Walter Smith, OBE (born 24 February 1948) is a Scottish football former manager. His most recent job was at Scottish Premier League club Rangers.
Smith had an unremarkable playing career, consisting of two spells with Dundee United which was split by a short time at Dumbarton.
A pelvic injury meant he moved in to coaching at Dundee United under Jim McLean and he also took charge of Scotland's under-18 and under-21 teams. Smith was also assistant to Alex Ferguson at the 1986 FIFA World Cup in Mexico after it had been announced that he would be moving to Rangers as assistant to Graeme Souness.
In 1991, Smith became the manager of Rangers; he won 21 major honours in two spells at the club, including ten league titles, and guided the team to the 2008 UEFA Cup Final. Smith is the second-most successful manager in the history of Rangers behind Bill Struth. In 1998, he left Rangers to manage Premier League club Everton; he was in charge at Goodison Park for four seasons before he was sacked in 2002. Smith was later appointed Scotland manager in 2004 after a brief stint as assistant manager to Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United. He presided over a revival in the national team's fortunes, taking Scotland 70 places up the FIFA World Rankings, before returning to Rangers in 2007. He won eight of his trophies with the club during this time, before leaving in 2011.
Read more about Walter Smith: Early Life, After Management, Managerial Statistics
Famous quotes containing the words walter and/or smith:
“Of course I’m a black writer.... I’m not just a black writer, but categories like black writer, woman writer and Latin American writer aren’t marginal anymore. We have to acknowledge that the thing we call “literature” is more pluralistic now, just as society ought to be. The melting pot never worked. We ought to be able to accept on equal terms everybody from the Hassidim to Walter Lippmann, from the Rastafarians to Ralph Bunche.”
—Toni Morrison (b. 1931)
“The wretchedness of being rich is that you live with rich people.... To suppose, as we all suppose, that we could be rich and not behave as the rich behave, is like supposing that we could drink all day and stay sober.”
—Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946)