 Giles pictured in 2013 | |||
| Personal information | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Michael John Giles | ||
| Date of birth | (1940-11-06)6 November 1940 (age 85) | ||
| Place of birth | Dublin, Ireland | ||
| Height | 1.61 m (5 ft 3 in)[1] | ||
| Position | Midfielder | ||
| Youth career | |||
| 1954–1956 | Stella Maris | ||
| 1956–1957 | Manchester United | ||
| Senior career* | |||
| Years | Team | Apps | (Gls) |
| 1957–1963 | Manchester United | 99 | (10) |
| 1963–1975 | Leeds United | 383 | (88) |
| 1975–1977 | West Bromwich Albion | 75 | (3) |
| 1978 | Philadelphia Fury | 21 | (0) |
| 1977–1983 | Shamrock Rovers | 42 | (11) |
| Total | 620 | (112) | |
| International career | |||
| 1959–1979 | Republic of Ireland | 59 | (5) |
| Managerial career | |||
| 1973–1980 | Republic of Ireland (player-manager) | ||
| 1975–1977 | West Bromwich Albion (player-manager) | ||
| 1977–1983 | Shamrock Rovers (player-manager) | ||
| 1981–1983 | Vancouver Whitecaps | ||
| 1984–1985 | West Bromwich Albion | ||
| * Club domestic league appearances and goals | |||
Michael John Giles (born 6 November 1940) is an Irish formerassociation football player andmanager best remembered for his time as amidfielder withLeeds United in the 1960s and 1970s. After retiring from management in 1985, Giles served as the senior analyst onRTÉ Sport's coverage of association football from 1986 until 2016. He was nominated for the1972Ballon d'Or[2] and theFAI voted Giles as the greatest Irish player of the last 50 years at theUEFA Jubilee Awards in 2004.
After winning anFA Cup winner's medal underMatt Busby at Manchester United, Giles moved to Leeds in 1963 where he played in midfield alongsidecaptainBilly Bremner. The duo formed a central midfield partnership which was one of the best in English and European club football. Their pairing helped yield several major trophies in the most successful era in Leeds' history. Giles and Bremner both scored 115 goals for the club.
In his later years in football, Giles pursued a managerial career which saw him installed as player-manager and manager of, among others,West Bromwich Albion, theRepublic of Ireland,Vancouver Whitecaps andShamrock Rovers. Despite having an outstanding knowledge of the game, Giles personally never liked being a manager. He became disillusioned with aspects of the job, such as suffering at the hands of non-committal boardrooms, and left management permanently in 1985. He later declared that he had no regrets about quitting managerial life.[3]
After repeated encouragement from childhood friendEamon Dunphy, Giles inadvertently entered the world of football punditry in 1986 and became asenior analyst onRTÉ Sport until 2016. In December 2019, he was employed as an analyst for Premier Sports' live coverage of the English Premier League matches. Also, he writes two columns per week for the IrishEvening Herald newspaper, and offers his opinions about the game on radio stationNewstalk 106.
Giles grew up inOrmond Square, aworking class area of inner-cityDublin, where he developed many of the skills that would aid him in becoming a professional footballer.[4] He was encouraged to enter the game through his fatherChristy who played forBohemians in the 1920s[5] and managedDrumcondra during the 1940s.
Growing up, Giles remarked "I didn't consider myself Irish". This was due to the outsider status of association footballers in the mainstream sports-life of the Republic, where Gaelic Games were a much more dominant force in the '50s of his youth.[6]
Giles was spotted in Dublin playing forStella Maris, before he began his English career withManchester United. He joinedMatt Busby's team for a £10 signing-on fee in 1956. He was given an early first-team debut in 1959 after eight of the team died in theMunich air disaster in February of the previous year. Among the dead wasBill Whelan, who was five years older than Giles and also came from the Cabra district of Dublin.[7]
He was also chosen to play for theRepublic of Ireland team by the age of 18.
