‘Side before self’ – how an old Leeds motto came to be adopted by Scotland

“Side before self, every time.”

It’s a motto synonymous with Leeds United, which has been repurposed and repackaged as the rallying cry for an entire nation at the World Cup.

In the aftermath of Sunday’s 1-0 win for Scotland over Haiti in Foxborough, Massachusetts, an image of the Scots’ shirt was shared on social media. Billy Bremner’s famous line had been printed inside their collars.

He was a Scotland international with 54 caps between 1965 and 1975, but Bremner is also a Leeds icon, and that’s a quote running through the core of the West Yorkshire club. It adorns Elland Road’s facade and is engraved in the steps beneath Bremner’s famous statue outside the stadium.

The inspiration, it transpires, has come from Scotland’s kit manager, Jim McAlister. He is the man who pushed to have it printed on the inside of their shirts.

“The team hotel and the training ground are branded with inspirational quotes from some iconic Scottish football figures,” he tells The Athletic.

“The strips are an extension of that. We just wanted to do something a bit different for the players. They’re following in some famous footsteps, so it’s nice to have that historical link as well.”

As legendary as those five words are in Leeds history, it’s actually very difficult to source them. Bremner is associated with them, undoubtedly, but there is no clear record of where or when he first used the phrase.

When The Athletic asked Eddie Gray, 78 — another Elland Road hero from Bremner’s era across the 1960s and 1970s — about that sentence, he could not recall its origins. Club historian and author of more than 10 Leeds United books, Dave Tomlinson, also drew a blank in researching where it all started.

“I’ve looked through and can’t find anywhere that he’s said it,” he tells The Athletic. “Now, it’s probably been around the camp before.

“It’s probably been in something one of the managers has said and he’s just embellished it, but certainly, it was accepted and it was always associated with Bremner, but I can’t find exactly when it came about.”

Tomlinson suspects Don Revie, Bremner’s immensely successful manager at Leeds, will have somehow been involved in such an inspirational expression.

“If you go anywhere, you find it (the quote) is often said about him (Bremner),” he said. “It’s become associated with him, almost as a symbol for the club.

“In many cases, I’ve seen it was also associated with Don Revie. So, whether it came from that relationship or whatever, I don’t know.”

Bremner played 773 times for Leeds. During his time with the club, they won two First Division titles, one Second Division title, one FA Cup, one League Cup, two Inter-Cities Fairs Cups and one Charity Shield.

He was captain through the most successful period in the club’s history. Gray remembers Bremner leading by example in a team full of leaders and internationals.

“Collectively, you are talking about playing with 13 or 14 international players,” he told The Athletic. “They’re all top players, they came together as a group and they worked hard for each other.

“We had a lot of players who could change the game. Billy was a great influence in the game — he scored so many important goals.

“When you’re playing with 13 or 14 full international players all at the top of their game, you don’t tend to think about it as individuals.”

While Bremner is credited with this motto, Gray remembers him as an individual with immense self-belief. That applied to him with Leeds and with Scotland.

“Billy was important,” Gray says. “Billy’s great strength was his self-belief. That’s what made him the player he was.

“Regardless of who Billy was playing with, Billy would always be thinking he was the man who was going to make things happen. That was just his nature. That’s how he was as a player and as a man.”

Tomlinson references Bremner being a member of the Scotland squad at the 1974 World Cup. He was one of five Leeds players in that group, which also included David Harvey, Joe Jordan, Peter Lorimer and Gordon McQueen.

Like Leeds, that was a Scottish squad that prided itself on being greater than the sum of its parts. As a youngster, Tomlinson recalls supporting Scotland at that tournament because of its links to the club.

“It’s very much this bit about no stars,” he said. “It’s very much team first. It’s very much about, ‘I blend in, I might be the best player, I might be the captain, but I will always think about the club first’.

“When Bremner went to the World Cup in ‘74 with Scotland, it was a similar thing. Leeds had just won the league title and it was very much Scotland, but Leeds United, going to the World Cup.

“With all the Leeds players in the Scotland side, it was like supporting your club.

“I was quite disaffected with England, so not just because they hadn’t got to the World Cup finals, but I was just disaffected with them. For me, Scotland, certainly with that number of players in, always captured the same spirit (of Leeds).

“There were stars, but fewer stars. It was about the team and they did magnificently there.”

Scotland were the only team to finish that tournament unbeaten, but they still exited in the group stage. They beat Zaire 2-0, drew with defending world champions Brazil 0-0 and then finished 1-1 with Yugoslavia.

Scotland, Brazil and Yugoslavia all finished on four points, but the Scots exited with an inferior goal difference to the other two. They face Morocco in their second match on Friday and with that Haiti win already under their belts, they are well placed to go at least one better this time.