Football Career
Born in Fulham, London, Macdonald started out as a full back before switching to centre forward. After signing from Tonbridge Angels Bobby Robson paid £1,000 to sign him for Fulham in 1968 just after their relegation from the Football League First Division.
A year later he moved to Luton Town. At Luton he scored 49 times in 88 matches, which caught the eye of Newcastle United manager Joe Harvey, who signed him for £180,000 in the summer of 1971. At Newcastle he quickly became a favourite of the fans, scoring a hat-trick on his home debut against Liverpool, and was the club's top scorer for five seasons in a row.
While at Newcastle, he made his debut for England (against Wales). On 16 April 1975, in a game for England against Cyprus he scored all five goals in a 5–0 victory, a record that still stands today (spawning a newspaper headline "SuperMac 5, Cyprus 0".) In total he played 14 times for his country, scoring six times (the only other game he scored in being a 2–0 win over then World Champions West Germany).
Macdonald left Newcastle for Arsenal in 1976, for the unusual fee of £333,333.33, and played two full seasons (being the club's top scorer in both), but suffered a knee injury in a League Cup match against Rotherham at the start of the 1978–79 season, from which he was unable to completely recover. After having spent a couple of months in Sweden with Djurgårdens IF he announced his retirement from playing at the premature age of 29 in August 1979. He never won a major honour but was on the losing side in two FA Cup finals and a League Cup final, two for Newcastle and one for Arsenal.
Read more about this topic: Malcolm Macdonald
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