F365 Posted 04/11/08 13:42 by John Nicholson (from http://www.football365.com/john_nicholson/0,17033,8746_4454526,00.html[/I]) Bill Shankly has been dead for over 27 years and yet his reputation and status remain undiminished to all who witnessed him and to those who know their football history. Respected as much for the man he was as for his football nous, it's worth revisiting the man to remind ourselves of his remarkable story and achievements. Born in 1913 in Glenbuck, a small mining village of less than a thousand people in east Ayrshire, he was one of ten kids - all five brothers went on to play professional football. His mother's brothers were director of Carlisle United and chairman of Portsmouth, so he came out of the womb steeped in the game. He left school aged 14 to go down the pit for two and six a week and worked there until he was 19 when, after a successful spell playing amateur football for Cronberry Eglinton, he was signed by Carlisle United in 1932. The following year he transferred for £500 to Preston with whom he won the first Division in 1934. He was crucial to that team's success, playing in the old wing-half position. He played in the first televised cup final against Huddersfield, winning after extra time, and was capped seven times for Scotland. Like many men, the war years fatally disrupted his career and he retired in 1948. Before ending up at Liverpool he managed in the lower leagues at Carlisle, Grimsby, Workington and Huddersfield, where he signed a young Denis Law. His reputation as a fierce disciplinarian and motivational manager was already well established. He was unusually a tea-totaller and was years ahead of his time in terms of promoting fitness regimes. Liverpool were in the second division when Shankly took over. Two third-place finishes were the prelude to a title-winning season in 1962-63. Two seasons later they were First Division champions - such meteoric rises could happen in those days. He had turned an ailing club into one of England's biggest and best in just a few years. The Liverpool F.C. we know today was born in this era. From top to bottom he transformed Anfield. He put together a side fitter and stronger than any other. He created what came to be known as The Boot Room. So fit and strong were his sides that when they won the 1965-66 First Division title, they used just 14 players and two of them were bit-part players. Shankly delivered the ten most successful years the club had to date winning two FA Cups, two more league titles and a UEFA Cup before retiring in 1974 aged 60. His successor Bob Paisley would build even bigger, more prolonged success onto the base that Shanks had created. That's the bald facts but perhaps even more importantly in that period, Shanks became a mythic figure of quite epic proportions; a people's poet and philosopher. At times he seemed to be a father figure to the whole red half of the city and the football world beyond. How this happened at a time when the fledgling media spent little time focusing on footballers, let alone its managers, is genuinely astonishing and proof of the sheer irrepressible character of the man. He was of course aided by the fact that, at the time, the city of Liverpool was at the vortex of popular culture thanks to The Beatles, so anything Liverpool related caught people's attention. Hand in hand with the rise of The Beatles was the depiction and celebration of the working class through the plays and novels of Osborne, Delaney, Sillitoe and many others. For perhaps the first time, it was cool to be working-class and more than that it was especially cool to be northern and working-class. Films like Billy Liar, A Taste of Honey, Saturday Night, Sunday Morning and This Sporting Life were played out against a northern backdrop of decaying mills, chimneys and dirt. Coronation Street was gritty and full of memorable characters the like of which we had all grown up with. Social mobility was at an all-time high as bright kids from deprived backgrounds became successful. Into this fertile seed compost of modern culture was planted Bill Shankly. In previous eras his superb west of Scotland accent might have simply made people tune out but now, in the new reality, where the working-class had something to say and a ready audience who wanted to listen, he was not only heard, he was appreciated. "The socialism I believe in is everybody working for the same goal and everybody having a share in the rewards. That's how I see football, that's how I see life." Born into an industry based on collectivised labour, socialism was in his DNA. He even changed Liverpool's strip to all red. The red of revolution made the players seem bigger and fiercer. He was a proper man of the people and thought it part of his job to write to fans personally and even called on fans at their homes to discuss how the game had gone. This wasn't PR puffery, this was his way. He saw football as pure working-class art; of the people, by the people and if the team failed, then he had failed the people. He would give tickets away to fans. It's no wonder the fans adored him really. He paid them respect and took notice of them. He saw them all as part of the same thing. They all won and all lost together. This collectivist spirit was imbued into the players. They were a team, not a set of individuals. When Tommy Smith once informed him his knee was injured, Shanks insisted that "it's not your knee, its Liverpool's knee". He possessed a dry wit, saying if Everton were playing at the bottom of the garden he'd draw the curtains and telling Smith he could start a riot in a graveyard. There are a seemingly inexhaustible supply of Shanks wit and wisdom all dispensed in the papers and on local TV news to a public eager to lap it up. His success as a manager helped cement his legend but regardless of the silverware he was one of those rare individuals who innately commanded respect. It's a nebulous attribute that is impossible to define but it is undoubtedly true of Shanks that both fans and players would have walked on hot coals for him. Even now, ex-players queue up to re-tell tales they have told hundreds of times before, seemingly not wanting their memories of the great man die. Shankly wasn't around in the public eye for long, little more than 14 years at Liverpool, probably ten of which he was in the full glare of the limelight. It feels like it was much much longer. His impact was so intense, so stellar that it burned an indelible mark into football. He built two successful sides at Liverpool, the mid 60s Roger Hunt and Ron Yeats side and the early 70s Tommy Smith and Kevin Keegan side. In an era of the long ball they played a pass and move game coupled with an almost brutal aggression. Much like Shankly himself, it combined style and precision with physicality. He was a man of the people to the last, dying like every good Scotsman, of a heart attack. Somehow, when you go to Liverpool FC or even just to the city itself, it is possible to still feel Shankly's presence. It's in the atoms, in the molecules, in the dark matter of the place so deeply has his influence soaked. And if you're in any doubt as to his qualities, search out an interview with him. It's a testament to the fecundity of his words that interviews conducted 40 years ago still have wisdom and resonance; they still inspire. Few can be called great football men; even fewer can be called great men. Shankly was both.
If You're Second You Are Nothing: Ferguson and Shankly I enjoyed reading this book in the last year comparing Bill Shankly and Alex Ferguson. It is a very good read and really makes me understand the natures of these great managers and there total dedication to their teams http://www.amazon.co.uk/Youre-Second-You-Are-Nothing/dp/0330443143
great article and a fitting tribute to the legend who has brought us to where we are today and higher
Never get tired of reading the Shankly legend another great book is "Much More Important Than That" by Stephen F Kelly link