The European champion who couldn’t convince Stein he was worth Scots call
Ron Saunders never told me why he left and I never asked
AHEAD of what should have been this Saturday’s Champions League final in Istanbul,
Sportsmail continues its series on Scots who have lifted the European Cup with a look back to 1982 when defender Ken McNaught helped Aston Villa defeat the mighty Bayern Munich in Rotterdam.
THE one glaring omission from his CV wouldn’t have been quite so conspicuous had he not soared so high.
Ken McNaught not only played at the highest level of English football. In the colours of Aston Villa in 1981, he conquered it. Then, 12 months later, he planted the flag in Rotterdam by lifting the European Cup.
If the absence of a Scotland cap was hard to fathom, even in the age of Miller, McLeish, Hansen and Narey, it seems all the more absurd through the passing of time.
Now 65, the Fifer vividly recalls the night of March 17, 1982. He and Gary Shaw had just scored to eliminate Dynamo Kiev in the quarter-finals.
‘Afterwards, I was walking down a corridor and Jock Stein was talking to my father, who he’d tried to sign for Dunfermline in the 60s,’ he said. ‘Jock turned to me and said: “Don’t make any plans for the summer because you’ll be coming to Spain with the Scotland squad”.
‘I must have had a stinker the rest of the season because that was the last I heard from him. Allan Evans went instead,’ said McNaught in reference to one of three Scots who joined him in the Villa squad that beat Bayern Munich in the European Cup final, the others being Des Bremner and unused sub Andy Blair.
McNaught is remarkably phlegmatic about his inernational omission to this day. He appreciates that Scotland at that time were blessed with an abundance of outstanding centre-halves.
Yet he could — and did — excel in the most esteemed company.
‘I was lucky,’ he reflected. ‘I went to Everton when they’d just won the title. I had a proper upbringing playing with guys like Joe Royle, Brian Labone, John Hurst, Colin Harvey, Alan Ball, Howard Kendall… Gordon West in goals.
‘At Villa, I played with guys like Andy Gray, Brian Little and Dennis Mortimer. Because we got successful, you then started playing against better players. I played against Johan Cruyff three times, (Johan) Neeskens, (Paolo) Rossi, (Roberto) Bettega, (Gaetano) Scirea. I actually scored against Dino Zoff but it was disallowed.’
McNaught might well have name-checked some of the great Liverpool players of that era or the Ipswich side that Villa finished four points ahead of to win the old First Division title in ‘81.
‘We’d only used 14 players in 42 games,’ he said.
‘The Liverpool greats, Bill Shankly and Joe Fagan, used to say if you won 23 or 24 games you’d done it in style. We won 26. Ron Saunders had us all ultra-professional.’
It’s conceivable, although not entirely logical, that the injury which dogged McNaught in the early part of 1981-82 may have figured in Stein’s thinking.
‘I’d damaged my knee in preseason and it broke down on me at Wembley in the Charity Shield against Spurs,’ he explained.
‘I played the first game against Notts County at home and I did it again then.
‘I had an operation but then I developed a blood clot in my calf — a thrombosis. No one knew what it was so I kept getting physio.
‘But that made the condition worse because all the blood was going into my calf and couldn’t get back out. It was swelling up bigger than my thigh.
‘It slowly started to get better but occasionally I just had to sit down and throw my leg up as the blood was only going one way.’
Villa’s mid-table form made for difficult viewing. Less so victories against Valur and Dynamo Berlin in the European Cup which set up a rested McNaught for a return against Kiev in March.
Before then, though, came a thunderbolt.
‘Ron Saunders (the manager) had complained of a neck injury and sometimes he had to wear a collar,’ explained McNaught.
‘With hindsight, part of the reason was stress directed from the owners.
‘He was taking training as normal, then, all of a sudden, he just went down. If he hit the ground you knew there was something seriously wrong.
‘But we never thought anything about it. We just blamed his neck condition.
‘Dennis Mortimer phoned me at night and asked if I’d heard about the boss. I thought the worst — that he’d passed away. Dennis told me he’d resigned. I asked why but nobody knew.
