Glenn Gibbons: Brews with Jock Stein were Alex Ferguson's cup of tea

Published on Friday 24 September 2010 15:31

No event could have provided a more appropriate - or poignant - reminder of the revolutionary changes in football in modern times than the recently-marked 25th anniversary of the death of Jock Stein.

To the most illustrious of those who have succeeded him over the past quarter of a century, the late Celtic and Scotland manager was the giant on whose shoulders they stood, enabling them, in the famous dictum of Isaac Newton, to see further.

None of those who followed, of course, has either been as far-sighted or achieved such distinction as Sir Alex Ferguson, so deeply influenced by Stein that he was able to surpass the latter's haul of major trophies, at home and in Europe, some time ago.

The Manchester United manager is an entirely apposite star pupil, who not only was Stein's assistant with the national team on the night he was killed by a heart attack, but attributes his accomplishments without hesitation to the lessons learned from him since his own earliest days in management 36 years ago.

In an extensive reminiscence about his mentor - his "idol" may be even more apt - two or three years ago, Ferguson, the scourge of the Old Firm as the brilliantly-inspired manager of Aberdeen in 1985, made the quite startling revelation that he would happily have spent the rest of his days as Stein's lieutenant.

For emphasis, he added: "I'm serious about that. I could have stayed Jock's assistant forever. The best days of my playing career were with Dunfermline, but, as a manager, I've never had better times than I did as Jock's assistant with Scotland.

"Back then, most of the international matches were played in midweek, and the squad would gather on the Sunday before. Jock and I would check in to our hotel on the Saturday night, though, and there would begin the most brilliant and fascinating experiences any football manager could want. Jimmy Steel, the old Celtic and Scotland masseur and a great friend of Jock's, would keep the pots of tea coming as Jock would fill my head with his own intelligence and wisdom.

"At around three in the morning, I'd say, 'Jock, I really have to go to bed, we've a big day tomorrow'. He'd just say, 'Ach, you can have a nap in the afternoon. Steely, go and get us another pot of tea.' He hardly slept, of course, and loved nothing better than having company during those late hours. To me, it was a godsend, and I never wanted it to end."

Ferguson is not only Stein's natural successor through his accomplishments but the one clearly anointed by the big man himself. He is also, however, the direct link to an earlier, less complicated age, one which seemed, almost spookily, to take its leave along with Jock.

Within a few months of his funeral, Rangers had been taken over by the Lawrence construction company and the resurgence of the Ibrox club's fortunes under managing director David Holmes and manager Graeme Souness marked the beginning of the previously inconceivable commercialisation of a game which had been - the abolition of the maximum wage in 1960 excepted - largely untouched for a century.

The significance and scale of the sea change instigated by Rangers would be indicated by the declaration made by Freddie Fletcher, then the newly-appointed commercial director at Ibrox and later chief executive of Newcastle United. In what was at that time a staggering pronouncement on a previously inconceivable development, Fletcher said: "It is our ultimate aim to create a commercial model in which gate money amounts to only 30 per cent of our annual income."

There would soon follow the first 1,000-a-week footballers, satellite television with its riches and its demands for ever more soundbites and match scheduling and, of course, the rise of what is now the ubiquitous agent.

All the silverware notwithstanding, among Ferguson's most towering achievements has been his longevity and, above all, his capacity for accommodating the kind of changes that managers of his and, especially, Stein's generation would have instinctively considered reprehensible and potentially damaging. Those of us who knew Jock well, including the Old Trafford manager himself, will go to our own graves wondering if his famous intolerance of inflated egos - particularly those that sprang from notably modest talents - would have coped with the conceits of the modern player and his retinue.