Can you define charisma?
Neither can I.
So I’m just gonna say that Brian Clough was a one-off.
There was nobody like him before he won the title with Derby County in 1972. And there’s been nobody like him since Nottingham Forest won the European Cup in 1979 and 1980.
I thought I knew everything about Clough and Peter Taylor, having lived through their era and read four books about them.
But I Believe In Miracles : The remarkable story of Brian Clough’s European Cup-winning team reveals many significant facts and hilarious anecdotes that are new to me.
Outrageous stuff happened back then, things that are beyond belief from where we are now, and I laughed over 100 times as I read these 300 pages.
Clough could be funny and charming but also obnoxious, as he was one day in Barcelona, where Forest were playing a pre-season game when Caesar Luis Menotti, the great Argentinian manager, was in charge of the Catalan giants. He took a cigarette from Menotti’s mouth, dropped it on the ground and stamped it out.
This book concentrates on what Clough and Peter Taylor did in those three seasons of success at Forest, how that team was created, and the originality of Clough’s methods.
Left back Frank Clark, let go by Newcastle at the age of 29, turned out to be one of the most astute free transfers in history.
By contrast, Viv Anderson and Tony Woodcock were kids in the reserves when Clough arrived in 1975.
Garry Birtles, a carpet-layer playing in non-league at Long Eaton, was watched by Clough, who said, “The half-time Bovril was better than he was.”
But Peter Taylor watched him and then arranged a trial at Forest. The carpet layer was signed for £2,000 and the rest is history.
Later on, whenever the players got a £2,000 bonus, they called it “a Birtles.”
Taylor, a former goalkeeper, knew that the capture of Peter Shilton from Stoke was a game-changer. After that, anything was possible.
Clough created a perfectly balanced team of craftsmen and warriors by tremendous buying and selling, and gave them the belief to overcome huge challenges by uncanny man-management. They were unbeatable because he made them feel unbeatable.
All the players craved Clough’s approval but found that didn’t come easily. Centre half Larry Lloyd, a Liverpool reject, was a rough character who often wanted to throttle his manager. The duo transformed Kenny Burns, a centre forward at Birmingham, into a defender who played alongside Lloyd.
Clough, a brilliant bully, did bold things, crazy and radical things, all the time, mainly to keep everyone on their toes.
If a player was off-form, he’d sometimes be told he was the first name on the team sheet for Saturday.
He signed Trevor Francis, the first £1m player, then gave him his debut in the Forest A team.
Since most of Forest’s attacks were down the left flank, right winger Martin O’Neill often felt unloved. He says, “I felt as if I was always trying to prove him wrong, whereas some of the others were trying to prove him right. Some people, like John Robertson, played the game to prove Clough right that he was a great player.”
One day the manager stopped a training session because he knew O’Neill was sulking, and told the player that the session would not resume unto he said what his problem was. When O’Neill refused, Clough insisted, saying that nobody would move until he spat it out.
“Fine, I want to know why I’m in the second team.”
“I can answer that. Because you’re too good for the third team.”
Unfortunately, the British media are obsessed with Manchester United and Liverpool, so the special abilities of that group of Forest players was never fully understood or recognised.
However, a German author later realised that their journey from 1977 to 1980 was a unique fairytale.
Nottingham Forest, he concluded, had become the best club team in England out of nowhere: “In just two years they rose from near obscurity to the greatest prize in the world of club football. They were football’s equivalent of the Napoleon of 1797 and the Beatles of 1963. And they deserve those comparisons. They must surely lay claim to being the most remarkable club team in football history. No team from any country had achieved such a feat before. No team will ever achieve that feat again.”
Clough once described two-footed winger John Robertson as “the Picasso of our game”.
Robertson remembers Brian Clough’s first day at Forest :
It was the aura. It was the moment the dressing-room door almost flew off its hinges. It was the way, before uttering a single word, that in one swift movement Clough was already taking off his jacket and flinging it at a wall peg, as if he had been there for years. Clough being Clough, it landed plum on the hook. It was like a whirlwind coming in. I’ve never seen anyone in my life with so much charisma. All I could think was: ‘Jesus, this guy means business.”
Nottingham is the smallest city in Europe to win club football’s biggest trophy.
London has won the Cup with Big Ears once. Nottingham has won it twice.
If your best friend loves football, buy two copies of I Believe In Miracles.