There is a reasonable argument that Don Revie helped modernise the British game far more than any of his peers, a list let’s not forget that includes Bill Shankly and his long-term nemesis Brian Clough.
In the plus column were Revie’s detailed dossiers on forthcoming opponents and bringing in ballet dancers to assist players’ postures. A less welcome introduction was the ‘professionalism’ that partly secured Leeds United two league titles, a brutality that sometimes crossed the line of acceptance even back in the harsher climes of the nineteen-seventies. His son Duncan meanwhile insists that Revie once stood in the centre-circle at Elland Road and foresaw executive boxes and midday kick-offs several decades before they came to prominence.
There is also another reason why the architect of Yorkshire’s greatest ever team will forever be known as a trailblazer of course, a single decision that sadly, perhaps even cruelly, has come to define him over and above all of his sizable achievements. Forty years ago this week Don Revie resigned as England manager.
Walking away from the national job was simply not the done thing, not back then. You were pushed, retired, or reached a mutual agreement with all other options construed as giving up on your country: a mild form of treason. That the announcement came via an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail – for which Revie was paid a handsome £20,000 – and included the startling revelation that he was off to manage the United Arab Emirates on a four-year contract worth £340,000 only exacerbated the controversy ten-fold.
The shock and collective resentment that swept across the country had barely subsided before a further bombshell emerged: a week earlier the 50-year-old had missed an international friendly in Brazil claiming he was on a scouting mission. He was in fact in Dubai dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s on his treachery.
The scandal meant it was now open season on a manager who had never really endeared himself to the public; who appeared curmudgeonly and self-righteous in the era of the touchline mavericks such as Malcolm Allison and Clough. It additionally hardly helped his cause that his time as England boss had been largely underwhelming with successive failures to qualify for major tournaments and widespread criticism dished out for his constant chopping and changing of personnel.
The tabloids therefore, unsurprisingly, went to town nicknaming him ‘Don Readies’ and lambasting him for his greed and disloyalty. They dug and dug and soon after published claims of match-fixing going all the way back to 1962 that many insist to be true to this day but have never proven in court. They singularly failed however to report that prior to his resignation Revie had approached the FA and requested that his contract was annulled aware that they had already sought out Bobby Robson to be his replacement. His request was denied.
Staying with the FA their response to the unholy mess was little short of staggering. On the instruction of their chairman Sir Harold Thompson (an inveterate snob who never hid his disdain towards Revie due to his working class roots) their departing employee was charged with bringing the game into disrepute and banned from football for a period of ten years.
Thankfully sense prevailed when a court ruled that the governing body had over-estimated its powers but even with the law siding with him Revie endured further character assassination when Mr Justice Cantley said his resignation showed a ‘sensational, outrageous example of disloyalty, breach of trust, discourtesy and selfishness’. We can only imagine what he would make of today’s breed of boss.
With Ron Greenwood installed as his England successor Revie’s time in the Middle East was happy on the personal front but less so professionally eventually leading to club management with Al-Nasr and in Egypt with Al-Ahly after which he began to put out feelers for a return home. As a player in the fifties with Manchester City Revie had revolutionised the game playing as a deep-lying forward. Twenty years later he repeated the feat from the dug-out. Now the silence was deafening from a nation he had twice changed for the better.
Stricken with motor neurone disease one of the most successful English managers in history passed away in 1989, on the same day Michael Thomas strode though Liverpool’s midfield in the final knockings to win Arsenal the league. His funeral was a who’s who of football but notably there were no flowers from his former employers; no card; no minute’s silence at grounds on the opening games of the following season. For the FA it was as if Donald George Revie had never existed at all.