Giles was a regular first-team player over the next four years, playing alongsideBobby Charlton andDenis Law. Manchester United won theFA Cup in1963, where Giles played the defence-splitting pass which started the move towards a winning goal byDavid Herd.
After being out of favour, he asked for a transfer and joinedLeeds United for £33,000. "I am going to haunt him", is what Giles said of Busby, to his wife Anne, after the Scotsman had forced his departure when freezing him out of the starting team.[8]
Giles would soon evolve into one of the finest central midfielders in England, as Leeds won theSecond Division title in his first season there. In 1965, he was in the team which came close to aLeague championship andFA Cup "double" but missed out on both, to Manchester United and toLiverpool respectively.
Giles formed a strong partnership withBilly Bremner as Leeds managerDon Revie built a new team around them. The players had similarities in their styles and were a tremendous foil for one another. Giles was known as the creative force and Bremner as the ball-winner, but each was capable of doing the other's primary job.
In the1967–68 season Leeds won both theLeague Cup and theFairs Cup. That was the first season in which Giles was affected by injury, which meant he missed the second leg of the Fairs Cup final.[9] In the1968–69 season, Giles was instrumental in Leeds becoming league champions in a then record 67 points from 42 matches at 2 points for a win, a record that stood for ten seasons. In1970, Giles again had a magnificent season as Leeds chased three trophies but lost all three, the League went toEverton; theFA Cup toChelsea after areplay; and theEuropean Cup campaign ended at the hands ofCeltic in the semi-finals.
In the fifth round of the1971 FA Cup, when Leeds were unexpectedly beaten 3–2 byColchester United, Giles scored Leeds' second goal as they almost came back from 3–0 down. Leeds regained theFairs Cup but lost the League title on the last day, withArsenal getting the victory they needed to earn the championship and form one half of a successful "double" bid.
Leeds won their firstFA Cup and Giles his second when they defeated Arsenal 1–0 at Wembley in1972, yet again they missed out on the League on the final day of the season after defeat toWolverhampton Wanderers.Sunderland andA.C. Milan beat Leeds in the finals of theFA Cup and theEuropean Cup Winners Cup in 1973, rendering Leeds trophyless again.Jack Charlton's retirement in 1973 also left Giles as the most senior member of the squad. In the same year, he started to combine his Leeds duties with a spell as player-manager of his country.
In 1974, a 29-match unbeaten run at the start of the season helped Leeds coast to their second title, but then controversy reigned after Revie quit to take over theEngland team. Revie recommended to the Leedsboard of directors that Giles, nearly 34 and approaching the end of his playing career, should be his successor. The board instead appointedBrian Clough, a brilliant manager but a controversial choice as he had been publicly critical of Leeds in the past and was not an admirer of Revie. Clough and the players never got on – the players had wanted Giles too – and the board reacted by dismissing Clough with a big pay-off after just 44 days in charge. Giles still did not get the job though (that went toJimmy Armfield) and concentrated on playing as Leeds chased a place in their first European Cup final. Giles himself never applied for the Leeds vacancy on those two occasions, his name had instead been put forward as a candidate by others. Also in 1974, Giles was nominated—along withDanny Blanchflower—byBill Nicholson as his successor atTottenham Hotspur. The Spurs board appointedTerry Neill instead.[10]
Giles was outstanding in Leeds' European campaign but was no longer an automatic fixture in the side. After appearing in the1975 final, which Leeds lost 2–0 toBayern Munich, Giles accepted an offer in June 1975 fromWest Bromwich Albion to become their player-manager, while still playing for and managing the Irish team.
