Chalmers, Stevie – The Celtic Wiki

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Fullname: Thomas Stephen Chalmers
aka: Steve Chalmers, Stevie Chalmers, Stephen Chalmers
Nickname: Di Steviano
Born: 26 December 1935
Died: 29 April 2019
Birthplace: Garngad (Roystonhill)
Signed: 6 February 1959 (From Ashfield)
Left: 9 September 1971 (to Morton)
Position: Centre Forward
Debut: Airdrie away 1-2 League 10 March 1959
Last game: Clyde home 6-1 League 1 May 1971
First goal: Raith Rovers away 3-0 League 19 September 1959
Last goal: Clyde home 6-1 League 1 May 1971
Internationals: Scotland / Scottish League XI
International Caps: 5 games / 4
International Goals: 3 goals / 0

Biog

“It was the moment that changed everything.” Stevie Chalmers on scoring the winning goal in the European Cup final in 1967

“It was the moment that changed everything.”
Stevie Chalmers on scoring the winning goal in the European Cup final in 1967

Stevie Chalmers The great Steve Chalmers will always be remembered as the man who scored the most important goal in the history of Celtic, but it should also be remembered as one of the most important in footballing history too.

It was this talented striker who, with just five minutes remaining, hit the winner in the 1967 European Cup final against Inter Milan in Lisbon. That one moment ensured Chalmers and his team-mates would be immortalised as the Lisbon Lions for all eternity and it seemed fitting that this historic goal should be scored by such a great and faithful servant to the Celtic cause.

Stevie was born in 1935 and brought up in the Celtic stronghold of Garngad (Roystonhill) in Glasgow, as was another famous Celtic son, Jimmy McGrory. His dad had tried to make it at Celtic with no success and moved over to Clydebank instead, so Stevie’s success made up for his father’s lost chance.

It might not have been for Stevie at Celtic, as he was to become so seriously sick from tuberculosis-meningitis in his late teens and early 20s that he was given three weeks to live, but thankfully through his inner strength and the support of others, he pulled through. He had actually been told by the doctor:

“He told me that no one with tuberculosis meningitis had been walking out of the hospital alive. I suppose I was his star patient”.

Celtic Career (early years, pre-Jock Stein)

He joined Celtic in February 1959 at the age of 23 and became one of ‘Kelly’s Kids‘ along with others such as Jimmy Johnstone, Billy McNeill, John Hughes and Tommy Gemmell.

A junior internationalist Chalmers had signed for the Bhoys from Ashfield and made his debut a month later in a 2-1 league defeat at home to Airdrie, but had to wait till the next season from which he went onto become a first team regular but was a great scorer from the off, scoring 15 goals in 19 games in his debut full season with one hat-trick and five doubles.

On scoring on his debut v Rangers – a 1960 Scottish Cup semi-final – he would be congratulated for the goal in a letter from Dr McKenzie who treated him, a Rangers fan, hailing him as “a triumph of modern medicine”. However, Celtic lost this match and underachievement & frustration was the norm at Celtic at this time.

From his earliest days at Parkhead the raw talent of Chalmers was obvious. He had great pace, was a tireless runner and a clinical finisher. However some said there was a naivety about his play which meant that at times his ability was not always utilised as effectively as it could have been. Despite the difficulties of the years prior to Stein’s arrival, Chalmers was still a success and a consistent scorer for the First Team.

His talent was undisputed. However playing in a Celtic side packed with ability but lacking real guidance the quest for silverware became an annually fruitless and frustrating task. Losses in cup finals, and repeatedly falling short in an era when the management at both team & board level was poor, was just very frustrating for everyone at the club, and things had to change.

All that would change in the most dramatic fashion with the arrival of Jock Stein as manager in early 1965.

Jock Stein era

Buoyed by the arrival of the new boss Celtic claimed the Scottish Cup soon afterwards. It was Chalmers’ first winners’ medal as a Celt and the Bhoys’ first trophy in eight years. With Stein at the helm Chalmers and Celtic blossomed. The new manager not only recognised the talent of Chalmers he knew exactly how to get the best from the player.

The tactically astute Stein would often deploy Chalmers as a front runner knowing the immensely hard working and unselfish forward possessed the intelligence to create havoc for defences even when he wasn’t in possession of the ball. Chalmers excelled under Stein. Time after time his clever runs would draw defenders and create gaping holes for his grateful team-mates to exploit.

He was of course equally as capable of scoring goals as he was creating them. Great anticipation and awareness coupled with the ability of a natural finisher made him lethal in the penalty area. His pace meant that with the ball at his feet he could beat any defender and he posed a real goal threat with his considerable ability in the air.

