ALEX McLeish, who played alongside Neale Cooper in the Aberdeen team which beat Real Madrid to win the European Cup Winners’ Cup in 1983, expressed his deep sorrow at the tragic death of his fellow Gothenburg Great last night.
Cooper passed away aged just 54 yesterday after being found seriously injured in the stairwell of a block of flats in the Bucksburn area of Aberdeen in the early hours of Sunday morning.
McLeish, who is in Lima in Peru with the Scotland squad, had immediately got in touch with his former team mates John Hewitt and Neil Simpson, who are based in Aberdeen after being informed that Cooper was in intensive care. He was visibly upset after he learned his friend had passed away.
The 58-year-old told how Cooper, who had suffered a near-fatal heart attack last year, had been in fine form when he had last met up with him at the 35th anniversary reunion of the European Cup Winners’ Cup winning Aberdeen team at Pittodrie earlier this month.
“It’s horrible, tragic,” he said “Neale had a heart attack last year and I didn’t know many details this time other than he had a fall at home.
“I had kept in touch with John Hewitt and Neil Simpson and the guys up there in Aberdeen and I’ll be in touch with Neale’s family. It’s horrific to hear this bad news.
“Neale was a massive character, a tremendous lad and always was throughout his career. He was such an affable guy. I was praying he would pull through. He was a battler and we were all together in hoping he would pull through.
“I saw him last at our Gothenburg night a few weeks ago and he was in such good spirits. I spoke to him about his heart attack and he said he was recovering well. I knew that anyway because his family had kept me up to speed.”
Cooper, who was born in Darjeeling in India, but brought up in the north-east, joined Aberdeen as a teenager shortly after McLeish had moved there from his home in Barrhead in the 1970s.
The pair became regulars in the Sir Alex Ferguson side that dominated Scottish football and excelled in Europe in the years that followed.
They won one League Cup, two Premier Division titles and four Scottish Cups together - but the undoubted highlight came when in the Nya Ullevi in Sweden on May 11, 1983, when both men were in the side that beat Real Madrid 2-1 after extra-time to lift the European Cup Winners’ Cup.
They would also play side by side, with Cooper at right back and McLeish at centre half, in the first leg of the European Super Cup final against European Cup winners Hamburg in Germany later that same year.
Aberdeen drew that game in the Volksparkstaion in November 0-0, but won the double header 2-0 on aggregate the following month to become the first and to date only Scottish club to lift two European trophies.
Cooper, who was affectionately known as Tattie, was a popular and larger-than-life personality who later played for Aston Villa, Rangers and Dunfermline.
He also managed Ross County with great success for six years after the Dingwall club were granted entry into the senior leagues and later went on to have spells in the dugout at Hartlepool United twice, Gillingham and Peterhead.
McLeish, whose side played Peru in an end-of-season friendly in the National Stadium in Lima this evening, paid a glowing tribute to his former team mate and remembered being immediately struck by his confidence, presence and ability when he first joined him at Pittodrie.
“He was such an important player for Aberdeen in particular and he had a great career,” he said. “When I went to Aberdeen he was supposed to be the new Franz Beckenbauer.
“I saw him when he was 14 and I arrived on the training ground and he stuck out a mile. I remember thinking: ‘Who’s that guy! He’s absolutely brilliant!’
“Then, because of the partnership Willie and I formed he moved in to midfield and he became a very good footballer with a very aggressive style of play, but he could do everything.
“I’ll never forget seeing that curly mop of white curls walking into the training ground. I thought we had a top, top player in our midst and I wasn’t wrong. I was 17, he was only 14, but he wasn’t overawed.”
“The senior players were important members of that side. They drove home the importance of having a winning mentality to the rest of us. Stewart Kennedy was a mentor for me. It was such a humble group of players.
“But everybody played their part in the success that we enjoyed in Scotland as well as in Europe at that time and Neale certainly contributed in a big way. This is such terrible news.”
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