‘I don’t think anybody even knew the full reason. I was probably the
We beat Dynamo Kiev in the quarter finals and Jock told me I’d be going to the World Cup in Spain
I swore I’d never go back to Villa as long as Doug Ellis was there
one player who was close to him. After I’d stopped playing, he used to phone me up and ask me round for a coffee. We’d sit and chat in his conservatory. But he never offered it (the reason for quitting) and I never asked.’
Saunders’ replacement was every bit as surprising as the departure itself.
‘When Dennis told me it was Tony Barton, I said: “But he brings up the mail from Villa Park once a week”.
‘To be honest, Tony (de facto chief scout) probably knew more about the players than Saunders did as he used to go around the country finding out all their personal details before we signed them.’
The comfort was that Villa were like a self-playing piano. ‘Saunders said later in an interview that a monkey could have run the team,’ recalled McNaught.
Tony Morley’s goal against Anderlecht saw Villa take a lead to Belgium for the second leg of the semi-final.
Barton’s men ground out a goalless draw to progress but the occasion was marred by crowd trouble, with the Belgians claiming a pitch invader had cost them the chance of a goal.
‘The referee had blown his whistle before they got anywhere near the goal,’ said McNaught. ‘They tried to demand a rematch. There was an inquiry but it didn’t happen.’
Villa would face Bayern in Rotterdam for the biggest prize in the club game.
‘We weren’t bothered by what the bookies thought,’ said McNaught. ‘We knew we could defend and score goals on the breakaway. That’s exactly how it turned out.’
The vast Villa support weren’t quite so confident nine minutes in when Jimmy Rimmer had to be replaced in goal by Nigel Spink.
‘I used to room with Jimmy,’ recalled McNaught. ‘He was getting treatment but that was part and parcel of football in those days.
‘But I remember before the game we were outside the ground talking with our families. He just kept shaking his head when he was talking with his wife.’
McNaught saw the early substitution as no more than a minor set-back.
‘Because I’d been in the reserve team, I knew how good a keeper Spinky was,’ he explained.
Despite boasting the likes of Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, there was to be no way past Spink and company for Bayern.
With 23 minutes remaining, Morley bobbed and weaved, allowing Peter Withe to pounce. Cue a German onslaught.
‘I knew they’d up their game,’ said McNaught. ‘After we scored, we’d knock it up to Peter to try and get him to hold on to it. But he was flicking the ball here, there and everywhere. I was going mental at him. But we just dug in there.
‘Kenny Swain cleared one off the line and Spinky made a few good saves.’
It would be the following March before Juventus would rip the trophy from Villa’s grasp but a 3-1 aggregate win over a Bernd Schuster-inspired
Barcelona in the Super Cup Final in the January was to be no small consolation.
‘Maradona was in the squad but was ill the night before,’ said McNaught, scorer of the third goal in extra-time at Villa Park.
‘He was definitely at the game because he asked for Gary Shaw’s autograph.’
By the end of 1982-83, though, change was in the air. ‘I agreed terms with Tony Barton only for the deal to be turned down by the new owner,’ explained McNaught of his departure to West Brom.
‘I thought: “That’s it”. We were used to Saunders running the whole club but Barton did not have the same strength of character.’
Doug Ellis, who returned to Villa as chairman in late ’82, is a man McNaught struggles to mention by name.
‘I swore that I’d never go back to Villa Park as long as he (Ellis) was in control. And I never did,’ he stated. ‘The first time I went back was when Randy Lerner took over (in 2006).
‘It wasn’t just the way he (Ellis) treated me. It was the whole team and the whole club.
‘There’s no way that club should have been relegated five years after winning the European Cup.
‘All he wanted to do was sell off the assets. Everybody called him Deadly Doug and all that stuff. But he was out for himself and no one else.’
The man who defended the Holte End like his life depended on it spent fully 23 years in exile. He managed golf resorts in Scotland, worked in various jobs in Norway, China and Australia.
But Villa Park was always where it was at. Firstly through hospitality, and then after being asked to head up the Former Players’ Club, McNaught’s endless fund of stories echo again inside his spiritual home. Doubtless, that elusive Scotland cap may just raise a laugh or two.
‘It’s 11 years now,’ he said of his return. ‘Since then I’ve hardly been away from the place. I’m pleased with how things worked out.’