Davie Cooper’s ability to beat opponents with a “dip of the shoulder” is a skill rarely seen in Scottish football these days, according to his former Rangers team-mate John MacDonald.
Former Clydebank, Gers, Motherwell and Scotland winger Cooper died of a brain haemorrhage on March 23, 1995 at the age of 39, after collapsing during the filming of a coaching video.
MacDonald struggles to believe it is 25 years since that happened but has nothing but good memories of a gifted footballer famed for his left foot.
Former Light Blues attacker MacDonald, who played for the Ibrox club between 1978 and 1986 – the bulk of Cooper’s career at Rangers – told the PA news agency: “When you got to play with him and watch him in training, he showed what a great player he was.
“It is all about pace now, much more than in our time. You don’t get many individuals. That is the difference between now and then.
“Coop didn’t need the pace, he just went past players with a dip of the shoulder and quick feet.
“He would go past people as if they weren’t there. He was the same in training, you couldn’t get the ball off him.
“He hated the games in training when John Greig would play just two and three touch.
“You get a few guys with a lot of skill these days like Ronaldo and Coop would have been at that standard if he was playing just now.”
Cooper began his senior career at Clydebank in 1974 and signed for Rangers three years later for a fee of £100,000 after starring against the Light Blues in a League Cup encounter which went to four games.
The man from Hamilton was an almost ever-present in his first season at Ibrox as Jock Wallace’s side won the domestic treble.
Team-mate and former captain Greig moved from the dressing room to the hot seat for the following season and in time Cooper fell out of favour for a spell before Wallace returned in 1983.
Cooper won 22 caps for Scotland, scoring six goals – his most important the dramatic penalty in the 1-1 draw against Wales in Cardiff in 1985 which took Scotland to the play-offs for the 1986 World Cup finals in Mexico.
His Scotland team-mate Graeme Souness became player/manager at Ibrox after that tournament and Cooper, like the Govan club, was rejuvenated.
His free-kick which thundered past Aberdeen keeper Jim Leighton at Hampden Park in the victorious 1987 League Cup final is the stuff of Ibrox folklore, as is the ‘keepy-up’ goal in the 3-1 win against Celtic in the 1979 Drybrough Cup final at the national stadium when he lifted the ball over four Hoops players before knocking it into the net.
By the time he left Rangers to sign for Motherwell for £50,000 in August 1989 – unarguably one of the best bits of football business of all time – he had won three league titles, three Scottish Cups and seven League Cups but he was not finished with silverware.
Cooper thrilled the Fir Park faithful in every bit a way he had done at Kilbowie and Ibrox and helped the Steelmen to their thrilling 4-3 Scottish Cup final win against Dundee United at Hampden Park in 1991.
In 1993, he returned to Clydebank, where it had all started, as a player/coach before tragedy struck two years later.
“It is hard to believe it was 25 years ago,” says MacDonald.
“I was training at Clydebank just to keep myself fit when Davie was coaching there at the end of his career. It was such a young age. Such a shame.”
