“Celtic jerseys are not for second best, they don’t shrink to fit inferior players,” Jock Stein once said.
And the shirt didn’t shrink to fit Jimmy Johnstone. In truth, at times it looked too big for him, billowing out as he carried the ball on the tip of his toes past a stream of bewildered full-backs.
The sleeves would be rolled up, the socks rolled down and for a player whose legs were battered black and blue from opponents who were teased into mistimed tackles or who adopted brutality to try to stop this whirling dervish, he kept coming back for more.
Never has a nickname been more appropriate. Johnstone jinked. He jousted with giants and more often than not left them in a heap.
The bald stats are impressive but tell only half the story of the player who was voted the greatest ever to wear a Celtic jersey – 13 years, 515 appearances and 129 goals. Nine league winners’ medals, four Scottish Cups, five League Cups and, of course, the European Cup.
Johnstone’s medal haul should be on show at the Louvre, such was his artistry. His talent didn’t need any bigger stage than Celtic Park, though. Not when that arena housed a team that was the best in Europe.
If some of the football they played was a symphony, Johnstone conducted the orchestra. He didn’t need a baton, not when he had a right foot to control the pace and tempo of the game.
If Celtic were in a hole, the order was to get the ball out wide to Johnstone and he’d do something out of the ordinary.
And he usually did. The fact he did his damage, often while having nowhere to go behind him as he was pressed against a touchline, made it all the more extraordinary.
A dip of a shoulder, a feint this way and that and yes, a jink between flailing legs, would suddenly open up space and a team-mate to be played in.
Watch the goal he created for Bobby Murdoch in the 1970 European Cup semi-final at Hampden. Poor Terry Cooper later said: “I was trying to
kick him but I couldn’t get close enough.”
It’s not too much of a stretch to suggest he was Scotland’s Messi 20 years before the little Argentinian sorcerer was born.
Not in terms of Lionel Messi’s astonishing goals ratio but the manner in which he took the ball in tight situations and wriggled his way through traffic? He’s certainly got a case.
And bear in mind, this was in an era where ball players were unprotected by referees.
Johnstone took some brutal treatment and kept coming back for more.
In an excellent documentary Lord of the Wing from 2004, two years before motor neurone disease took Jinky at the age of only 61, former Rangers captain John Greig – like Johnstone, named his club’s greatest player – said this: “I had the pleasure in my day, of playing against some of the best players in the world.
“But it’s hard to think of anybody who was any better than Jimmy.”
Yet it almost didn’t happen. Johnstone had been at Celtic since he was nine years old but there was no formal offer made to sign him until Manchester United tried to lure him to Old Trafford as a 15-year-old. That jolted Celtic
into action.
Sir Alex Ferguson, unaware of that fact until it was presented to him in the aforementioned documentary, reacted: “That’s hard to imagine ... Johnstone, Best, Charlton, Law ... can you imagine that? Ooft.”
Ooft indeed.
He was the archetypal flawed genius. Infamous scrapes, such as being rescued by coastguards halfway between Largs and Millport on a rowing boat with no oars after an all-night bevvy session with Scotland between internationals against Wales and England in 1974, are now part of our football folklore.
Three days later, he ripped the Auld Enemy apart in a 2-0 win at Hampden.That was Jinky.
Being cut loose by Celtic a year later hurt him badly.
A short spell in America with San Jose Earthquakes was followed by a return home and fleeting appearances for Sheffield United, Shelbourne, Dundee and Elgin, who were a
Highland League club at the time.
There followed a long battle with the booze, which he won with a lot of help from Glasgow businessman Sir Willie Haughey, to whom he’d tried to sell his medal collection.
Just as he’d got his life back on track, MND was diagnosed. He fought it for five years, convinced a cure could be found. It still hasn’t and in 2006, football and his loving family lost Jinky Johnstone. But what memories he left behind, for those who saw his wizardry in the flesh and for the YouTube generation.
Even the sometimes grainy, black and white images can’t camouflage his teasing, tormenting genius.
“Football was the greatest part of our lives, just like the boys from Brazil and Spain,” he once said. “They lived in poverty, like us, and that’s where all
the great players came from
– the street.
“I look back now and think, bloody hell, we did achieve great things.”
