Cesar Luis Menotti: Chain-smoking Argentina legend's jousts with Scotland and jibe about Wembley goalposts

Menotti’s Argentina met Scotland in two memorable encounters in the late 1970s

It is sometimes described as the Scotland football team's greatest year. And right in the middle of a glorious and sometimes tempestuous 12-months came a date with Argentina.

It was June 1977 and Ally MacLeod's side were prepping for World Cup glory. That was the plan at least but they had to get there first. That came later in the year against Wales at Anfield.

A summer tour to South America, where one of the games was against World Cup hosts Argentina, seemed, on the face of it, an eminently sensible arrangement. It will certainly never be forgotten, not least because the first assignment was against Chile, then under the rule of former army chief Augusto Pinochet. Not so sensible. It was dubbed “the match of shame”. The SFA came in for heavy criticism for organising a friendly in a stadium where just a few years earlier thousands of opposition supporters had been tortured.

Cesar Luis Menotti: New York Cosmos v World All Stars in August 1978, shortly after leading Argentina to World Cup glory in 1978 (Photo by Colorsport/Shutterstock)

The match itself passed off peacefully enough, Scotland winning 4-2 to record their first ever victory on South American soil. It was a different story in Buenos Aires a few days later in a clash brought to mind because another of the protagonists from a wild evening at the La Bombonera, the historic home of Boca Juniors, has died. It came as a surprise to some that Cesar Luis Menotti, the long-haired, chain-smoking former manager of Argentina, was even still alive.

A propensity for smoking often as many as 40 cigarettes during a match did not seem like the recipe for a long life, though that is what someone known as El Flaco (The Slim One) was blessed with. He passed away on Sunday at the age of 85 and over three years after the death of the player to whom he famously handed a debut.

No Diego Maradona obituary worth its salt failed to mention Menotti and no eulogy to Menotti could fail to reference Maradona, who the manager controversially left out of Argentina’s World Cup winning squad in 1978. He himself said Maradona never forgave him.

Menotti had already handed the player his full international debut and later watched from the dugout as the squat Maradona scored a first-ever international goal against Scotland at Hampden Park in June 1979.

Kenny Dalglish (r) is fouled by Argentina player Americo Gallego during the 1-1 draw in 1977 (Photo by Don Morley/Allsport/Getty Images)

The player was still just 18. Menotti, meanwhile, was a gaunt but interesting-looking 40. He was still in his mid-30s when asked to take over Argentina at a time when the country was suffering the tyranny of the right-wing military junta. Scholarly-looking and left-leaning, with long sideburns and open-necked shirt, his message was not simply to win the match, but play good football. “Menottismo” it became known as.

He instilled flair but was not above gamesmanship, as Scotland discovered to their cost on 18 June 1977 in one of the unfriendliest international friendlies ever played.

“Scotland are in South America to learn what football’s about in this neck of the woods,” wrote Doug Baillie in the Sunday Post. “And if Martin Buchan and Co. didn’t know beforehand, they sure are well aware of a few things now. If they do qualify for the World Cup finals, and they're drawn against Argentina, shin guards must be worn back and front - and punch-proof jerseys might not be a bad idea either! I really can't understand Argentinians' attitude to their fitba'."

It was quite an intro to a match report and hardly a commendation of Menotti, although Argentina were a credit to their manager when threading passes through the ticker tape to lift the World Cup on home soil twelve months later.

Willie Johnston runs at Argentina midfielder Omar Larrossa during an ill-tempered friendly international between Aargentina and Scotland at the Boca Juniors stadium on June 18, 1977 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The game finished 1-1. (Photo by Don Morley/Allsport/Getty Images)

Scotland, not so much. But the previous summer there was reason for optimism under Ally MacLeod after they held Argentina 1-1 - both goals were penalties - in their own backyard in front of 60,000. “Not so much a football match….more a lesson in survival,” mused The Scotsman's football correspondent Mike Aitken, for whom the match report almost wrote itself as Argentina defender Daniel Killer - yes, really - felled Kenny Dalglish to concede the penalty from which Don Masson put Scotland ahead.

The Scotsman put a call in to Masson yesterday to reminisce about Menotti. “He was a one off,” the 77-year-old told me from the boutique B&B he runs in Nottinghamshire. "And a good advert for smoking cigarettes. He was a good-looking guy, with that distinctive long hair."

Masson shared a room with Willie Johnston, whose later troubles in the country were presaged by being sent off after, Aitken wrote, "being spat on and punched in the kidneys by the ruthless (Vicente) Pernia". Both players were ordered off just before the hour mark. Johnston broke into tears and had to be escorted from the field by Scotland trainer Donnie Mackinnon. "It was an awful moment that made every Scot in the ground sick to the very pit of his stomach,” added Aitken.

Masson recalls Johnston still being inconsolable in their hotel room. "I always remember Ally MacLeod coming to the room as Willie was so upset because he thought his chances of playing in the World Cup the next year had gone," he says. "Ally said to him: 'Don't worry Willie, you're the first one on my list...'"

Cesar Luis Menotti - New York Cosmos v World All Stars in 1978, shortly after leading Argentina to their World Cup triumph on home soil (Photo by Colorsport/Shutterstock)

According to Baillie, a former Rangers centre-half, it was astonishing that MacLeod had kept his cool during the post-match press conference as he sat just a couple of yards from Menotti and heard him accuse the Scots. "The Scotland team were too defensive," he complained. "They lay down and wasted time too often."

Menotti had one last dig before he exited the press conference, no doubt in a cloud of nicotine fumes. "And at least our fans do not rush on to the pitch and smash up the goalposts," he said.

It was a mic drop moment before anyone knew what a mic drop moment was. Just a fortnight previously Scotland supporters had of course swarmed onto the pitch at Wembley following a 2-1 win over England, tearing up the turf and cracking a crossbar.

News had reached Argentina. A more recent bulletin of news, sent in the opposite direction following Menotti’s death, felt like another link to a storied past had gone.