The most remarkable aspect of the gilded footballing career of Tony Book was that until his fourth decade he was still earning a living as a bricklayer. Supplementing his wages by playing part-time non-league football, it was only at the age of 30 that he was swept into the full-time game. Within two years he had become the nationally admired captain of Manchester City, holding aloft the 1968 league championship trophy, followed soon by the FA Cup, the League Cup and the European Cup Winners’ Cup.

In a reversal of that late entry into top level football, Book, who has died aged 90, then became an early starter in management, leading City to a League Cup trophy in 1976 and a league runners-up spot in 1977. He presided over an entertaining era of football at Maine Road, and was manager for seven years before moving on to backroom duties over the next couple of decades that included two spells as caretaker manager.

Tony was born in Bath. When he was four, his father, Charlie, an army officer, was posted to India, where the family lived for seven years before returning when Tony was 11. At West Twerton secondary modern school in Bath, he revealed a talent for football, playing for Somerset schoolboys and the Peasedown Miners Welfare club. Leaving school at 16 in 1950, he began a bricklaying apprenticeship with a building firm, Mortimers, where he remained for more than a decade.

After national service in the Royal Army Medical Corps, in 1954 Book moved from the first team at Peasedown to play for Frome Town as a semi-professional, and in 1956 he was signed by Bath City, bricklaying by day while training two evenings a week.

Although he was much respected as a right-back for Bath over the next six years, appearing more than 400 times, by the age of 28 he had long since put aside hopes of making it into a higher level of football. But then the whirlwind arrival in 1962 of a new manager, Malcolm Allison, transformed his fortunes.

The flamboyant young boss doubled training to four evenings a week and introduced new coaching methods that Book in particular was able to respond to. When Allison was appointed manager of Second Division Plymouth Argyle in 1964, he put Book forward as a transfer target. Worried that Plymouth would be unwilling to sign a 30-year-old with no league experience, Allison persuaded Book to doctor his birth certificate, and he became 28 again. The directors agreed a £1,500 fee with Bath, and Book resigned from bricklaying to spend the rest of his career in football.

Determined to make the most of his late opportunity, he had two successful seasons as captain at Plymouth – to whom he soon revealed his real age without recriminations. In 1965 Allison was on the move again, to become assistant manager to Joe Mercer at Manchester City. During the close season of 1966 he persuaded his new club to sign Book for £17,500.

At the end of Book’s debut 1966-67 campaign in the First Division, he was voted player of the year by City supporters and made club captain. Playing stylish football under Mercer, with Mike Summerbee, Francis Lee and Colin Bell in the side, City then took the 1967-68 season by storm. Going into their final league match they were ahead of Manchester United, needing a victory to secure the title. They did it with a nervy 4-3 win at Newcastle United and, just four years after leaving non-league football, Book was lifting the league trophy.

The following season he collected the FA Cup after a 1-0 victory in the 1969 final against Leicester and in 1970 City also won the League Cup (2-1 against West Bromwich Albion, followed by the European Cup Winners’ Cup (2-1 in Vienna against the Polish side Górnik Zabrze). By now 35, Book had captained the side to four trophies in three years.

There was a fourth place in the league in 1971-72, by which time Allison had taken over as manager. When he was sacked in 1973 and his successor, Johnny Hart, stood down through ill health, Book stepped in as caretaker player-manager for seven games until Ron Saunders was appointed. Saunders took on Book as his assistant, and at 39, with 244 league appearances for City under his belt, he retired as a player to concentrate on his new duties.

Saunders lost his job in April 1974, after which Book took over as manager, steering City to eighth place in his first full season. The following year he led them to the 1976 League Cup, which they won 2-1 against Newcastle, and in the 1976-77 season – by now featuring quality players signed or nurtured by Book, such as Dave Watson, Asa Hartford, Peter Barnes, Joe Royle and Dennis Tueart – City were runners up in the league, a point behind Liverpool.

In 1977-78 City again looked to have a chance of the title, but after a late stutter finished fourth. Midway through the next season the City chairman Peter Swales made a fateful decision to kick Book upstairs so that he could bring back Allison as manager – a move that Swales later characterised as “my biggest mistake”. The sidelining of Book and the return of Allison ushered in the beginning of a long decline at Maine Road that took 30 years to reverse.

Book was made general manager, nominally in charge of Allison but, after a season and a half of that unsatisfactory arrangement, both men were sacked in late 1980. For three months Book was temporary assistant manager at Cardiff, before returning to City to become youth development officer. Over the years the role developed into a wider one, and he took on the mantle of elder statesman at the club, twice acting as caretaker manager – in 1989 on the departure of Mel Machin, and in 1993 after the sacking of Peter Reid.

In 1996, with 30 years of service under his belt and only six months to his official retirement, he was dismissed on the day before a new manager, Frank Clark, arrived at the club. The next few years were spent scouting for Sunderland and Tottenham, but having been made an honorary president of City in 1997, he remained a regular visitor to the club that had become such a part of his life.

He is survived by his wife, Sylvia (nee Mitchard), whom he married in 1957, their two children, Anthony and Tracey, a grandson, Jake, and two great-grandchildren.

• Tony (Anthony) Keith Book, footballer, born 4 September 1934; died 13 January 2025