Scottish Football: Requiem or Renaissance?

By Henry McLeish

Did I only dream about Archie Gemmill scoring one of the greatest goals ever in beating Holland 3-2 in the 1978 World Cup? Did Jim Baxter really play ‘keepie uppie’ and torment the life out of the weary World Cup winners England in 1967? Were Celtic really the first British team to win the European Cup? Have we obsessives become untethered from reality? Are we hanging on to a world real or imaginary, where football dominated our lives to such an extent that it ‘was more than a game’, indeed ‘more important than life itself’? Has my natural childhood football environment and each of its overlapping parts – cultural, religious, identity, class, political, intellectual, psychological, sociological, philosophical and, sadly, tribal – created the conditions for distorted and highly selective lapses of memory and reality? I don’t think so. In this personal and thought-provoking book, former footballer and First Minister Henry McLeish examines his own and his country’s dysfunctional relationship with football. Read this book and rethink your own relationship with the beautiful game in the country that took it to the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Luath Press
• Release date: Apr 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9781912387458

Henry McLeish

RT Hon Henry McLeish began his political career as an elected member in local government in 1974, and was leader of Fife Regional Council for five years. In 1987 he was elected as a member of the UK Parliament and acted as Minister for Devolution and Home Affairs in the Labour Government from 1997 to 1999. In the first Scottish Parliament he was Minister for Enterprise and Lifelong Learning from 1999, and in 2000 he became First Minister of Scotland until 2001. Retiring from politics in 2003, he is now an adviser, consultant, writer, author and broadcaster and lectures in the USA and elsewhere on the European Union and politics. He chaired the Scottish Prisons Commission, which produced a report into sentencing and the criminal justice system entitled ‘Scotland’s Choice’. In 2010 he conducted a major report on the state of football in Scotland, which had been commissioned by the Scottish Football Association, and chaired a commission into sport requested by the Scottish Government. He is now an honorary professor at Edinburgh University.