The Thistle Archive

MacLeod, who played as a midfielder, made 20 appearances for Scotland and played in the 1990 World Cup Finals. He had a successful club career, mainly with Dumbarton, Celtic, Borussia Dortmund and Hibernian, winning 10 major club honours in Scotland and Germany, including 4 league titles with Celtic. He returned to Dumbarton as player-coach and guided the club to promotion from the Second Division with a last day win over Stirling Albion in 1995. In the summer of 1995, MacLeod left the Sons to manage Premier Division club Partick Thistle.

MacLeod continued the trend set by Peter Cormack, Derek Johnstone and Sandy Clark by pulling on the boots while at the same time managing Thistle. He listed himself as a substitute for a match with Celtic at Parkhead in October 1995, but resisted the temptation to play against his former club. He did appear from the start the following week at Aberdeen and was arguably Thistle's best performer in an admittedly poor showing. It was still a little surprising that he choose not to repeat the experience and was content to spend the rest of his time at Firhill merely watching from the technical area, excepting one pre-season outing in a friendly at Glenavon in July 1996.

MacLeod's tenure at Firhill was unsuccessful, as the club were relegated at the end of the 1995–96 season. He re-joined Celtic as assistant coach under Wim Jansen, where he helped the club win a league and Scottish League Cup double in 1997–98, their only season in charge. After leaving Celtic as a result of Jansen's departure from Celtic Park in 1998, MacLeod worked as a football pundit for the Daily Record and commentated on football for BBC Scotland and BBC Radio Scotland. MacLeod has also worked as a Scottish football analyst on Newstalk radio in Ireland. MacLeod was admitted to Golden Jubilee Hospital in Clydebank during January 2010 to have a heart operation.

MacLeod endorsed the Conservative Party in the 2010 General Election, campaigning for their candidate in the Argyll & Bute constituency. In 2012, he starred on the CBeebies show "My Story" with his grandsons, Murdo Jr. and Ross. During the 2014 Scottish independence referendum he was a supporter of the Better Together campaign against Scottish independence.

Murdo is included in our feature piece, The Definitive Who's Who Of The Partick Thistle Internationalists →