Chelsea legend Eddie McCreadie keeps his distance
https://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/chelsea-legend-eddie-mccreadie-keeps-his-distance-1-3307268
Saturday 15 February 2014
I know this is from 2014 , thought it worth reposting.
WHILE he might be harder to track down now, there was once a time when everyone knew where to find Eddie McCreadie.
He was performing at left-back for Chelsea when London, and the King’s Road, was the place to be. For a former East Stirlingshire player, it represented quite a step.
Eddie McCreadie embraces quiet retirement in East Tennessee.
Towards the end of the 1961/62 season he was playing in the old Scottish Second Division. At the start of the following campaign, he was in the Chelsea first-team, having been offered a contract on the spot by Tommy Docherty after a Scottish league match. “And I wasn’t dropped again for 12 years,” says McCreadie.
He was a permanent fixture in the Chelsea team for most of the 1960s and early 1970s. After he stopped playing he was then quickly promoted to manager. “I was only the tenth coach in the history of a club formed in 1905, that is a considerable compliment,” he notes, with understandable pride. Of these ten, five were Scots, in a further illustration of the club’s strong Scottish ties. It makes McCreadie’s long absence from Stamford Bridge in the time since he resigned his post, after winning promotion from the Second Division, seem all the more marked, and mysterious.
Originally from Glasgow, he has been born again in east Tennessee. “My accent might be a bit different, but I am still very much Scottish and very proud of it,” he says. “It’s just that I have not been back for some time,” he adds, with considerable understatement. The McCreadie of yore is still cherished at Stamford Bridge, however much the club has changed in the interim. To this day there is a bar called McCreadie’s in the Shed End stand. “I have never been, but I have seen pictures,” he says. “It is very humbling.”
Even now, a plaintively sung chorus of ‘Oh Eddie Mac, when are you coming back?’ is sometimes struck up by Chelsea supporters. It might be heard from the away fans today, when Chelsea take on Manchester City in the fifth round of the FA Cup. It is a competition McCreadie helped Chelsea win for the first time in the same city in 1970. A replay, held at Old Trafford, was required to settle the final against Leeds United, one that was watched by 28 million people on television. They looked on as McCreadie nearly decapitated his friend and compatriot Billy Bremner with a flying challenge (the clip is still popular on YouTube).
Chelsea captain Eddie McCreadie changes his shirt at half time, 23rd November 1972. Picture: Getty
Remarkably, no penalty was awarded and Chelsea went on to win 2-1 after extra time. “I got a few knocks myself, though I did most of them to myself,” concedes McCreadie, who rates George Best as the finest player he faced in a list that includes Pele. “I did not take too many prisoners when I was playing. I enjoyed that side of the game, but I wasn’t dirty I didn’t think.”
If anyone wishes to own the jersey McCreadie wore in the first match against Leeds at Wembley then it is for sale on Ebay now, currently priced at just over £5000 and apparently given to the seller “by a family friend soon after the game”. It certainly helps support McCreadie’s claim that he does not own a single souvenir from his time in football; rather, he chose to give everything away.
“Chelsea called me about a year-and-a-half ago and asked if I could give them something like a jersey for the museum,” he recalls. “And I did not have anything! I had given everything away. Every shirt I had, every medal, I gave them away, don’t ask me to who. I just gave them to people. I had several things in my home in London that people could see. I felt after a while that when friends come to your home, you don’t have to throw in their faces who you are. Although I am very proud of my career, I had a change of heart, and I took everything down, and gave everything away.”
It is as if McCeadie has shed his skin. And in a way, he has. There is scant recent information about the former Chelsea and Scotland full-back, and you get the impression that this is the way he likes it. Last heard of in the United States, where he went to take up a coaching post with the short-lived North American Soccer League side Memphis Rogues, one thing was certain; he has not been seen at Chelsea for decades, not since he left his post as manager very suddenly in July 1977.