Rangers were made painfully aware of the devastating prowess of Chalmers on 3rd January 1966 when he netted a second-half hat-trick as Celtic demolished their rivals 5-1 at Parkhead, the Celts coming from behind to win 5-1. He was delighted and thought the boss would be too:

“What manager wouldn’t throw you up in the air, catch you and give you a cuddle? But Jock just glowered at me!” he laughs. “Then he told me he wouldn’t have picked me as man of the match, that Yogi [John Hughes] deserved it. Maybe he did that for my own good, in case I got a big head. I’d like to think I wouldn’t. But I do understand Jock’s motives much better now when maybe I didn’t at the time.”

However, it was in May 1967 when his finest moment came, with that iconic goal v Inter Milan in the European Cup final. That goal was typical of his uncanny ability to find space amongst even the very meanest of defences. it changed everything, and sealed Celtic as one of definitively one of the world’s greatest clubs in history.

It was a fairytale moment, for him more than anyone else, as a reminder he was once told he had only weeks to live, yet here he was 12 years later, in peak physical form and sealing the ultimate in club football competition. It was so humbling, and very inspiring to everyone, but the personal angle is something that is as important as all else in this case.

The bigger picture was that goal sealed an important triumph for world football, as attacking football was being stifled by the cattenacio and ultra-defensive style of football. Chalmers was the unassuming hero who punctured that advance and helped attacking football regain a foothold in the game.

That pivotal dream season of 1966-67 saw Stevie Chalmers score 37 goals in 55 matches across the competitions, which clearly showed his value, and the support are fully indebted to his constant service to the side.

It is possibly fair to say that with all the challenges that Stevie Chalmers had to face, his story possibly more than any others reflected that of a fairytale, which was so apt for Celtic’s story, and for him to be the man to score that winning goal in Lisbon was just perfect.

There was so much more to come, with further titles & triumphs. Another wonderful moment emphatically proved his status with his wonderful run and goal in the Bhoys heralded 4-0 Scottish Cup final triumph over Rangers in 1969 there were so many strings to Chalmers’ bow. It helped to seal the treble for Celtic, and he was a pivotal player for Celtic.

A broken leg sustained in the 1969 League Cup final against St Johnstone all but ended Steve Chalmers’ Celtic career, but he was getting older and there were a number of young developing players in line behind him in the squad.

By the end of his time at Celtic, he had scored 228 goals in 405 games for Celtic in the major competitions; he had won the European Cup, four league titles, three Scottish Cups and four League Cups. Stevie is the fourth highest goalscorer in Celtic’s history, and only Jimmy McGrory, Bobby Lennox and Henrik Larsson have been more prolific than him. His 228 goals was a post-war record until his fellow teammate Bobby Lennox overtook it (two incredible goal scorers in one side).

Incredibly, he was capped only five times for Scotland, scoring 3 goals. It’s almost too unbelievable, and this is even though one of his goals was against Brazil, a first minute “blazing goal” (25th June 1966). Pele was quite impressed with Stevie Chalmers, and actually sought him out to hand him his famous No.10 Brazil shirt – because he didn’t want Billy Bremner to get his hands on it due to the bruising treatment he had received from Bremner.

However, there were other fine strikers around like Dennis Law competing for similar roles, but regardless five caps is still a derisory low total for someone with his record at club level, and is another reason to the indifference many Celtic fans have had to the national side.

Post-Celtic

Stevie Chalmers eventually left Parkhead in September 1971 to become player-coach at Morton. Indeed he was so successful there that Partick Thistle persuaded him to move to Firhill where he played a further two seasons before returning to Celtic Park in 1975 as a youth coach, and then later worked in various Celtic operations such as the Celtic Pools.

Steve Chalmers was a courageous, unselfish and immensely talented footballer and remained a humble and courteous gentleman. Inducted into Celtic’s Hall of Fame in 2001 and the SFA Hall of Fame in 2016 he was the complete centre forward. He is a Celtic great and a favourite son.

His son (Paul Chalmers) went on to play for Celtic, but didn’t manage to be a regular for the first team, a tough ask to follow on from an all-time great at the club. Paul Chalmers went on to become a regular with various clubs, including St Mirren, Swansea, Dunfermline and Hamilton.

Passing

In 2017, he was diagnosed with dementia, similar to Billy McNeill, which was painful to hear, it also restarted discussions on the potential link between the long-term impact of heading in football and the possible impact to the onset of dementia. Billy McNeill, Stevie Chalmers and Jim Brogan all from that era and Billy McPhail from the 1950s had succumbed to dementia. It is something that should be further researched and openly discussed.

