Jock Stein

John Stein was born on 5 October 1922 at 339 Glasgow Road in Hamilton, Lanarkshire, the only son of four children to George Stein, a coal miner, and Jane Armstrong. Stein saw football as his escape from the Lanarkshire coal mines. In 1937, he left Greenfield school in Hamilton and after a short time working in a carpet factory went down the pits to become a miner. In 1940, Stein agreed to sign for Burnbank Athletic, but his father vehemently objected. Soon afterward, he instead joined Blantyre Victoria, another local junior club. Stein first played for senior club Albion Rovers as a trialist in a 4–4 draw against Celtic on 14 November 1942. On 3 December 1942, manager Webber Lees signed Stein for the Coatbridge club. He continued to work as a miner during the week, which was a reserved occupation during the Second World War. This allowed Stein to play regularly, as many of their other players were serving in the Armed Forces. He had a brief loan spell with Dundee United in 1943. Rovers won promotion to the First Division in 1947–48, for only the fourth time in the club's history. During the 1948–49 season, Rovers conceded 105 goals, won only three league games out of 30 and were relegated back to the Second Division. According to Rovers' historian Robin Marwick, Stein played 236 matches for Rovers, who were his longest serving senior club as a player. He scored nine goals, six of which were penalties (he also missed two penalties). His last Rovers appearance was against…

Celtic reserves

In July 1957, Stein was given the job of coaching the Celtic reserve team. His squad included a number of young players who would later play under him in the first team, including Billy McNeill, Bobby Murdoch and John Clark. In his first season as a coach, Stein won the Reserve Cup with an 8–2 aggregate triumph over Rangers. Despite this success, according to football journalist Archie MacPherson, Stein was told by club chairman Robert Kelly he would not progress further at Celtic due to his Protestant faith; Celtic had only previously appointed Catholics as managers, though one of these, Willie Maley had spent 50 years at the club and Stein was only the fourth person to be appointed Celtic manager, after Maley, Jimmy McStay and Jimmy McGrory, who was manager for 20 years. It was later suggested that Stein was allowed to leave Celtic temporarily with the intention of later appointing him manager, but MacPherson found no evidence for this.

Dunfermline

On 14 March 1960, Stein was appointed manager of Dunfermline. When Stein was appointed, the team were only two points above last place and mired in a battle against relegation. The team had not won in four months, but then won their first six matches managed by Stein. To build upon this initial success, Stein signed Willie Cunningham and Tommy McDonald from Leicester City. Dunfermline became a powerful force and Stein guided them to their first Scottish Cup victory in 1961, winning 2–0 in a…

He married Jeanie McAuley in 1946 and they were together until his death 39 years later. They had a son George and daughter Ray. Ray died of cancer on 9 September 2006 aged 59, and was outlived by her mother, who died on 2 August 2007 at the age of 80. George was living in Switzerland by the time of his father's death.

Jock Stein is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential managers in the history of British football. In contrast to his predecessors, he was actively involved in his players training – a "tracksuit manager". And whereas training had previously consisted of mainly running around the track, he introduced practising with the ball into training. He is considered a football visionary; in particular for his time at Celtic where he transformed a side lacking direction and having gone almost eight years without a trophy into the best team in Europe, all whilst playing entertaining adventurous football. Prior to that, he had led Dunfermline Athletic to their first ever Scottish Cup final win. Furthermore, his man-management style and grasp of the psychological side of the game was years ahead of its time. Stein was known to be respected by his peers and an influence on the next generation of managers who would follow in his footsteps; such as those who played under him like Billy McNeill, Kenny Dalglish, Graeme Souness, Alex McLeish, Gordon Strachan; and those who worked under him as coaches like Jim McLean, Walter Smith, Craig Brown and in particular Alex Ferguson. Stein's use of a free–flowing 4–4–2 formation and his relentless, highly offensive strategy with Celtic in the 1967 European Cup final victory over Inter Milan in Lisbon, which saw him overcome Helenio Herrera's highly successful but more defensive–minded catenaccio tactical system, has also retroactively been…