“It would take a combination of both Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot to get to the bottom of Eddie,” wrote Alan Hudson in a column in the Stoke Sentinel in 2002 after a visit to see his former team-mate. Hudson is of the few ex-Chelsea players to have seen him in person in the last 25 years. In the same column, Hudson noted that his old friend distinguished himself by being “a left-back and wing-back all rolled into one”. There was always something a little different about McCreadie. For example, not many players include a self-penned poem in their testimonial programme:
I’ve never felt so happy/And yet sad/I love you today/It might be cold tomorrow.
These lines could have been written about his relationship with Chelsea. They certainly seemed to anticipate a parting of ways, something that eventually happened after McCreadie led them to promotion two seasons after he was handed the reins at the already relegated club in 1975. The dispute is long reported to have centred on a company car. Bobby Campbell, his opposite number at Fulham, had one, and McCreadie did not. Even then such a scenario must have seemed faintly ridiculous; more so now, in view of the largesse with which the club is now associated. At the modern day Chelsea, it is likely that even the groundsman position includes such a perk.
<img src="https://images-e.jpimedia.uk/imagefetch/w_auto,f_auto,ar_3:2,q_auto:low,c_fill/if_h_lte_200,c_mfit,h_201/https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/webimage/1.4943718.1560009517!/image/image.jpg" class="teaser__image" alt="Ian Cathro with his team ahead of a penalty shoot-out against Dunfermline in the Betfred Cup" />
“I know you have to ask about that,” he says, during a near hour-long, once briefly interrupted, conversation. When the battery in his cordless phone dies, McCreadie quickly calls back on his cellphone. Among the messages he wishes to put across is that the particular detail about a car is not accurate. “Everyone has that wrong,” he says. “It was nothing to do with a car. I am not going into details. I left because I resigned. It is assumed that I was not happy at the time, and no, I was not happy at the time. It was a disagreement between myself and the directors at the club, but these things happen. Am I mad at anyone? Of course not, but it was a decision I felt I had to make.”
“I love Chelsea, Alan,” he continues. “Please put that in. It is the greatest club in the world and every day I was there they treated me with the highest respect, took care of me, and as manager as well. We just had a disagreement that time. Things happen. There was a disagreement and I left because I felt it was the right thing to do. It was a difficult time for me, as it was for them.”
https://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/chelsea-legend-eddie-mccreadie-keeps-his-distance-1-3307268
Saturday 15 February 2014
I know this is from 2014 , thought it worth reposting.
WHILE he might be harder to track down now, there was once a time when everyone knew where to find Eddie McCreadie.
He was performing at left-back for Chelsea when London, and the King’s Road, was the place to be. For a former East Stirlingshire player, it represented quite a step.
Eddie McCreadie embraces quiet retirement in East Tennessee.
Towards the end of the 1961/62 season he was playing in the old Scottish Second Division. At the start of the following campaign, he was in the Chelsea first-team, having been offered a contract on the spot by Tommy Docherty after a Scottish league match. “And I wasn’t dropped again for 12 years,” says McCreadie.
He was a permanent fixture in the Chelsea team for most of the 1960s and early 1970s. After he stopped playing he was then quickly promoted to manager. “I was only the tenth coach in the history of a club formed in 1905, that is a considerable compliment,” he notes, with understandable pride. Of these ten, five were Scots, in a further illustration of the club’s strong Scottish ties. It makes McCreadie’s long absence from Stamford Bridge in the time since he resigned his post, after winning promotion from the Second Division, seem all the more marked, and mysterious.
Originally from Glasgow, he has been born again in east Tennessee. “My accent might be a bit different, but I am still very much Scottish and very proud of it,” he says. “It’s just that I have not been back for some time,” he adds, with considerable understatement. The McCreadie of yore is still cherished at Stamford Bridge, however much the club has changed in the interim. To this day there is a bar called McCreadie’s in the Shed End stand. “I have never been, but I have seen pictures,” he says. “It is very humbling.”
Even now, a plaintively sung chorus of ‘Oh Eddie Mac, when are you coming back?’ is sometimes struck up by Chelsea supporters. It might be heard from the away fans today, when Chelsea take on Manchester City in the fifth round of the FA Cup. It is a competition McCreadie helped Chelsea win for the first time in the same city in 1970. A replay, held at Old Trafford, was required to settle the final against Leeds United, one that was watched by 28 million people on television. They looked on as McCreadie nearly decapitated his friend and compatriot Billy Bremner with a flying challenge (the clip is still popular on YouTube).
