When I was about twelve years old, a friend of mine had a younger brother who was only about five or six years old at the time. He was in the process of losing his baby teeth and had a massive gap at the front and on the top side of his mouth - he was instantly given the nickname "Joe Jordan".
Joe himself became known as "Jaws" or "Lo Squalo" (the shark) when he later played for AC Milan having lost his front teeth during a Leeds United reserve team match. In his time as manager of Bristol City, fans produced giant inflatable teeth instead of the more traditional bananas that for some inexplicable reason were all the rage in the late 80's.
Howard Wilkinson talks about Joe and his time at Leeds
Playing Career
Jordan moved down to England to join Leeds United from Greenock Morton in 1970. With such a powerful Leeds team at the time and forward options including the likes of Allan Clarke and Mick Jones, this was also an era when squad rotation hardly ever existed so Jordan's chances were very limited to begin with to break into the first team. By 1973 though things were beginning to happen and although he was not selected for the FA Cup final against Sunderland, he did play in the European Cup Winners Cup Final against AC Milan a few days later. Jordan would go on to becoming the regular number 9 in the Leeds line-up for the next five years and also played for Scotland in the World Cup Finals of 1974, 1978 and 1982. In 1978 Jordan left Leeds to join Manchester United for £350,000 - in today's terms that would probably be about 30 million! He scored 37 goals in his time at Old Trafford before a new challenge opened its doors and he moved to AC MIlan in 1981 (getting relegated and then promoted again with them) and then stayed in Italy moving on to play for Verona for another year before returning to England in 1984. His swan-song saw him have spells at Southampton and then Bristol City where he finished his playing career in 1988 and then became the City manager.
Management and Coaching
In 1990, he headed back up to Scotland to take over as manager of Hearts. He was sacked in 1993 after a poor string of results and after that became assistant manager to Liam Brady at Celtic for a short period. Having left Celtic when Brady was sacked, he took over at Stoke City for a short period before returning to Bristol City for a second stint as boss between 1994 and 1997. There were then short spells as assistant manager with Northern Ireland and Huddersfield Town before he teamed up with Harry Rednapp for the first time at Portsmouth in 2004 as part of his coaching team. He would then follow Rednapp to Tottenham in 2008 and again, along with other members of Rednapp's team, upon Rednapp's Spurs departure in June 2012 Jordan also left the club.
The Gattuso Incident
Jordan has had confrontations on and off the pitch throughout his career and the most recent one happened when Spurs were playing away to AC Milan in a Champions League match. Another player with a very short fuse was Gennaro Gattuso whom during the game had a touchline bust-up with of all people - Jordan. Although at this time in his late 50's, the Scotsman did not back down from Gattuso and maybe the Italian did not know the Scotsman's own past history - maybe he should have spoken to older Milan fans about Jordan being a past hero himself for the club and they could have filled him in a bit! The following video is an exert from an interview that Jordan did for Sky's "Goals on Sunday" with Chris Kamara and Ben Shepherd in September 2012. The other guest that day was Mick McCarthy who also remarks on his own encounters with Jordan "back in the day". Comments are closed.
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