Lou Macari Player Profile

Lou Ma­cari

Al­though Lou Ma­cari has al­ways un­der­played his Italian roots, many people have re­garded him as an icon for the Scot­tish Italian com­munity. Ma­cari star­ted out with Celtic where he es­tab­lished him­self in the all con­quer­ing side of the early 1970´s and went on to gain two cup medals and two league titles un­der the guid­ance of Jock Stein.

Greatly im­pressed by the Ed­in­burgh born front­man, newly ap­poin­ted Manchester United boss Tommy Docherty even­tu­ally signed Lou Ma­cari for a trans­fer fee of £200,000 in the winter of 1973. A hard work­ing and ded­ic­ated per­former, he made his First Di­vi­sion de­but for Manchester United in a 2–2 draw against West Ham United at Old Traf­ford in Janu­ary 1973 and be­came an im­me­di­ate fa­vour­ite with the home sup­port­ers. The Scot, who was quickly con­ver­ted into an at­tack minded mid­field play­maker by fel­low coun­try­man Tommy Docherty, would make a habit of com­ing for­ward from deep po­s­i­tions to score im­port­ant goals for The Red Dev­ils. Lou Macari´s first years with Manchester United were spent in a strug­gling team that even­tu­ally found them­selves re­leg­ated to the Second Di­vi­sion at the end of the day, but the mid­field war­rior nev­er­the­less en­joyed his foot­ball un­der the sound lead­er­ship of man­ager Tommy Docherty and he be­came one of the key play­ers in bring­ing the le­gendary club back to the top flight in 1975. As a Manchester United player, he col­lec­ted an FA Cup Win­ners medal in 1977 and ap­peared in well over 300 Foot­ball League matches for The Manchester Reds be­fore he fi­nally left the Old Traf­ford club to be­come the new man­ager at Fourth Di­vi­sion side Swin­don Town in the sum­mer of 1984. A Scot­tish in­ter­na­tional, Lou Ma­cari pulled on the fam­ous dark blue shirt of Scot­land on 24 oc­ca­sions between 1972 and 1978. Lou Ma­cari: “Celtic was the biggest job of all for me, but it never got off the ground. It was a job I was never even given an op­por­tun­ity to get near suc­ceed­ing at. The con­ver­sa­tions I had with Fer­gus Mc­Cann drove me crazy. The lack of sup­port was quite in­cred­ible. It was grief all the way. I know Fer­gus tries to paint a com­pletely dif­fer­ent pic­ture, but I worked my socks off at Celtic. I’m sure after I left he did grasp that the way he treated me was out­rageous.” Lou Ma­cari Ca­reer De­tails: After hanging up his boots, Lou Ma­cari man­aged Swin­don Town, West Ham United, Stoke City, Glas­gow Celtic, Birm­ing­ham City and Hud­der­sfield Town. Lou Ma­cari Play­ing Ca­reer: Glas­gow Celtic 1970–1973, Manchester United 1973–1984, Swin­don Town 1984–1986.

Manchester United History