Giles is widely regarded as one of the greatest footballers to have come out of the Republic of Ireland.[11] High tributes have been conferred on Giles by hugely successful former managers such as Alf Ramsey, Matt Busby and Brian Clough. His status at Leeds United was noted when supporters there named him in the greatest Leeds XI of all time. His place in English football history was recognised in 1998 whenthe Football League, as part of its centenary celebrations, listed Giles on its list of100 League legends.[12] When Giles was quizzed as to the differences between himself and another highly regarded former Irish player,Roy Keane, he said: "If forced to compare us, I'd say I was slightly more creative than him and he [Keane] was a better ball-winner."[3]
In the early part of his career, Giles endured some rough treatment. This occurred when he suffered a career-threatening ankle injury at the hands ofBirmingham City'sJohnny Watts, and knee ligament damage sustained when tackled byEddie McCreadie atStamford Bridge.[13] Being a creative and diminutive figure, Giles thereafter accepted he would have to become a tougher player in order to avoid being singled out by opponents. On later becoming a pundit, Giles at length wrote about how he felt he had to become "a lion rather than a lamb" on the pitch so as to help achieve his full potential.[14] His primary reason for this was to avoid being labelled a hypocrite when the time came for him to give judgement on tough tackling by others.
Giles showed much promise as a young player-manager of theRepublic of Ireland, as he combined his duties in charge of West Brom, where after a slow start, he won the majority of Baggies supporters over. Under his leadership, they were promoted from theSecond Division in April 1976, and finished 7th in theFirst Division in1976–77. He recently said the time he spent at West Brom was amongst the happiest of his career despite him not winning trophies there. However, his spell at the club also witnessed several clashes with the club's board over the financial running of the club, an area that Giles felt the board excluded him from too much. Giles even tendered his resignation over the matter on the day promotion was secured, although he was persuaded to change his mind and oversee the First Division campaign.[15] He resigned as player-manager at West Brom on 21 April 1977, the very same day as his former team-mateJack Charlton resigned his managerial post atMiddlesbrough, and moved back to Ireland to manageShamrock Rovers until 1983.
He returned tothe Hawthorns for a second spell as manager during the 1983–84 season, steering the side to safety despite losing his first game in charge 1–0 to Third DivisionPlymouth Argyle in the FA Cup.[16] The following season saw Albion start well and they were as high as 5th at Christmas, but finished 12th. However Giles' decision to sell fan favouriteCyrille Regis and top scorerGarry Thompson led to supporter disgruntlement, with the replacements Giles signed -Garth Crooks andImre Varadi - proving unsuccessful.[16] He resigned as manager in October 1985 following a 3–0 defeat atCoventry City, a record ninth consecutive defeat for Albion.[17] Youth team managerNobby Stiles, who was also Giles' brother-in-law, replaced him although, despite a slight improvement in results, the club could not climb off the foot of the table and, underRon Saunders, finished in bottom place.[18]
As player-manager of the Republic of Ireland between October 1973 and March 1980, Giles oversaw a revival in the fortunes of the national side which had struggled for the previous decade. The1976 European Championship qualifiers saw the international debut ofLiam Brady and a more respectable showing. In the1978 FIFA World Cupqualifiers, the side finished only two points short of qualification, defeatingFrance at home during that campaign.
During his five-and-a-half-year spell in charge atGlenmalure Park Rovers won theFAI Cup in 1978, he scored 2 goals in 4 appearances in theEuropean Cup Winners Cup and captained Ireland nine times, scoring once. Giles played his last game on 14 December 1980 at Milltown, he was 40 years of age.
He resigned atMilltown on 3 February 1983, after having left his Ireland job in March 1980, and ventured across theAtlantic for spells in charge of clubs in theNorth American Soccer League. In 1981, he was hired to coach theVancouver Whitecaps of the NASL. He held that position for three seasons, being named the1982 North American Soccer League Coach of the Year.
Giles later returned to Ireland and settled into a much-admired career in journalism and started out as a pundit onRaidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) in November 1986. He featured onPremier Soccer Saturday and its international and European soccer coverage, particularly their coverage of games involving theRepublic of Ireland national football team. Giles contributed toRTÉ Sport's coverage of the 2010 World Cup[19][20] where prior to it starting he correctly predictedSpain would win the tournament. He is the leading soccer analyst onNewstalk.
