On this day, 10 June 1938, Joe McBride was born. Joe would sign for Celtic in 1965, fulfilling a boyhood dream as he left Motherwell for £22,000.
Joe was unlucky to miss out on Lisbon due to injury and for that reason he is sadly not better known. So good was the striker, that James McGrory said the following: “I have been asked to name the best Celtic centre-forward I’ve ever seen play and the man I choose may surprise you. He’s Joe McBride… He was a tremendous header of the ball and could take a half-chance on the ground. And his heart was in the right place!”
Born on this day in 1938, Joe McBride. pic.twitter.com/LqnZLhsxXs
— Li'l Ze (@LilZe85) June 9, 2020
Jock Stein even described him as “The quintessential striker, a man who stuck the ball in the back of the net when he couldn’t think of anything else better to do it.”
McBride was Stein’s first signing and arguably one of his very best. He notched up 86 goals in 94 games, yet remarkable was only given 2 Scotland caps.
In the 1966/67 season, McBride had scored 36 times by Christmas, before he was sidelined with a knee injury for the rest of the season. McBride said: “Gerd Muller won the Golden Boot that season and he admitted at a function that the trophy would have gone to me but for the damage I did to my knee. The pain of being denied the opportunity to see what kind of goalscoring figure I could have achieved will live with me until the day I die. But 60 goals would have to have been a possibility. The doctors thought I needed a cartilage operation but the problem was caused by flaking bone behind my knee and it took a year out of my playing life.” Of McBride’s goals that season, 33 were scored in the league and he finished top scorer in the country despite missing the second half of the season.
He sadly died of a stroke in 2012, but he is unquestionably a Celtic legend.
On this day in 1938, Joe McBride is born. Just days after signing for the club. He made 94 appearances for Celtic scoring 86 goals. McGrory: “I have been asked to name the best Celtic centre-forward I've ever seen play and the man I choose may surprise you. He's Joe McBride.” pic.twitter.com/1Hhip7wurF
— CelticLisboa (@CelticLisboaa) June 9, 2020
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