OBITUARIES: Bertie Mee
A physiotherapist turned manager, he led Arsenal FC to their historic league and FA Cup double
Tuesday 23 October 2001 23.12 BST
How much does a football manager do? It is a question that recurs frequently, and seldom more so than when Arsenal, in the 1970-71 season, won the elusive FA Cup and League Championship double 10 years after their north London rivals, Tottenham Hotspur, had achieved it. The Gunners' manager was Bertie Mee, who has died aged 82.
Arsenal, who had not won a domestic trophy since 1953, ironically beat their rivals 1-0 to clinch the title, and five days later defeated Liverpool at Wembley to lift the FA Cup.
Mee had succeeded Billy Wright five years earlier, in June 1966. The contrast could not have been greater. Mee had never been more than a peripheral player, an outside right of sorts with Derby County. Wright, by contrast, had won 105 caps, captaining England with panache, figuring in no fewer than three World Cups. But where Wright, during his four years at Highbury - his first managerial position - had seemed a mere tyro struggling to assert himself, Mee proved a formidable organiser from the start, even if he would never make the public impact of such formidable predecessors as Herbert Chapman, or win the affection of such as Tom Whittaker, in charge of the team in the late 1940s.
Here an analogy is relevant. Whittaker, from the north-east, had been a moderate left half whom Chapman, after Whittaker had broken a leg on tour with an FA team in Australia, persuaded to become the outstanding trainer of his times, a man with "magic hands" who, in an era when technology was still in its infancy, could bring injured players back to fitness in record time. Mee himself was a physiotherapist, and an outstanding one, though he had the advantage of sophisticated technology.
While Whittaker, beloved by his players, became manager and promptly won the championship, Mee - a steely character and far less of a father figure - was destined not only to win that double but to survive in his role as manager for a decade.
Mee was born in Bulwell, Nottinghamshire. His career as a footballer with Derby County was cut short by an injury, and after six years serving with the Royal Army Medical Corps he qualified as a physiotherapist. Mee joined Arsenal as a trainer in 1960 before becoming the team's physiotherapist and then manager of the club. In his first season he brought in key players George Graham, Colin Addison and Bob McNab. Later he "brought on" Charlie George and, under the captaincy of Frank McLintock, developed an effective partnership between Ray Kennedy and John Radford, converting former fullback Peter Storey into a midfield anchorman.
As a manager, Mee was often praised for his man management, but seldom, if ever, for his knowledge of the game or tactical flair. When Arsenal won the double, it was thanks to his productive partnership with his coach Don Howe, the former England right back, in charge of youth football at Highbury.
In the famous 1970-71 season, Arsenal were perhaps unfairly criticised for their "cautious" tactics. In fact, in George, Eddie Kelly, Graham, and winger George Armstrong, they had particularly creative players.
At Highbury, Mee kept the heat off Howe: it is all too easy to underestimate this function in a manager, who, in the last analysis, must take the brickbats as well as the plaudits. But at the FA Cup Final banquet in 1971, after the Gunners had beaten Liverpool, Howe was mortified when, in his speech, the club chairman, Denis Hill Wood, made no mention of him. That was the end for Howe, who left to manage his old club West Bromwich Albion.
When apprised of Howe's departure, Mee scornfully brushed it aside and, although he would survive at Highbury for another five years, things would never be quite the same again.
When things went wrong Mee could be peppery with the press - "I know you're only doing your job, I know you have to make a living!" Charm was never his forte, but as an administrator he was formidable.
Moreover, his players long admired him for his pugnacious courage after an appalling episode in Rome in 1970, when Arsenal had drawn 2-2 with Lazio in a torrid European Cup match. At the end of the official banquet, the Lazio players attacked the Arsenal team, and a bitter battle broke out outside the restaurant. In it, Mee, fists flailing, played a gallant part.
Arsenal, who had won the Fairs Cup the previous year - reversing a 3-1 defeat by Anderlecht in Brussels in the first leg of the final with a 3-0 win at Highbury - proceeded to beat Lazio 2-0 in the return leg, before eventually going out to FC Koln on away goals in the quarter final.
Unsurprisingly, Arsenal's double season earned Mee the title of football manager of the year for 1970-71. It was the only year he would win the award, although he twice took the team to the Football League Cup final and saw them finish runners-up in the league in 1973. By the time he resigned from Arsenal in 1976, however, the team had sunk to 17th place.
In 1986 Mee became the general manager of Watford FC and remained a director there until 1991.
He is survived by his wife Doris and two daughters, Alison and Beverley.
·Bertie Mee, football manager, born December 25 1918; died October 21 2001.
Commenti
Posta un commento