Neil Simpson: I couldn't breathe through one my nostrils for year after Aberdeen's Gothenburg triumph

Name the four players who started every game in Aberdeen's triumphant European Cup Winners' Cup campaign?

Neil Simpson during an event hosted by Aberdeen to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Gothenburg Greats at Pittodrie, on March 21, 2023, in Glasgow, Scotland. (Photo by Alan Harvey / SNS Group)

This head scratcher surely features in the big book of Gothenburg quiz questions those celebrating the Pittodrie club's success of 40 years ago may turn to when passing the time between various anniversary events currently being staged in the city. Skipper Willie Miller, Jim Leighton and Mark McGhee are three more obvious answers, but perhaps less so Neil Simpson. He was just 21-years-old after all when being trusted by Alex Ferguson to patrol midfields from Sion to Sweden during that distinguished campaign.

Nothing fazed him – not even an elbow in the face in the final against Real Madrid in the final that left Simpson sporting a broken nose weeks before he was due to get married. “Paco Bonet, the centre half, was running alongside me and elbowed me in the face,” recalls Simpson. “The cartilage was right at the side of my nose and I couldn’t breathe through one of my nostrils for a year, until I could get the operation. I was down on the ground for about 30 seconds. I was really dazed and then I shook myself, got up and got on with it. It was cold and wet so we just got on with it.”

The conditions suited Simpson. “I loved slide tackles. You saw a few skimming across the surface and it did suit Neale (Cooper) as well. We could also play as well. We were up against (Ricardo) Gallego and (Uli) Stielike, two international players." He had already played against the likes of Lothar Mattheus, Ruud Gullit, Giuseppe Bergomi and Franco Baresi for the Scotland Under-21s, as well as Bayern Munich pair Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and Paul Breitner in the Cup Winners' Cup quarter final.

Aberdeen team pictured with the European Cup Winners' Cup after beating Real Madrid.

Simpson might have been a country boy but he was no innocent abroad. He is from a farming background and so knew how to look after himself. He will at least have some idea how to drive sheep down Union Street, reputed to be a perk of being conferred the freedom of Aberdeen. Simpson is due to receive this honour today alongside his surviving teammates. Ecstatic fans rather than livestock clogged up the same street 40 years ago today to hail the returning heroes.

Was Simpson able to take it all in? A local hero had become a legend while in his early 20s. It’s taken four decades to grant him some perspective. "People are generous with their praise," he says. “We have street cred amongst the younger ones because it was Bayern Munich and Real Madrid (we defeated). No disrespect (but) if it had been a Romanian or Austrian team then it would have maybe been dismissed a bit more. For young people now, it's a case of: 'wow you were pretty good back then!'”

Now 61, Simpson is Aberdeen's Pathways Manager at the club's youth academy. But alongside the likes of Cooper and Eric Black, he was the future once. Remarkably, Alex Ferguson thought nothing of pairing 19-year-old Cooper with the barely much older Simpson in a European final against such distinguished opponents. “Somebody told me the fact that we were the youngest pairing to win a European final,” says Simpson. “I don’t know how true it is but some statto told me that a couple of years ago.”

Tragically, Cooper, the youngest member of the Aberdeen side, was the first of the gang to die. He passed away five years ago aged just 54. “He was a great teammate and also the life and soul of the dressing room,” says Simpson. “In terms of camaraderie and getting people going he was brilliant. I just laughed at him. We did a get-together with the players the year he died. I was on stage with him and I just had tears going down my face. He was so funny. He told story after story and did Fergie impressions. As soon as you had to go out on the pitch, he was someone you could rely on, technically was very good and was good in the air. He would never let you down."

Bayern Munich's Klaus Augenthaler (left) looks on as Aberdeen's Neil Simpson scores a goal to level the scores at 1-1 at Pittodrie.

The players will celebrate what would have been Cooper’s 60th birthday at a dinner in November to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Super Cup win over Hamburg, which crowned the triumph in Gothenburg six months earlier. Such glories meant the same to the likes of Willie Miller, brought up in the shadow of Celtic Park, as it did to Simpson, who although born in London went to primary school in the village of Sauchen in Aberdeenshire before moving to Newmachar, ten miles north west of Aberdeen.

But learning that Simpson used to pretend he was Joe Harper or Zoltan Varga in the playground adds an extra ingredient to his story. He even once dreamt about setting up Harper for a goal, something that later came true. "On my debut (in 1978), we played against Hamilton Accies and I came on as a sub and I actually set up one of his goals in a 7-1 win at Pittodrie," he recalls.

Simmy was on his way. From being the young supporter who got a thrill from touching the ball when a wayward shot flew into the crowd, as happened once in a game against Dundee, to becoming the beating heart of the team that conquered Europe just a few years later. “My uncle caught it,” he recalls. “He gave me the ball and it was every kid’s dream to throw it back.”

In Simpson’s case, dreams tended to come true. But not even he could have imagined what would later unfold.