AS Real Madrid staged another improbable Champions League comeback against Manchester City in the Bernabeu on Wednesday night to book their place in the final, Dave Smith could have been forgiven for wondering wistfully what might have been.
The former Rangers player reveals in his excellent new autobiography, The Road To Barcelona: The Glory of ’72 And My Life In Football, that he was once placed on a list of potential signing targets by the Spanish giants when he was at Aberdeen.
Los Blancos were impressed by both Smith and Charlie Cooke of Dundee during a scouting mission to Scotland ahead of a European Cup game against then First Division champions Kilmarnock in 1965.
How would the elegant, cultured, intelligent, technically-gifted midfielder cum defender have fared in Madrid? He would undoubtedly have excelled. He was always at his best whenever he took to the field in continental competition.
Smith certainly shone during Rangers’ successful European Cup Winners’ Cup campaign during the 1971/72 season. He was the standout performer in the 3-2 win over Moscow Dynamo in the final in the Nou Camp. That was underlined when he was named Scottish Football Writers’ Association Player of the Year shortly afterwards.
Yet, the 78-year-old, who also recounts how he turned down an offer from Liverpool when he was a teenager in 1960 and spurned the opportunity to join Paris Saint-Germain so he could take over as manager at Berwick Rangers in 1976 in his book, has no regrets.
Smith’s eldest brother Jim, who had suffered from a heart condition and had tragically passed away in 1963, had been a Rangers supporter and he had promised him that he would play for the Ibrox club one day.
When the Glasgow giants approached Aberdeen in 1966 he had, much to the annoyance of his manager Eddie Turnbull, no hesitation ignoring interest from Crystal Palace, Everton and Spurs to sign.
Negotiations with Scot Symon in the Station Hotel in Perth were brief. In fact, his terms weren’t even discussed. Smith said: “He just told me: ‘We’ll look after you’. And he did.”
It was not a decision that he ever had cause to rue. “Every time you pulled on a blue jersey was a great experience as far as I was concerned,” he said. “I considered myself fortunate to get paid for something I would have done for nothing.
“You get 50,000 fans going to Ibrox every other week and every one of them would do anything to pull the blue jersey over their heads just once. I got to do it on numerous occasions. It was an honour to do that.”
Most Rangers supporters consider it a privilege to have seen Smith play for them. He is remembered fondly to this day for setting up Colin Stein and Willie Johnston for the opening two goals against Dynamo. But he modestly plays down his own role in the historic triumph.
“Most people will say it was just two big punts up the park,” he said. “You have to give credit to the boys at the other end of it. I knew where Steiny was going to go and I knew where Bud was going to go.
“For the third goal, Peter (goalkeeper McCloy) played a big punt up the middle. It would hit a satellite nowadays. When it came down Bud was already on his way. In the footage it looked as if Bud was a mile offside. Obviously it wasn’t. Who was occupying the two centre backs? They were marking Steiny.
“John Greig was injured before that game. But we wanted him on the park and he played even though his leg was so sore. In the first minute he went in to a crunching tackle. That showed how big a heart he had. He must have been in some pain during the game, but he played right to the end.
“Without the other players you are nothing. One man himself couldn’t win anything, not even Pele. I was lucky to have 10 good boys around me. My team mates allowed me to play the way I wanted to play. I just went out and played and the other players gave me the freedom to do that.”
Smith enjoyed meeting up with his old muckers at a dinner to mark the 50th anniversary of the European Cup Winners’ Cup triumph back in February. But he noted that Rangers have not officially celebrated the Barcelona Bears’ achievement to date. “The club have done nothing for us so far,” he said. “I have no idea if they have got anything lined up.”
He added: “The players in that team are all very friendly still, apart from obviously the ones we have lost. And they are remembered by us all. The patter is just the same as it was 50 years ago, we still kid on about the same things and the nicknames are all the same.
“We have less hair and are a bit rounder around the waist. But it doesn’t seem like 50 years since we were players together. You would think we were youngsters when we meet up.”
Smith never managed to lift the Scottish title during the eight years that he spent as a player at Rangers – something which the members of the Dave Smith Loyal Fraserburgh RSC are not slow to remind him of when he travels to games at Ibrox with them these days.
He said: “The boys on the bus say: ‘Do you not have league medals from Celtic?’ They always tell me I should have for helping them to win Nine-In-A-Row. I get that every week.
“You would have thought with the number of league titles that Rangers have won that I would have been involved in at least one of them in time I was at Ibrox. It was probably the bleakest time for us as far as the league is concerned.
“I didn’t think there was much between us. But they had the mentality to beat the teams they should beat and we obviously didn’t. The league wasn’t won and lost playing Celtic. You only played them twice a season. It was the other games that mattered and we didn’t come up to scratch in them. We have only ourselves to blame.”
If Smith laments one thing about his spell at Rangers it is moving on to Arbroath in the November of 1974 – just four months before Jock Wallace led them to their first Scottish title in 11 long years.
“People think that I didn’t get on with Jock,” he said. “I actually got on with him very well. He was a good trainer. But when he became manager the way he wanted to play wasn’t the way that I wanted to play. There was no disagreement. I said to him: ‘Don’t pick me’.
“I didn’t like the way he played, but I don’t have a leg to stand on because he won the league the year after I left. You can’t argue with that. He was right, I was wrong.”
Still, Dave Smith is still one of just 11 Rangers players to have lifted a European trophy. “I wouldn’t swap a thing,” he said.
The Road to Barcelona: The Glory of ’72 And My Life In Football by Dave Smith with Paul Smith is published by Birlinn and is available to buy now.
