Malcolm Macdonald (soccer player)

Malcolm Macdonald
Personnel
Surname	Malcolm Ian Macdonald
birthday	January 7, 1950
place of birth	Fulham ,  England
position	striker
Juniors
Years	station
	Tonbridge Angels
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
1968-1969	Fulham FC	13 0(5)
1969-1971	Luton Town	88 (49)
1971-1976	Newcastle United	187 (95)
1976-1979	Arsenal FC	84 (42)
1979-1980	Djurgårdens IF	9 0(2)
National team
Years	selection	Games (goals)
1972-1976	England	14 0(6)
Stations as a trainer
Years	station
1980-1984	Fulham FC
1987-1988	Huddersfield Town
1 Only league games are given.

Malcolm Ian Macdonald (born January 7, 1950 in Fulham ) is a former English football player and coach . The "Supermac" striker was a successful striker at Luton Town , Newcastle United and Arsenal FC in the 1970s ; from the age of only 30 he then coached his home club Fulham for four years .

Player career

After Macdonald had played at the amateur club Tonbridge Angels, he was signed in 1968 by Fulham FC . After a year with the Londoners, the initial left-back moved a few kilometers north to Luton Town . Due to good performances in Luton he was committed as a beefy, quick-start and powerful striker from Newcastle United . The transfer fee was £ 180,000. After five relatively successful seasons - each season he was the “Magpies” top scorer - Macdonald went to Arsenal . The "Gunners" paid the curious transfer fee of £ 333,333.33 for the top scorer of the 1974/75 season. This was preceded by a dispute in Newcastle with the new coach Gordon Lee . Shortly before, he had taken part in a TV show on the BBC and completed a 100-meter run in just 10.9 seconds.

At Arsenal FC Macdonald still had a high number of goals. He immediately conquered the top scorer in the First Division and was also the most accurate player in his club in the 1977/78 season. A serious knee injury , which he suffered at the beginning of the 1978/79 season in the League Cup against Rotherham United , put his career a setback and as a result he lost his regular place. He then went to Sweden to join Djurgårdens IF for a year before taking on the role of coach at Fulham when he was only 30 years old.

In the national team , the European Championship qualifier on April 16, 1975 in London against Cyprus stands out, when Macdonald scored all five goals for the 5-0 success of coach Don Revie's team alongside Kevin Keegan , Mick Channon and Colin Bell . In the other three appearances in the EM qualification in the second leg in Cyprus, as well as against Czechoslovakia and Portugal, however, he was no longer able to enter the goalscorer list.

Coaching career

Originally, Macdonald had only held a director's post in Fulham, but then suddenly found himself in the head coach role at the club that had just been relegated to the third division. He tried to compensate for the lack of experience with a large co-coaching staff and so he took the two ex-Arsenal colleagues Roger Thompson and George Armstrong as well as Ray Harford and Terry Mancini by his side, who rather took on the daily work with the team. The team, which was only marginally strengthened by transfers, quickly convinced with attractive offensive football and after promotion to the second division in 1982, Fulham FC under Macdonald narrowly missed the direct march into the top English division. His tendency towards self-destruction became his undoing and when his private life attracted more and more public interest, the club's management took a period of weak sporting activity as an opportunity to dismiss Macdonald in the spring of 1984.

After a three-year hiatus, he was brief coach of Huddersfield Town , but the increasing personal and financial difficulties, made worse by a serious alcoholic disease, made a permanent commitment in the football business no longer. According to media reports, he managed to get his life back on track from the late 1990s onwards. In the north east of England he began working as a presenter for a local radio station as a sports journalist.

successes

• English Premier League top scorer: 1975 , 1977

literature

• Dennis Turner: Fulham. The Complete Record . Breedon Books, Derby 2007, ISBN 978-1-85983-566-1 , pp. 229-230 .

Web links

• Homepage of Malcolm Macdonald
• Statistics in the Post War English & Scottish Football League A - Z Player's Database
• Statistics as an English international

Individual evidence

1. ^ "Superstars: A brief history" (BBC Sport)
2. ^ German Sports Club for Football Statistics DSFS, Berlin 2008, page 69
3. ↑ "Triumph and despair" (The Observer)