The most famous team of winners in Scottish football has just celebrated its 40th anniversary with a tented banquet on the pitch at Celtic Park in Glasgow.
 
The 11 heroes were dubbed the Lisbon Lions after a legendary night in the Portuguese capital. On 25 May 1967, Celtic Football Club made history by becoming the first British team to win the European Cup.
 
The Hoops beat the much-fancied Inter Milan 2-1 with goals from Tommy Gemmell, the big shot fullback, and forward Stevie Chalmers. It was a formidable achievement by a team of Scots all born within a 30-mile radius of the Glasgow club. Three of the original Lions – goalkeeper Ronnie Simpson, Bobby Murdoch and the incomparable Jimmy Johnstone, have since died, but in this book their surviving colleagues speak with tremendous affection about their team-mates.
 
This book is a pot-pourri of wonderful footballing memories - but are there real lessons about winning?
 
The man who moulded this team was the late and great Celtic manager Jock Stein. His arrival at Celtic Park in March 1965 turned a group of talented individuals into a winning machine – but they also did it with style and vivacity.
 
What can be gleaned from this collection of reminiscences is the respect that the team had for Big Jock. Stein was a master of sports psychology before it even became fashionable. He was a great motivator, as Stevie Chalmers explains:
“Jock Stein use to con me rotten. I can never thank him enough for that! He was a master manipulator, that’s for sure, and Celtic would never have won the European Cup without him”
 
He would leave Chalmers out of the first team and then take him aside and say: “Look, I know you should be playing. You’re a better player than that mug who’s in your position but I’ve got to play him. You should be keeping him out of the side but he’s in and you’re not and it’s up to you to do something about it. Force me to play you.”
 
He would say the same to the other players and it worked a treat. Chalmers says: “Everyone wanted into that first team and, even when you were dropped, you were geed up because The Boss thought you were better than the player in your position and you just had to work that wee bit harder to get your place back.”
 
This is the kind of insight that explains a lot about how Stein managed to turn the Scots into the best team in Europe. Jim Craig tells his story about Stein’s way with the players.
 
In the first half of the final, a Craig tackle on Renato Cappellini resulted in a penalty for Inter Milan. Celtic went into the dressing room 1-0 down at half time.
 
“Jock came over, threw an arm around me and said, ‘Don’t worry, Cairney [Craig’s nickname] that was never a penalty. Never in a million years. Don’t blame yourself. Put it behind you. Show then what you can do in the second half.”
 
Then, at the end of the game, after Celtic had won the trophy, Jock Stein’s tone became much darker: “What on earth were you thinking about at the penalty? What a stupid tackle. You almost cost us the European Cup with that daft tackle.”
 
Craig acknowledges that this was typical of the boss. “He knew the right buttons to push at the right time.”
 
Jock Stein was a genius. But he also had a ferocious temper and he could let fly if he wasn’t happy with the team’s performances. After one bad first half display, the Celtic team were getting a telling-off in the dressing room. Each player was given a separate dressing down and then he turned to Jim Craig who hadn’t been playing in the first half. “And you, Cairney, just how bad are you that you can’t even get in this team.”
 
This book is more a series of match anecdotes, rather than any analysis of how Celtic managed to become such a superb team. But it’s an enjoyable book to delve into – and one that gives a glimpse of an era when Scottish football could claim to be among the best in the world. Changed days indeed.

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