To this day the Malmo right back probably doesn’t know quite how it happened. The stocky, unremarkable bloke on the left side of Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest team was not quick and often seemed happy to sign post exactly what he was about to do.
But John Robertson did it anyway. As Roland Andersson showed him down the line at the Munich Olympiastadion in 1979, Clough’s unlikely and rather reluctant hero, dropped his shoulder, earned himself a half a yard of space and arched a beautifully perfect cross onto the head of Trevor Francis at the far post.
With that, the most famous trophy in Forest’s history – indeed one of the most unlikely and celebrated triumphs of the English game – was secured. Francis had only been at the club a matter of months but he knew enough about Robertson to know exactly what was coming, to know exactly where to be.
‘He crossed the ball like a metronome,’ Francis told the Daily Mail several years ago.
‘People talk about my famous goal but it was all about him, really. I did the simple bit. He never really knew it, but he was a bloody genius.’
Francis died two and a half years ago and now Robertson has gone, too. The Scot passed away on Christmas Day at the age of 72. Forest supporters in particular will appreciate the timing. To them, there was always something vaguely celestial about Robbo.
John Robertson (left) was rather slow, smoked, and Brian Clough described him as an ‘uninterested waste of time’ – then he became a Nottingham Forest hero
He won two European Cups with Forest and his ability was compared to that of George Best
Robertson was to score a European Cup-winning goal of his own a year after that magical moment in Bavaria. Clough’s team defended their title thanks to a Robertson goal against Kevin Keegan’s Hamburg in Madrid.
But it was that moment twelve months before in Germany that will always stand out. Forest’s journey from the old Second Division to the pinnacle of the European game was complete and it had been carved out of nowhere by a player who represented so much of what was so beautifully unlikely about all of it.
Robertson was actually on the transfer list at the City Ground when Clough swept through the door in 1975. The Scot didn’t look like an athlete, nor did he live like one. He smoked, for a start. He was scruffy and looked overweight.
Clough’s first impressions were not remotely portentous. There was no early identification of immense and extraordinary talent. No lightning strike moment.
‘He was a scruffy, unfit, uninterested waste of time,’ was one of Clough’s more earthy reflections and he meant it.
But Robertson could play off both feet, could deliver crosses and passes from a standing start and read the needs and wants of a game instinctively and intuitively. He became a playmaker from a wide position and as such was a trailblazer.
Forest and all that they did under Clough were driven by a strong sense of underdog purpose and a sense of togetherness that could not be bought. But within that structure and under the noses of such solid citizens as John McGovern, Frank Clarke and Garry Birtles, real genius was allowed to thrive.
A recent poll of Forest supporters voted Robertson as the club’s best player of all time and none of the members of the Thursday Club who still gather in Nottingham to look back at the wondrous things they did would ever disagree.
Without him, Nottingham Forest would not have been remotely the same and vice-versa
‘He may not have looked like George Best but he was as good as him in every way,’ said McGovern.
‘We would not have won those European Cup finals without him.
‘It was quite easy to see that if you wanted to create something, just get the ball out to Roberston as quickly as possible. He was our go-to man.’
Robertson, born in Lanarkshire, played 28 times for Scotland and played in the 1982 World Cup finals in Spain. He scored a winning goal against England in 1981, something he was not shy of mentioning as the years drifted on through a stellar coaching career and then, reluctantly, retirement.
In Scotland, they knew exactly what they had. The great Graeme Souness once described Robertson in these pages as ‘the most underrated footballer of any generation’ but throughout it all it was hard to escape the feeling the ordinary man vibe was all just part of the act.
‘He looked like he had a little paunch, he’d wear these battered old desert boots and you would barely see him without a fag in his hand,’ added Souness.
Upon the end of a playing career that eventually concluded with a second spell at Forest after 72 league appearances down the road at Derby, Robertson found a home as Martin O’Neill’s right hand man at Wycombe, Norwich, Leicester, Celtic and Aston Villa.
As a coach, his schtick was pretty much the same. He continued to look almost deliberately out of place, to wear an expression of a man who had just been – or was about to be – caught doing something he shouldn’t.
Forest fans voted him their club’s greatest-ever player and it is hard to disagree
But as a foil to O’Neill’s urbane and eccentric intelligence and ultra-analysis, Robertson’s brand of straight forward football and man management instinct was priceless. Players loved him and listened to him. O’Neill did too.
As players under Clough, O’Neill would simmer as he saw Robertson get away with murder while the great man turned a blind eye. O’Neill felt as though he couldn’t move without the scrutiny of his manager’s arched eyebrow. Robertson? Different rules applied.
In management O’Neill and Robertson were not quite Clough and Taylor and never purported to be. There was, however, a familiar ying and yang that can never be forced, built or bought.
O’Neill will mourn the loss of his dear friend. Forest and their following will feel the heavy melancholy of the severing of another thread to their storied past.
Clough – gone now for 21 years – described Robertson as the greatest he ever knew. Souness said he ‘could have played for any club in the world and I mean Real Madrid, Barcelona or Bayern Munich’.
Only the brave would disagree though whether anyone else other than Clough could have fully uncovered the magic buried beneath the feigned indifference would be a debate worth having.
Robertson and Forest are woven together in history like Nottingham and lace. One without the other would never have been remotely the same.
