Dundee United, the other half of the New Firm

Sometimes football gives us incredible stories that sometimes sound like fairy tales or miracles, unexpected moments that can be unrepeatable. However, it also gives us examples of the fruit of hard work and a clear vision of a project. In the case of Dundee United, this came in the 1980s under the leadership of Jim McLean, who took over from Jerry Kerr, who had already been guiding the club's growth.

Dundee United's homme stadium Tannadice Park

History of Dundee United

Following the example of other football clubs formed in Scotland by the country's significant Irish community, such as Celtic and Hibernian, Dundee United was founded on May 24, 1909, under the name Dundee Hibernian. This was the second attempt by the Irish in the area to create a club, having previously attempted to do so in 1879 with Dundee Harp FC, which folded 15 years later. The nascent Dundee Hibernian began playing its matches at Tannadice Park (then known as Clepington Park), which has remained its home to this day.

In 1910, the club was accepted into the Scottish Football League and began playing in the second tier of the then-established system. Dundee began to suffer various problems that nearly led to its demise in 1923. It was saved by local businessmen who decided to change the name to Dundee United, with the intention of expanding the club beyond the Irish community. In the 1924-25 season, they won the Second Division title and achieved their first promotion to the First Division. This began a period of promotion and relegation that lasted until the early 1930s.

After World War II, the club struggled to reach the First Division until 1959, when they hired Jerry Kerr, who significantly changed the club's mentality. Kerr championed players as full-time workers and changed the transfer philosophy to one more in line with the club's capabilities. Among them was the signing of relatively affordable and highly skilled Scandinavian players. Kerr returned Dundee to the First Division after 28 years outside the Scottish top tier and established them as a club as a stable participant there. In 1966, Kerr managed to take the club to a new level as they had their first European cup experience, where to everyone's surprise they eliminated FC Barcelona from the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup (predecessor to the UEFA Cup), but were then eliminated by Juventus in the next round.

Jim McLean

James McLean was born into a working-class family but a keen football fan. In fact, both he and his two brothers became professional players and managers. As a player, he was a dangerous striker with a very good goalscoring record and played for several clubs, including Hamilton Academical, Kilmarnock, and Dundee FC, Dundee United's local rivals. It was at Dundee FC that he became a professional player and had an unenviable debut, as they were defeated 5-0 in the Dundee Derby in their first match.

After retiring from professional football in 1970, he entered the coaching world, becoming manager of Dundee FC for a year and a half. When first-team manager John Prentice announced he would step down at the end of the season, McLean was expected to take his place. However, to the surprise of many, he moved to the city rivals to replace Jerry Kerr, ushering in the club's golden era.

McLean was tasked with taking Dundee United to the next level after Kerr had established them as a First Division side. To this end, the newly appointed manager began recruiting very young players for the club, many for the youth teams, persuading them to sign for other clubs such as Celtic or Rangers. McLean's idea was to sign highly talented and capable young players who would assimilate and identify with the club's culture, so he gave them long contracts. Another unique feature was that all Dundee United first-team players had the same salary (one of the lowest in the league) and received bonuses for winning, as a form of motivation.

1983 Champions

The project was designed to yield results in the medium and long term, however, by 1974, the club was playing in a Scottish Cup final against Dixie Deans Celtic, where they lost 3-0. That victory marked a change in the club's mentality that greatly contributed to United's next years. The club began a progressive growth that saw them increasingly higher in the First Division and in December 1979, they reached the final of the Scottish League Cup against Sir Alex Ferguson's Aberdeen, in what became known as the New Firm, a reference to the Old Firm formed by Celtic and Rangers, historically dominant teams in Scottish football. The final ended in a goalless draw, forcing a replay to be played three days later at Dens Park, home of Dundee FC. There, United won 3-0 with a double from Will Pettigrew and achieved their first major title in their history.

A season later, they would reach the final of both domestic cups, winning one and losing the other. In the 1981-82 season, they would also reach another final, this time the Scottish League Cup, which they lost to Rangers, having finished fourth in the league, behind the Old Firm and Aberdeen. Dundee United had already become a force to be reckoned with in Scotland. However, not even McLean himself expected what would happen a season later, as he admitted years later.

After a somewhat irregular start to the 1982-83 season, Dundee had a very good second half of the league season that put them in first place, ahead of Billy McNeill's Celtic, who had won 3 of the last 4 league titles, and Sir Alex Ferguson's Aberdeen, who were crowned European Cup Winners' Cup champions that same season, beating Real Madrid in the final. Fate was capricious and Dundee had to play the final matchday, the decisive one for the title, against Dundee FC at their home stadium Dens Park. United won 2-1 in a tense and nerve-wracking match, thus becoming Scottish champions for the first and only time in their history.

Identity and belonging

To illustrate Dundee United's achievement, it's enough to look at some numbers, such as the number of players who played more than five matches in that championship. Only 14 players did so. There are also numbers that exemplify what McLean achieved with that idea he planted a little over a decade earlier. Six of the champion players were from the city of Dundee, 10 came from the youth teams, and only two players in the squad received transfer fees.

In that same squad, there were two players who almost played 400 matches for the club, one who surpassed that number, one who played more than 500, two who played more than 700, and two who played more than 800 matches for Dundee. Add to this the fact that three of them would eventually become managers of the club. It's worth remembering that the team reached the European Cup semi-final the following season and reached the UEFA Cup final in 1987, losing to Gothenburg of Sweden. Interestingly, Dundee United has a rather unusual record, with a 100% success rate against FC Barcelona in official matches, having beaten them on all four occasions they have faced each other.