Of the EnglishPremier League, Giles is often critical of the methods of modern coaching, and in particular, younger managers, saying in 2016:
When you hear the younger managers talking, it's all about tactics now. If their players are not playing well, they change the formation. There's nothing about not passing the ball to each other or misplacing passes. It's all about, well the tactics were wrong. I've seen it so often, you hear it on the television as well. Their team is playing very poorly, they're 2–0 down at half-time, they're giving the ball away, kicking it out of play. Well what do you have to do, and they start talking about changing the formation. No matter what formation you play you have to pass the ball to each other.
He was also part of RTÉ Sport's studio coverage of the2014 FIFA World Cup.
Giles left RTÉ Sport afterUEFA Euro 2016 after 30 years with the broadcaster, his last appearance was on the night of theEuro 2016 final.[21][22]
Giles resides in theHarborne area of the city ofBirmingham in England. He has playedgolf for many years, and at one time, played off ahandicap of five, but with his advancing age his handicap has risen to 12, "a bad 12" he claims. To coincide with his 70th birthday, Giles compiled a first-ever autobiography chronicling his life in and outside of football which was released in November 2010.[23] In 2010, his autobiography, titledA Football Man, became the best selling book in the Republic of Ireland.[24] In it, he claims to be an admirer ofcricket where he attended the occasional game in his spare time as a footballer.
Giles was portrayed by actorPeter McDonald in the 2009 filmThe Damned United, which centred onBrian Clough's ill-fated 44-day spell as Leeds United manager in 1974. Giles successfully sued the author of the book,David Peace, who printed the work in 2006, from which the film was made. He said of Peace: "His book was outrageous. I'm portrayed as the scheming leprechaun. He [Peace] had me in conversations with Clough that never happened. It made Clough out to be a wild man whereas he wasn't drinking then. I didn't get on with him but I found him highly intelligent. Peace said the novel was fiction based on fact, trouble is, people assume it's the official version. The movie was a misinterpretation of the misinterpretation that was the book!"[25]
In another interview in relation to his taking court action, Giles said: "I took my stand because I was the only one alive who could do anything about it. The Clough family had no comeback. They couldn't do anything as Brian was dead, that was a huge influence (on taking the legal action)."[26]
As part of the settlement in the 2008 High Court dispute, the publisher of the book,Faber and Faber, was ordered to remove from any future editions the references perceived by Giles as damaging and untrue.[26]
In 1966, Giles married Anne, sister of Irish Olympic sprinterPaul Dolan,[27] with whom he had four sons and two daughters. Two of his sons, Michael and Chris, played for Shamrock Rovers; Michael from 1981 to 1983 and Chris from 1993 to 1995. Giles' father,Christy Giles, played for Bohemians in the 1920s and won a league title in his first season atDalymount Park. His uncleChris Giles also played for Ireland. Giles is a brother-in-law ofNobby Stiles, his former Manchester United team-mate, who married into the Giles family. His uncle Matt managedTransport to FAI Cup success in 1950.
