I always had one main striker and someone off him, a (Eric) Cantona, (Dwight) Yorke, (Teddy) Sheringham, Brian McClair to drop in that wee hole. I believed it was important to use wide players to penetrate.’

His overwhelming sense is that he was blessed to have known Stein. ‘Every Celtic fan will have that sense of gratitude. It was an incredibly exciting ride for the club. And don’t I know it. I had to suffer it for some time as a Rangers player,’ he says of his signing for the Ibrox club in 1967.

Ferguson, a character who has mingled with greatness in his role as the peerless manager of his day and in roles such as a lecturing appointment at Harvard, says: ‘You knew when Jock Stein was in the room. He was a huge figure.’

The benign shadow of greatness he casts remains to this day.