footballing icon like Davie Cooper is snatched away from us so young we can
be left bereft, bemused and dumb struck. Dumb struck is how the news of
Coop¹s death left me.
There is something about the death of a legend that unites thousands of us,
because for us Bears who were fortunate enough to see Davie play, he is part
of us. The great players NEVER die, because for as long as we remember them,
and talk about them, then their greatness lives on in our hearts.
Davie Cooper was such a great player, perhaps he was also an unsung hero,
because he plied his trade in Scotland and was never tempted to Œprove¹
himself in England or elsewhere. Dalglish, quite rightly, is acknowledged as
a world great, but would that have been the case had he remained in
Scotland? Cooper was at least Dalglish¹s equal, albeit that Cooper was
pigeonholed as a winger.
Calling Cooper a winger is like calling Pavarotti a chanter. Cooper was the
footballer as artist. We hear loads of stuff about players Œexpressing
themselves¹, but Cooper was one of the very few who had something worth
expressing. Indeed I think that had Cooper had a right foot of equivalent
quality to his left, then the whole of world football would have beaten a
path to his door. Not that his one-footedness was any kind of hindrance, for
if Coop couldn¹t turn a defender outside-in with his left foot, then he
contented himself with giving the poor blighter twisted blood with the same
left foot, the magical, enchanting, devastating left foot.
On the day that Davie Cooper died the main news on the BBC and ITN concerned
another player who had misbehaved, and was up in court. The real sadness is
that British football should not have been concerned with Cantona on that
day, rather Cooper-s untimely demise should have been marked properly
nationwide. The Nine O¹clock news on the Beeb was typical.
The news of Cooper¹s death was tacked on to the end of the bulletin, with a
clip of the man destroying the Hearts defence in his inimitable manner, but
the newsreader rushed to finish the news and the clip faded before the ball
hit the net. Imagine a player such as Gascoigne in the same circumstances,
would be tacked on item at the end of the news be deemed sufficient?
And there is the rub. Cooper was as good as the very best, but his talent
was largely unrecognised outside Scotland. Ruud Gullit is reported to have
said that Cooper was the best he had seen, and I suppose he should know.
Otherwise the football world outside Scotland knows that we have lost a fine
player, but not that he was a class apart, a legend, a hero, an entertainer.
It has been said before, but wouldn¹t Davie have been a sensation in Serie
A?
We all have special memories of Coop, but for me it is the noise of the ball
hitting the back of the Aberdeen net in the Skol Cup Final 1987. From the
back of the main stand I swear I heard that ball hit the net above the roar
of the crowd, such was the power and accuracy of the shot. In a final which
was jam-packed with great goals and moments of palpitating excitement,
Cooper¹s contribution still stands out, possibly because we are not renowned
for dead ball kickers. Dribblers, wingers, wee barras who could beat a man
well, Scotland produces them from time to time. But Cooper was a fine
winger, a great player in the middle of the field, a sublime passer of the
ball.
But added to all that he couldn¹t half hit a dead ball. Would that he had
been able to pass that skill on to his colleagues at Ibrox, for there is no
way he could pass on his dribbling skills, for they were his peculiar if not
unique talent, a once in a generation occurrence.
Thousands will mourn the passing of Davie Cooper, and rightly so, for he was
special and remains special here in our thoughts, but once I¹ve got over the
shock of his death I like to think that the best we can do is to keep the
memory of Coop alive. The videos are OK, but it is the memories of those of
us who saw him play which will breathe life into the celluloid recollections
- for as long as we wish it to be so, Davie Cooper will be a Rangers legend,
up there with the very best.
ROBERT BURNS