WEE JIM AND ME
‘I am just grateful to have known him,’ says Sir Alex. ‘He was a good man and one of our greatest coaches’
THEY shared a room. They shared a plane. They shared a touch line. They shared history. The lives of Sir Alex Ferguson and Jim McLean collided in a wondrous era for Scottish football. Sparks occasionally flew. But their friendship was an unbreakable bond, spanning more than half a century.
‘Our relationship was fantastic,’ said Ferguson last night, anxious to pay due tribute to an extraordinary coach and influential friend.
‘Yes, we were at each other’s throat in that way you wind each other up,’ he said of the era in the 1980s when Dundee United and Aberdeen were at t he very forefront of Scottish football and at the sharp end of European competitions.
‘ He would do a bit in his programme, I would do a bit in my programme. It was hilarious stuff,’ recalled Ferguson who, of course, went on to make more history at Manchester United.
‘Walter (Smith, McLean’s assistant) and Archie (Knox, Ferguson’s assistant) would be calming influences but it would all blow over. We were rivals but I had the greatest respect for him.’
He added: ‘I would say this, too. He was one of the best coaches to come out of Scotland. A fantastic coach. People talk, rightly, about Jimmy Bonthrone and Eddie Turnbull being great coaches. But no-one ever surpassed Jim. Jock Stein recognised that and brought him into the Scotland set-up.’
Ferguson first met McLean in 1964 when, as a 22-year- old, the future Manchester United manager was already taking his coaching badges. ‘I shared a room with Jim,’ said Ferguson. ‘He was there in a sort of mentoring role as he was a bit older than me.
‘He helped me greatly then and I knew then that he would go on to become an influential and special coach. I was only a young man but his football knowledge was obvious to me. He was intelligent and clear-sighted on football.’
Ferguson, who swept the board in terms of silver ware with Aberdeen and Manchester United, has no doubts about McLean’s strengths.
‘First, he could read the pattern of a game quickly and accurately and make important changes. Second, his coaching methods improved every player who came under him,’ he said.
‘If you look at his teams, they had great talents such as Richard Gough, David Narey, Paul Sturrock, Maurice Malpas and others. But his greatness was to improve players who were not of that quality.
‘In Scottish terms, he constructed what we would call “right good teams”.’
The friendly fire broke out as Ferguson and McLean battled for the major prizes in Scottish football in the 1980s.
‘Every game we played against him and his team was really intense,’ he recalled. ‘These were the days when that game against United was bigger than playing Rangers or Celtic. Jim agreed with that. We both knew this was the crucial match. This went on for a good many years and it produced some spectacular games.’
United under McLean won the title in 1983 and the League Cup in 1979-80 and 1980-81, also reaching the semi-finals of the European Cup i n 1984 and the f i nal of the UEFA Cup in 1987. Ferguson won three titles (1979-80, 1983-84, 1984-85), four Scottish Cups and a League Cup, adding the European Cup-Winners’ Cup in 1983 and the subsequent European Super Cup.
‘It is almost absurd when you think back on it,’ said Ferguson of an extraordinary period. It certainly had its humorous moments.
‘Sometimes on a Sunday afternoon Jim, myself, Archie and Walter would share a four-seater to go to Belgium or Holland or wherever to watch a game, and scout a player,’ said Ferguson.
‘We would go our separate ways at the airport and then arrive back at the wee plane hours later. We would never tell each other what game we had been at. Jim would as ask the score to get a cl clue of where we were but we would say we had left before the end.’
Decades on, Ferguson l aughs uproariously about this but becomes profoundly s eri ous when discussing the legacy and character of his friend.
‘My adversaries in England were always Jose Mourinho, Rafa Benitez or Arsene Wenger,’ he said. ‘But my biggest adversary in the game was Jim McLean, believe me.’ It is a substantial tribute.
But the man who led Manchester United to two European titles and 13 English championships, added: ‘His legacy lies in the hearts and minds of the managers who contested games against him.
‘You knew if you were playing a Jim McLean side, it would be prepared, as fit as can be, tactically aware, and able to adapt in games.
‘ He was a real i nnovator in Scottish football. His legacy is that coaches followed him. There have been great Scottish coaches but nobody surpassed Jim McLean.’
Of his i nfluence on United, Ferguson said of his fellow traveller from player to elite coach: ‘ He took a club and changed it completely. He took players and made them better.’
On McLean’s character, Ferguson recognises something that propelled both of them to the top of the game. ‘ You need to have that drive, obsession, whatever you want to call it,’ he said.
‘You have to have something inside you that drives you on when things are going badly. It’s all right when things are going well. That’s no test. When things are going badly, that’s when it matters what’s inside of you. Jim had that character, that toughness.’
He had, too, a softness. ‘Yes, he could be prickly,’ admitted Ferguson. ‘He could turn on you in a flash. But it was over quickly. There was a more important side to him.’
It is summarised thus. ‘ Deep down, he was a good man. He was always ready to help. I learned so much from him. He would always be there for an ex-player starting out in management or for a friend.
‘I am grateful to have known him. He was a great coach but he was a good man.’
It is the most sincere and surely the most substantial of tributes from one exemplar of Scottish football history to another.