John Robertson (footballer, born 1953)
Scottish association football player (1953-2025)
John Neilson Robertson (20 January 1953 – 25 December 2025) was a Scottish professional footballer who played as a left winger for Nottingham Forest, Derby County and the Scotland national team. He provided the assisting cross for Trevor Francis to score the only goal when Nottingham Forest won the 1979 European Cup final. A year later he scored in the final when Forest retained the European Cup, this time against Hamburger SV. At Forest he also won promotion from the 1976–77 Football League Second Division, the 1977–78 Football League First Division, the UEFA Super Cup, two Football League Cups, the 1978 FA Charity Shield and the Anglo-Scottish Cup.
Robertson also played for Scotland, scoring the winning goal against England in 1981 and against New Zealand in the 1982 FIFA World Cup.
He then moved into coaching, acting as an assistant to his former Nottingham Forest teammate Martin O'Neill at Wycombe Wanderers, Norwich City, Leicester City, Celtic, Aston Villa and Grantham Town.
Playing career
Nottingham Forest (first spell)
Robertson represented Scotland at Schoolboy and Youth levels and played for Drumchapel Amateurs before joining Nottingham Forest in May 1970, making his first‑team debut later that year. Used mainly as a midfielder in his early seasons, he featured only sporadically and was on the transfer list when Brian Clough arrived in 1975. Under Clough, however, he was converted into a left winger and became a central figure in the side, putting together a run of 243 consecutive appearances between December 1976 and December 1980. He scored the decisive penalty in the replayed 1978 Football League Cup Final against Liverpool, set up Trevor Francis's winning goal in the 1979 European Cup Final, and struck the only goal of the 1980 European Cup Final against Hamburg.
Brian Clough, Robertson's manager at Nottingham Forest, was quoted as saying "John Robertson was a very unattractive young man.
“John Robertson (footballer, born 1953)” enters the record as scottish association football player (1953-2025). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what John, Robertson and footballer can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“John Robertson (footballer, born 1953)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, John, Robertson and footballer provides the most credible route into that argument.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q579743. VIAF identifies the subject as 187078582. The Library of Congress control number is no2011167427. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1953, 2025, 1979 and 1976.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Robertson (footballer, born 1953)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.