Tommy Gemmell
Celtic footballer and European Cup-winning ‘Lisbon Lion’ with the most powerful shot in Scotland
TOMMY GEMMELL, the footballer, who has died aged 73, played a key part in Celtic’s triumph in 1967 when the “Lisbon Lions” became the first British club to win the European Cup. Indeed, the trophy had been since its inception in 1955 the property of Latin teams. In Lisbon, Celtic started very much as the underdogs against Inter Milan, who had been victorious in 1964 and 1965 and had defeated holders Real Madrid en route to the final. Under manager Helenio Herrera, Inter had perfected the art of niggardly defence, or catenaccio.
By contrast, Celtic under Jock Stein had become renowned for freeflowing attack. Gemmell personified this approach, ranging forward seemingly at will from full-back. Tall at 6ft 2 in, and with a shot measured at 70mph (the most powerful in Scotland), he was the claymore to Billy McNeill’s buckler at the heart of defence.
Although right-footed, Gemmell had switched flanks earlier in the season, allowing Jim Craig to come in at right back. It was Craig who conceded the penalty which let Sandro Mazzola give Inter an early lead, but thereafter the Italians’ confidence crumbled.
Long spells before matches away from their families, insisted on by Herrera, had sapped their spirits and they lacked cohesion as a group. They were missing their injured playmaker, Luis Suarez, their own roving back Giacinto Facchetti appeared subdued, and goalkeeper Giuliano Sarti kept them in the game.
Instead Celtic played not just as a team but as a group of friends who, aside from Bobby Lennox, all came from within 10 miles of Glasgow. Soon after the hour, Craig overlapped up his wing, drawing defenders to him, until he squared the ball to Gemmell on the edge of the “D”. Gemmell’s shot rifled past Sarti in the sunshine.
The winner came with six minutes left to play. Again Gemmell was involved, demonstrating how even an 11-man defence could be picked apart, especially if it failed to mark players running from deep. Gemmell (who as a boy had been a winger) pushed forward once more (against Stein’s orders), setting up Bobby Murdoch whose shot was turned in by Stevie Chalmers.
Gemmell would claim that the pair practised such a manoeuvre. Everyone else in the stadium thought it a deflection. It mattered not: Celtic had won a glory that remains undiminished half a century on.
The eldest of four children, Thomas Gemmell was born on October 16 1943 in Motherwell and grew up nearby in Craigneuk, east of Glasgow. His father was a turner at the Dalziel steelworks and his mother a petrol pump attendant. Money was so tight in the family that he and his brother shared a bed into adolescence. Tommy grew used to playing football with feet cut by the home-made studs that poked up through the worn linings of his boots.
A bright and conscientious boy, he went to Wishaw High School but left at 16 to begin earning a wage as an electrician at the Ravenscraig plant. But by then he had been spotted by Celtic’s scouts and soon joined a feeder club, Coltness. Winger Jimmy “Jinky” Johnstone signed on the same evening.
Gemmell was (like Stein) a Protestant and revealed in later years that he had endured sectarian abuse in the dressing room as a youngster, the club being associated with Roman Catholicism. He withstood it and made his first team debut against Aberdeen in 1963, while still in full-time employment at the works.
The return to Celtic in 1965 of former player Stein transformed both the club’s and Gemmell’s fortunes. Where previously he had been told to hit long passes, often easily intercepted, Stein emphasised quick, attacking teamwork, the hallmark of the earliest Scottish form of the game. He also adopted the less defensive 4-24 formation popularised at the 1958 World Cup.
In the next six years, Gemmell would win six league titles, four League Cups and the Scottish Cup thrice. Yet while Stein usually gave him free rein on the pitch, he and the manager had an often fractious relationship off it. Gemmell admitted in later life that he had enjoyed liberally what success and recognition brought him.
Liking to think he resembled the film star Danny Kaye, he philandered in Glasgow’s West End, enjoyed his drink and wore flamboyant clothes perhaps not designed for a gangling redhead. He was especially proud of his white S-Type Jaguar.
Matters came to a head in 1969, when Gemmell, who could be hard when needed, was sent off for kicking Helmut Haller up the backside. The German had fouled him in an international without the referee spotting it. (The moment was later recreated for the 1990s television show Fantasy Football.) Stein dropped Gemmell for a forthcoming cup final and refused offers of a transfer from Barcelona.
Gemmell’s last significant match for the club was the European Cup final of 1970. This time, against the Dutch side Feyenoord, the Scots started as favourites, and Gemmell gave them the lead with another long-range shot. He and Liverpool’s Phil Neal remain the only British players to have scored in two separate finals of the competition.
Yet Feyenoord were the forerunners of the “Total Football” style of play that was to usher in an era of Dutch dominance, and they easily outclassed Celtic, winning 2-1 in extra time.
Gemmell left the club the next year, having made 418 appearances for the Hoops and scored from full-back a remarkable 63 goals, albeit half of those were penalties. In his time at Parkhead, he had also played 18 times for his country, the highlight being the 1967 demolition of world champions England.
He moved to Nottingham Forest (shortly before Brian Clough arrived), thereby trebling his wages. Gemmell scored six times in 39 matches before having a brief spell in the US with Miami Toros.
In 1973, he returned north to join Dundee, and that season captained them to victory over Celtic in the League Cup final – a result that led to much booing by his former supporters. He played much of the season while his big toe was healing after he sliced the top off it mowing the lawn.
After retiring in 1977, he was appointed Dundee’s manager. He at once signed Jinky Johnstone, whom he rated an even better dribbler than George Best, who he thought the finest player he had seen. Yet Johnstone was already lost to alcohol, and the strain of trying to manage him, the club and the hotel that Gemmell had bought as an investment broke him and his first marriage.
He did bring through the young Gordon Strachan, and win promotion back to the top flight in 1979, but relegation the next season ended his time at Dens Park. Later he did commentary for Radio Clyde, and had two short spells managing Albion Rovers, but he made his career in financial planning, having stints at Abbey Life and Sun Life. He published a ( ghosted) autobiography, Lion Heart, in 2004 but in recent years had endured poor health.
Tommy Gemmell married first, in 1967 (dissolved 1986), Anne Deas. He is survived by his second wife, Mary, whom he married in 1986, and by a son and a daughter of his first marriage.