Stevie Chalmers died on 29th April 2019, just one week after fellow Lisbon Lion Billy McNeill passed away, two very pivotal people in that triumph in Lisbon.

An absolute great gone but a man whose deeds will survive forever, and immortalised by scoring one of the most pivotal goals in Celtic & world footballing history.

Imagine being the person that scored the winning goal in 1967. Just imagine that. And yet, Stevie Chalmers never grabbed any glory for himself. It was all about the team, about the club, about the fans. The Lisbon Lions were, and remain, a great example to all of us, and Stevie Chalmers is a perfect embodiment of the ethos that underlies all that they set out to achieve.

Anecdotes & Quotes

1) A not so well known fact is that Stevie’s first name is actually “Thomas” – He was registered at birth and baptised as Thomas Stephen Chalmers but has always been known as Stevie Chalmers.This fact was confirmed by Stevie to TheCelticWiki member CaltonBhoy1967 who asked Stevie about it in person at the 2-1 victory over Motherwell at Celtic Park on 13th April 2010 and Stevie confirmed that Thomas is in fact his real name.

2) (Maley’s Spirit of KDS forum)
He came to one of our supporters club do`s early 90`s. Was a gent throughout, always humble about the goal, suggesting he was just in the right place at the right time, very polite and unassuming throughout.
As the night wore on and we all had a few, me and another few guys were standing in the loo at the urinals a few sheets to the wind and Stevie came in, he`d had a couple himself. One guys asks “what was it REALLY like to score that goal?”… ” Absolutely ******** brilliant” he replies and we all laugh and leave the bogs with a stupid big cheesers on our face,. A question he was asked a million times I bet but never got fed up answering. The greatest goal ever scored.

“As an event, it was a seminal goal against Inter Milan. It was something we rehearsed in training all the time for the strikers to knock a ball in the back of the net. On the day, Stevie was just in position to slide it home.”
Jim Craig on Stevie Chalmers (2019)

“There were some terrific individual performances from our players on the day in Lisbon. But we won the European Cup as a team. For us it was the match of our lives — a match we had to win. This game meant an awful lot more to us than it did to the Italians.”
Stevie Chalmers

“It was the moment that changed everything.”
Stevie Chalmers on scoring the winning goal in the European Cup final in 1967

“That goal against Inter Milan has brought me nothing but happiness. It meant a lot to my family too in the immediate aftermath. My brothers and sisters would go into work and people would congratulate them on my action.”
Stevie Chalmers

“That goal has brought me nothing but happiness. My only tinge of regret is that my father never got to see it; he had passed away shortly before we got to the final in Lisbon. It would have been lovely for him to see that.”
Stevie Chalmers

“If we’d have got beaten [v Inter Milan] we’d have got credit for going there and putting up a good performance, but I didn’t feel as if we were in awe of these people – we really took the game to them and let them worry about it.
Stevie Chalmers

“He told me that no one with tuberculosis meningitis had been walking out of the hospital alive. I suppose I was his star patient”.
Stevie Chalmers, around 12yrs later, he was scoring the winner in the European Cup final

“Celtic Football Club is devastated at the death of Stevie Chalmers, one of Celtic FC’s greatest ever goalscorers and the man who scored the most important goal in the club’s history. Rest in peace, Stevie. You’ll Never Walk Alone.”
Celtic FC

“He was an honest player, there were no dirty tactics and you knew what you were playing against. I played with Stevie and the game that stands out, of course, was Brazil when he scored in that 1-1 draw (in 1966). Pele was the name on everyone’s lips around that time, but Stevie didn’t look out of place in that type of company. “But it’s funny because I remember Pele coming up to me in that game and pointing to Billy Bremner and asking me to speak to him because Billy was giving him a hard time. but I said: ‘Any other player but him!’. “Stevie was a very clever player, a 100 per cent player, who was always in the right area to score goals, but could also make goals. He was always sniffing around for a goal and you had to watch him all the time. If you let him out of your sight, he’d end up scoring.”
Rangers centre-half Ronnie McKinnon (1960s)

”Steve Chalmers was incredible that night. He played up front on his own and Jock told us just to stick balls up to the corner flag…He said to Stevie ‘Just you chase them’. He was marvellous.”
Lisbon Lion Tommy Gemmell on the match v Dukla Prague

“You cannot forget that goal, it’s as simple as that. It was a typical, off-the-cuff striker’s goal. Stevie was alert, he was sharp, he was fast, and you we’d spent time practicing that sort of move at training. We knew that if you played balls from wide positions, getting bodies into the box could result in a goal. The best thing about a goalscorer like Stevie is that they’re always alert. That’s what makes them good forwards, and that’s what made Stevie such a special player.”
John Clark on Stevie Chalmers (2019)