In 2008, the Football Association of Ireland founded a non-profit trust to fund grassroots clubs and football at youth level. Giles, who had previously hosted charity golf events to raise money for good causes, allowed the FAI the right to use his image for the charitable organisation, thus giving rise to the John Giles Foundation. This would involve grassroots clubs taking part in sponsored walks called the "Walk of Dreams", whereby half the money raised by each club would go to the club themselves, and the other half going to clubs selected by the foundation.[28]
The inaugural event in 2011 was met with negative criticism, as the main walk ending at theAviva Stadium was marred by inadequate toilet facilities at the stadium endpoint, along with expensively priced food, a lack of bottled water and the absence of Republic of Ireland senior international footballers, whose attendance at the event had been promised, all of which went on to be discussed onRTÉ Radio 1'sLiveline programme.[28][29]
While the John Giles Foundation raised some €700,000 for its causes during its lifetime, it emerged in 2019 that the FAI, under the stewardship ofJohn Delaney had paid over €500,000 to former footballer Con Martin jnr, for the concept of the foundation, the fundraising walks and a kit-purchasing idea, payments of which were unknown to Giles at the time.[28][30]
In September 2022, the FAI announced the winding down of the John Giles Foundation, with a final donation of €55,000 being made to the FAI's Football For All schools programme.[28]
| Club | Season | League | FA Cup | League Cup | Total | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Division | Apps | Goals | Apps | Goals | Apps | Goals | Apps | Goals | ||
| Manchester United | 1959–60 | First Division | 10 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 10 | 2 |
| 1960–61 | First Division | 23 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 25 | 3 | |
| 1961–62 | First Division | 30 | 2 | 7 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 37 | 3 | |
| 1962–63 | First Division | 36 | 4 | 6 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 42 | 5 | |
| 1963–64 | First Division | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | |
| Total | 99 | 10 | 13 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 115 | 13 | ||
| Leeds United | 1963–64 | Second Division | 40 | 7 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 45 | 7 |
| 1964–65 | First Division | 39 | 7 | 7 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 46 | 8 | |
| 1965–66 | First Division | 40 | 6 | 2 | 1 | 12 | 0 | 54 | 7 | |
| 1966–67 | First Division | 29 | 12 | 7 | 2 | 12 | 4 | 48 | 18 | |
| 1967–68 | First Division | 20 | 7 | 5 | 1 | 10 | 2 | 35 | 10 | |
| 1968–69 | First Division | 32 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 39 | 8 | |
| 1969–70 | First Division | 32 | 13 | 9 | 2 | 9 | 4 | 50 | 19 | |
| 1970–71 | First Division | 34 | 13 | 4 | 2 | 8 | 1 | 46 | 16 | |
| 1971–72 | First Division | 38 | 6 | 7 | 4 | 6 | 0 | 51 | 12 | |
| 1972–73 | First Division | 33 | 6 | 8 | 1 | 8 | 1 | 49 | 8 | |
| 1973–74 | First Division | 17 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 19 | 2 | |
| 1974–75 | First Division | 29 | 1 | 7 | 1 | 9 | 0 | 45 | 2 | |
| Total | 383 | 88 | 61 | 15 | 83 | 12 | 527 | 115 | ||
| West Bromwich Albion | 1975–76 | Second Division | 38 | 2 | 4 | 0 | 5 | 1 | 47 | 3 |
| 1976–77 | First Division | 37 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 1 | 41 | 2 | |
| Total | 75 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 9 | 2 | 88 | 5 | ||
| English career total | 557 | 101 | 78 | 17 | 95 | 15 | 730 | 133 | ||
| National team | Year | Apps | Goals |
|---|---|---|---|
| Republic of Ireland | 1959 | 1 | 1 |
| 1960 | 3 | 0 | |
| 1961 | 4 | 1 | |
| 1962 | 2 | 0 | |
| 1963 | 3 | 0 | |
| 1964 | 5 | 1 | |
| 1965 | 3 | 0 | |
| 1966 | 4 | 0 | |
| 1967 | 1 | 0 | |
| 1968 | 2 | 1 | |
| 1969 | 2 | 0 | |
| 1970 | 2 | 0 | |
| 1971 | 1 | 0 | |
| 1972 | 1 | 0 | |
| 1973 | 1 | 0 | |
| 1974 | 5 | 0 | |
| 1975 | 4 | 0 | |
| 1976 | 3 | 0 | |
| 1977 | 4 | 0 | |
| 1978 | 5 | 1 | |
| 1979 | 3 | 0 | |
| Total | 59 | 5 | |
Source:[31]
| Team | From | To | Record | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| P | W | D | L | Win % | |||
| West Bromwich Albion | 5 July 1975 | 24 May 1977 | 101 | 41 | 31 | 29 | 040.6 |
| West Bromwich Albion | 14 February 1984 | 29 September 1985 | 75 | 24 | 15 | 36 | 032.0 |
| Total | 176 | 65 | 46 | 65 | 036.9 | ||
Manchester United[34]
Shamrock Rovers
Individual
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
