When I told a friend I wanted to write about former Dundee United manager Jim McLean after news of his passing last week, he wasn’t convinced.
“A lot of people in Dundee know a lot about him. I don’t know if you should.”
His point was that I wasn’t one of those people and maybe best leave it to the football commentators to speak of his character, controversial team management and successes.
But that’s exactly the point, I told him.
Even to me – by no means a football expert and who’s not even a Dundee United fan – McLean meant a lot.
His status in Dundee during the club’s glory years is hard to describe. What he did was incredible.
Pitching up at Tannadice in December 1971, lured from a coaching position across the road at Dens (he was also a player at Dundee), he was only 34.
United’s board offered him the job, it is said, because the Dark Blues always seemed to be incredibly fit under McLean’s leadership.
When he turned 40 at the start of the 1977-78 season, he was preparing to lead United to third in the Scottish top flight – the club’s highest position to that point.
He then led them to the Scottish Premier Division title in 1982-83 after consecutive League Cup triumphs in 1979 and 1980.
But more was to come, making the stage bigger and more global by taking them to the European Cup semi-finals in 1983-84 and the Uefa Cup final three seasons later.
By achieving the unthinkable, Jim McLean didn’t just make a hero of himself and his team. He made Arab-leaning swathes of Dundee feel like heroes too. He made wearing tangerine and black cool and instilled the belief that anything was possible. For United yes, but also on some level for our wee city, punching well above its weight.
I remember summer days as a kid spent at Forthill Sports Club in the Ferry (where incidentally Jim’s son Gary, a handsome teen at the time, a few years older than me, would sometimes hang out) when kids would wear their new United strips like badges of honour.
I remember my United-daft school pal Sarah Jane wearing orange and black war paint, singing every song about every player on the back of a bus like her life depended on it.
She went on to get a Blue, the highest honour from Oxford University, playing for the women’s football team, primed by her four older brothers who made her be goalie as a wee girl, pelting the ball at her until she had no fear.
I remember my Papa, Davie Maxwell, who latterly lived right in the middle of Tannadice and Dens on Hindmarsh Avenue, tell me we should be proud of both clubs.
Controversially, he switched allegiances in the 60s to United, but belonged to an old school group of fans who’d see both sides play, week about.
So although half my family supported Dundee, I knew it was OK to be proud of what McLean had achieved.
RIP a man who did something incredibly special for United and Dundee itself – and thoughts to his wife Doris and sons Colin and Gary.
https://www.eveningtelegraph.co.uk/fp/jim-mclean-dundee-united-legend-book-articleisfree/
This article originally appeared on the Evening Telegraph website. For more information, read about our new combined website.