Francis McLintock (born 28 December 1939) is a Scottish former footballer, football manager and businessman. He also worked as a sports agent and football pundit in his later life.
He began his career in Scottish Junior football with Shawfield, before earning a professional contract with English First Division club Leicester City in December 1956. He played in two FA Cup final defeats before he was sold to Arsenal for £80,000 in October 1964. He had a poor start to his career at Arsenal, though he did feature in two League Cup final defeats, but he found success at the club after being switched from right-half to centre-half in 1969. Appointed as captain he led the club to their first European trophy, the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup in 1970. The following season, 1970–71, he captained Arsenal to the Double, as they won the league and the FA Cup. He was sold to Queens Park Rangers in June 1973 for a fee of £25,000, and helped the club to finish as First Division runners-up in 1975–76, before he announced his retirement in May 1977. He scored a total of 66 goals in 766 league and cup games in a 20-year professional career, and won nine caps for Scotland in an eight-year international career.
McLintock was appointed manager of Leicester City in June 1977, but resigned in April 1978 with the club heading out of the First Division. After a spell coaching at QPR, he returned to management with Brentford in February 1984. He took the Bees to the 1985 Football League Trophy Final, before he resigned in January 1987. He later worked as assistant manager at Millwall, before becoming a sports agent and football pundit.
McLintock was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 1972 New Year Honours.
McLintock was born in Sandyfaulds Street, Glasgow, and brought up in the Oatlands area of the Gorbals. He was the son of Catherine, a cleaner, and Archie McLintock, a casual labourer, and grew up in poverty with elder sister Jean. He was brought up Catholic and attended the local Catholic school, St Bonaventure's. He hated the sectarianism in Glasgow.
McLintock started his semi-professional career at the age of 15 in the Scottish Juniors with his local club, Shawfield. He worked during the week as an apprentice painter and decorator. He soon began attracting interest from Scottish and English clubs, but decided to join an English club as he did not want to join a Scottish club only to be sent back on loan in the Junior leagues to gain experience.
He had a successful trial with Leicester City in December 1956, and was offered a part-time contract on his 17th birthday, with Shawfield receiving a £400 fee. At his mother's insistence, he continued his painting and decorating apprenticeship in Leicester, and would continue in the trade alongside playing football for the next five years. He found it easy to settle at the club as manager Dave Halliday and a total of 27 players and trainers at Filbert Street were Scottish. He was initially quite short but experienced a growth spurt, and gained extra leg muscles as he cycled to and from work and training. In fact McLintock's initial 5 ft 2 in (1.57 m) physique meant Halliday was keen to terminate his contract, but he was persuaded not to by coach Matt Gillies, who had witnessed the extra training McLintock put in every day. In his spare time he also trained with his left foot to become a two-footed player.
Gillies replaced Halliday as manager, and handed McLintock his debut eight games into the 1959–60 season, a 3–3 draw with Blackpool at Bloomfield Road. He kept his first-team place and picked up two-man of the match awards but after a mistimed tackle on Arsenal's Jackie Henderson he was initially diagnosed with extensive cartilage damage in his right knee and was scheduled in for a risky surgical procedure, but after demanding a second opinion he was diagnosed with a sprain and was sidelined for sixteen weeks. He returned to action in February after replacing new signing Ian White in the starting eleven, and scored his first goal for the Foxes in a 3–1 victory over Manchester United.
He was still struggling with his knee so missed the start of the 1960–61 season, but was returned to the starting line-up in September as City began to put a good set of results together, beating Manchester United 6–0, Arsenal home and away, and putting five goals past both West Ham United and Newcastle United. They went on to reach the 1961 FA Cup final against Tottenham Hotspur at Wembley Stadium; the day before the final McLintock painted a cellar as part of his painting and decorating job. An injury sustained by Len Chalmers early in the game meant that McLintock was shifted from right-half to fill in at right-back, and ten-men Leicester fell to a 2–0 defeat. In the summer he qualified as a painter and decorator, and immediately quit his job to focus on full-time football. Liverpool manager Bill Shankly made a transfer bid for him, but was rebuffed by the Leicester board, as was Leeds United manager Don Revie.
The 1961–62 campaign represented a step back for Leicester as they dropped eight places down to 14th place. Injury meant McLintock featured in only one European Cup Winners' Cup game, a 1–1 home draw with eventual winners Atlético Madrid, and prevented him from playing in the reverse fixture at the Estadio Metropolitano de Madrid, which Madrid won. In the summer, McLintock and goalkeeper Gordon Banks refused to sign new contracts at the club as they demanded a £10 a week raise to £30 a week – the pair were vilified in the local press to such an extent that McLintock went into the offices of the Leicester Mercury to forcibly put his case across to the sports editor – and eventually after three months they settled for £28 a week.
During the 1962–63 season he forged an effective half-back partnership with Colin Appleton and Ian King and was part of the revered "Ice Kings" team which won a series of games over the course of the brutal winter and came within nine points of winning the Football League. City were top of the First Division with five games to go but picked up only one point from these final five games. They also had an excellent run in the FA Cup to reach the 1963 FA Cup final, and were installed as favourites ahead of Manchester United. However McLintock and his teammates were poor on the day, and United won the match 3–1. Having been on course for the Double in April, Leicester ended May with a fourth-place finish and as runners-up in the cup.
Early in the 1964–65 season, McLintock was still unhappy with his contract at Leicester City and with what he perceived to be the club's lack of ambition. Despite the board relenting and offering him £80 a week to sign a new contract, he had already made up his mind to leave the club in favour of the chance to win "cups and caps" elsewhere and put in a formal transfer request.
In October 1964, McLintock was signed by Arsenal for a club record £80,000. He endured a poor début at Highbury, mishitting a back-pass to allow Nottingham Forest's John Barnwell – who ironically had been sold by Arsenal to finance McLintock's transfer – to score an easy goal. He found that manager Billy Wright had no identifiable system of play and McLintock soon regretted joining the club as his first four games all ended in defeat. He was in poor form in the 1964–65, 1965–66 and 1966–67 seasons but remained a regular first-team player as the Gunners struggled in mid-table. He insisted that the club change strip from red and white to all red so as to rid the team of the stigma of failing to live up to the highly successful red and white Arsenal teams of previous years; the experiment lasted for just the 1966–67 season before Arsenal reverted to red and white. Dissatisfied with the club's management, he put in a transfer request, which was denied by the board.
The new management duo of Bertie Mee and Dave Sexton began to slowly turn the team around, and Arsenal improved to ninth place by the 1967–68 campaign. After Sexton's departure, Don Howe was promoted to first-team coach and continued to improve the team's training methods. They reached the League Cup final at Wembley Stadium in 1968, but were beaten 1–0 by Leeds United, with Arsenal having an equalising goal ruled out after McLintock was judged to have fouled goalkeeper Gary Sprake. In the summer, he was named as Arsenal's Player of the Year and his initial four-year contract came to an end.