Chelsea captain Eddie McCreadie changes his shirt at half time, 23rd November 1972. Picture: Getty
Remarkably, no penalty was awarded and Chelsea went on to win 2-1 after extra time. “I got a few knocks myself, though I did most of them to myself,” concedes McCreadie, who rates George Best as the finest player he faced in a list that includes Pele. “I did not take too many prisoners when I was playing. I enjoyed that side of the game, but I wasn’t dirty I didn’t think.”
If anyone wishes to own the jersey McCreadie wore in the first match against Leeds at Wembley then it is for sale on Ebay now, currently priced at just over £5000 and apparently given to the seller “by a family friend soon after the game”. It certainly helps support McCreadie’s claim that he does not own a single souvenir from his time in football; rather, he chose to give everything away.
“Chelsea called me about a year-and-a-half ago and asked if I could give them something like a jersey for the museum,” he recalls. “And I did not have anything! I had given everything away. Every shirt I had, every medal, I gave them away, don’t ask me to who. I just gave them to people. I had several things in my home in London that people could see. I felt after a while that when friends come to your home, you don’t have to throw in their faces who you are. Although I am very proud of my career, I had a change of heart, and I took everything down, and gave everything away.”
It is as if McCeadie has shed his skin. And in a way, he has. There is scant recent information about the former Chelsea and Scotland full-back, and you get the impression that this is the way he likes it. Last heard of in the United States, where he went to take up a coaching post with the short-lived North American Soccer League side Memphis Rogues, one thing was certain; he has not been seen at Chelsea for decades, not since he left his post as manager very suddenly in July 1977.
“It would take a combination of both Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot to get to the bottom of Eddie,” wrote Alan Hudson in a column in the Stoke Sentinel in 2002 after a visit to see his former team-mate. Hudson is of the few ex-Chelsea players to have seen him in person in the last 25 years. In the same column, Hudson noted that his old friend distinguished himself by being “a left-back and wing-back all rolled into one”. There was always something a little different about McCreadie. For example, not many players include a self-penned poem in their testimonial programme:
I’ve never felt so happy/And yet sad/I love you today/It might be cold tomorrow.
These lines could have been written about his relationship with Chelsea. They certainly seemed to anticipate a parting of ways, something that eventually happened after McCreadie led them to promotion two seasons after he was handed the reins at the already relegated club in 1975. The dispute is long reported to have centred on a company car. Bobby Campbell, his opposite number at Fulham, had one, and McCreadie did not. Even then such a scenario must have seemed faintly ridiculous; more so now, in view of the largesse with which the club is now associated. At the modern day Chelsea, it is likely that even the groundsman position includes such a perk.
<img src="https://images-e.jpimedia.uk/imagefetch/w_auto,f_auto,ar_3:2,q_auto:low,c_fill/if_h_lte_200,c_mfit,h_201/https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/webimage/1.4943718.1560009517!/image/image.jpg" class="teaser__image" alt="Ian Cathro with his team ahead of a penalty shoot-out against Dunfermline in the Betfred Cup" />
“I know you have to ask about that,” he says, during a near hour-long, once briefly interrupted, conversation. When the battery in his cordless phone dies, McCreadie quickly calls back on his cellphone. Among the messages he wishes to put across is that the particular detail about a car is not accurate. “Everyone has that wrong,” he says. “It was nothing to do with a car. I am not going into details. I left because I resigned. It is assumed that I was not happy at the time, and no, I was not happy at the time. It was a disagreement between myself and the directors at the club, but these things happen. Am I mad at anyone? Of course not, but it was a decision I felt I had to make.”
“I love Chelsea, Alan,” he continues. “Please put that in. It is the greatest club in the world and every day I was there they treated me with the highest respect, took care of me, and as manager as well. We just had a disagreement that time. Things happen. There was a disagreement and I left because I felt it was the right thing to do. It was a difficult time for me, as it was for them.”
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