Sunday Herald 24 August 2003
John … you're immortal
Bill Shankly said it to him after Celtic lifted the European Cup in 1967 and it seems the big man’s magic really does live on as Jock Stein is named Scotland’s Greatest Football Manager. Michael Grant looks back at the voting process IN the 11 weeks since the Sunday Herald named the 50 greatest managers in Scottish football history, only one of them has enhanced his reputation by winning yet another piece of silverware.
Taking possession of the FA Community Shield after a victory on penalties over Arsenal is a paltry reward for Sir Alex Ferguson, though, given that he has missed out on a greater accolade. You have voted Jock Stein the best manager Scotland has ever produced, with Ferguson second.In the most comprehensive celebration there has ever been of Scotland’s great football leaders, the contest between these two extraordinary managers had the intrigue and unpredictability of a championship race.
Thousands of votes were cast as we presented 10 candidates for the honour of being named Scotland’s best. Stein edged it by a whisker. Our summer-long vote received the largest reader response of any competition or poll in this newspaper’s four-and-a-half-year history, gripping the imagination of football supporters and compelling them to vote for their favourite.
On June 8 we listed our choice of the country’s 50 greatest managers and ranked them in order from Tommy Burns in 50th position down to Willie Waddell in 11th. Then we left the rest up to you. We presented the top 10 and, in the format successfully used in the BBC’s “Great Britons” vote, profiled one contender a week while inviting your vote via the internet, e-mail, letters and telephone calls. The Sunday Herald has never known a reaction like it.
From the outset it was clear there were really only three candidates in the contest: Stein, Ferguson and, surprisingly, the trophy-laden Rangers manager Bill Struth. The iron disciplinarian of Ibrox won his last trophy half a century ago but interestingly received more votes than more celebrated icons such as Sir Matt Busby and Bill Shankly. Perhaps that suggested many votes were cast with a nod to club allegiances. Each of the final top three would have had a substantial number of admirers among general football supporters, but Stein’s voters were doubtless predominantly Celtic fans, Ferguson’s largely Aberdeen and Manchester United supporters, and Struth’s owing their allegiance to Rangers.
But even so, Struth was soon running third in a two-horse race.Stein shot into an imm- ediate lead when voting began but was gradually pegged back by Ferguson. Although Stein was ahead or shared the lead for nine of the 10 weeks of voting, it became increasingly close. He even slipped behind Ferguson in the days after the Manchester United boss’s record was highlighted by our essay on him. That was to be an especially rewarding aspect of the poll for us, in that the vote for one of the 10 candidates would invariably rise in the aftermath of them being profiled by one of our writers.
Hopefully we can take from that that you have found the series as entertaining and informative to read as it has been for us to compile.Stein’s eventual victory suggests that supporters in this country regard turning a Scottish club into the champions of Europe to be the pinnacle of our managerial achievement.I argued the case for Ferguson in these pages on August 3 but no-one could get too worked up about the honour going to Stein given the astonishing contribution he made to our game and the legacy he left Celtic.
This poll has provided confirmation, though none was required, of the special affection felt towards a man whose life was taken while serving Scotland 18 years ago. Stein’s name reverberates as powerfully today as it did that dreadful September night in Cardiff in 1985 when he died after Scotland played Wales in a World Cup qualifier. Ferguson might win another half dozen Premiership titles and not supplant Stein as far as some people are concerned. It is clear, too, that many football supporters below the age of 30 had sufficient understanding and appreciation of what he achieved to have cast their votes for Stein.
From the very beginning the series generated reaction and debate. We would have been surprised and disappointed if it had not. Letters and e-mails soon arrived telling us why our ranking was strange, inexplicable or downright wrong. Some readers took umbrage at John Lambie’s exclusion from the list of 50 and one of his former players even left a telephone message chiding us for the omission.
Hopefully you otherwise enjoyed the series, Chic. Interest was so keen that we even had to modify one of the rules after it had been explained in our introductory week. We had said readers could vote as often as they liked for their chosen manager, but some interpreted that as an opportunity to take liberties.Someone intent on seeing Struth win set up a computer programme which could automatically log an internet vote on his behalf every five seconds, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
That crashed the company’s entire e-mail system for a spell, but subsequently those votes were isolated and discounted. They were against the spirit of the contest. If we had not acted, the least popular candidate of the 10 might have outstripped Stein simply because a single supporter was able to launch a programme that could cynically bombard us with thousands of votes.What we have instead is a final result that we believe is representative of the general public feeling.
As far as we are concerned, the final 50 is definitive but it is also only a snapshot in time. It would be nice to think that any list of Scotland’s greatest managers is a work in progress and that young and emerging figures such as Alex McLeish, Davie Moyes and Gordon Strachan might event-ually muscle in to what we currently regard to be the elite.Perhaps their day will come but in the meantime Stein reigns. He was neck-and-neck with Ferguson going into the final week but in the end
The Big Man’s vote was the biggest. Hopefully Mr Stein’s family and the players who served him will be especially pleased by his victory in this national vote, but if this series has reminded us of anything it is that when it comes to producing exceptional football managers every Scot has much of which they can be proud.