Search: ' Gordon Strachan'
Stories
Football at the
sharp end
by Richard Gordon
Black and White, £9.99
Reviewed by Gordon Cairns
From WSC 349 March 2016
“Tales From The Technical Area” may have been a more pleasingly alliterative title, but the stories author Richard Gordon elicits from his subjects are generally of the more humble variety; summoning the sense of a damp bus shelter rather than a Perspex conservatory. The author is better known as the reasonable anchor man on Radio Scotland’s Sportsound among more excitable colleagues. Drawing on these radio connections he has amassed 48 interviews with a range of figures in the Scottish game. What is refreshing is that stories about Celtic and Rangers are minimal, allowing backroom staff and managers from smaller teams to tell their tales with a remarkable degree of candour.
The extraordinary life and times of Glenbuck and its famous sons
by Adam Powley and Robert Gillan
Pitch Publishing, £18.99
Reviewed by Graham McColl
From WSC 348 February 2016
With the Scottish football landscape currently ravaged almost beyond repair and Gordon Strachan, our jokey, England-based national-team manager telling us that Ikechi Anya and Scott Brown are talents to be reckoned with, it seems timely to be transported back to the village of Glenbuck. This was Bill Shankly’s childhood home and one that symbolises a footballing epoch – a century or so from the late Victorian era to the late 20th century – when Scotland produced reams of talented players from tight-knit working-class towns and villages, united by dangerous work in industry and an obsession with football.
The autobiography of Kevin Kilbane
by Kevin Kilbane
Aurum, £18.99
Reviewed by Jonathan O’Brien
From WSC 327 May 2014
Sixteen and a half years on, it seems surreal to recall that when Kevin Kilbane initially broke into the Ireland squad, he was touted as a bright, shining young hope who could give Damien Duff a serious run for his money on the wing. Things didn’t pan out that way, of course. But only one of them appeared in 66 competitive internationals in a row, and it wasn’t Duffer.
That extraordinary stat (in the history of international football, only Billy Wright managed a longer streak) sums up Kilbane’s entire career. Never more than ordinary on a technical level – I once saw him lose possession against Israel at Lansdowne Road by doing an inexplicable 360-degree pirouette while the ball trundled slowly towards him – he built himself a decent and rewarding career through sheer hard work and force of will.
Football memoirs don’t always reflect the subject’s own persona (read Gordon Strachan’s for proof, or rather don’t) but this one does. Killa is a stolid, honest and meticulous read. Generous-spirited, too, in more ways than one: all the proceeds go to a Down’s Syndrome charity. Kilbane is the sort of player who can still remember what he had for breakfast on the morning of a game in Reykjavik in 1997, and who said what to whom after a match against Macedonia aeons ago. Either that or he kept a detailed diary.
His otherwise happy 1980s Preston childhood was darkened by an alcoholic father who “pissed away all his wages”, and whose eventual departure from the family home “made no difference to my life”. Kilbane himself briefly became something of a drunkard in 1994, a pattern which came to an abrupt end when he was caught stealing a car stereo and a police sergeant gave him “the longest bollocking of my life”.
The tone is generally positive and sunny (I lost count of the number of times players or teams were referred to as “great lads”), but there are sporadic glints of anger. Cesc Fàbregas’s reputation for arrogance is added to here as Kilbane relays his obnoxious comments during an Arsenal v Huddersfield cup tie (“This team are shit!”). Later in the book, a Coventry fan screams at Kilbane that he deserves to have a handicapped daughter (Elsie has Down’s Syndrome). Kilbane tells him to fuck off, but is then pressurised by the club into making a public apology. Kilbane offers the fan the chance to hear the apology face to face, secretly hoping in vain that he turns up because “an apology was the last thing I was going to offer him”.
A few more interesting nuggets pop up – David Moyes supposedly finds it near-impossible to relax even on squad getaway breaks; hard man Thomas Gravesen privately cringed at the idea of being tackled hard; and Kilbane claims that Ireland’s players came up with the tactical gameplan for the fateful World Cup play-off in Paris behind Giovanni Trapattoni’s back. In the main, however, Killa mirrors its subject almost exactly, taking few chances and diligently plugging away. It passes a few hours agreeably enough, but that’s all.
by Richard Gordon
Black and White, £7.99
Reviewed by Dianne Millen
From WSC 316 June 2013
Even now, 30 years on, if you mention the date May 11, 1983 to any Aberdonian, even the coldest north-eastern eyes will mist over as we mutter affectionately “Aye, Gothenburg”. For it was on that night that Aberdeen, led by Alex Ferguson, beat Real Madrid 2-1 to lift the Cup-Winners Cup. BBC journalist and lifelong Dons fan Richard Gordon has now commemorated the 30th anniversary of the club’s most famous triumph in this engaging account.
Structured around the journey to the final – and beyond it to the subsequent Super Cup victory over SV Hamburg – the chapters assess each game and the impressive domestic results which surrounded it, presenting a pen portrait of a single member of the legendary team. These interviews are often both hilarious and insightful and convey a sense of how those individuals operated, and how they managed to achieve what they did. Even if, as Eric Black recalls, it was considered no big deal: “I just thought that was how it was – you turned up, played a game, got shouted at a bit and won a trophy every year!” (Aside from the European triumph, Ferguson’s Aberdeen were Scottish champions three times and won five domestic cups.)
That collective energy, Ferguson’s ability to construct a team greater than the sum of its parts, lifted the Dons to the highest levels. Ferguson’s attention to detail and control-freak tendencies irked some players but, as Gordon Strachan puts it: “At Pittodrie every Monday morning there would be eight of us wanting to kill Fergie but by Tuesday we’re laughing and joking about it.”
The author lets the overall picture gradually emerge as we read each individual’s account. The result is a fascinating tale of how a group of talented, but otherwise fairly ordinary, blokes did something exceptional together. While there is plenty of information and several mini match reports in the book, Gordon’s pacey writing style ensures it doesn’t get bogged down with the kind of details only a hardcore fan would want to know. Perhaps the only disappointment is that while he touches on the factors which made the team’s success possible, without an interview with Ferguson himself (although his shadow falls on almost every page) the analysis is inevitably incomplete.
Celebrating Gothenburg has sometimes been seen as controversial. Certain commentators (and even some managers) accuse Aberdeen fans of living in the past – or use it as a stick with which to beat those of us who call for better than mid-table finishes, even in these changed days. Ultimately, however, this book reminds us of just how amazing the achievement was and that it is still worth celebrating. And that given the right set of people and circumstances, any of us can achieve more than we thought we could.