Scottish Football

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.

Henry McLeish, the former First Minister of Scotland, has a life time association with football and remains its most passionate advocate. Born in Methil, his early life was a total obsession with football to the exclu-sion of everything else including school work. After progressing through schools football he left school for the first time and joined Leeds United as a school boy professional under Don Revie. After re-turning from Leeds, failing to settle down, he re-turned to school and joined East Fife and played for nearly six years. A frequent commentator on the game, Henry McLeish was absolutely delighted and privileged to be asked by the SFA in 2009, to undertake a major review of Scottish football, covering the development of Scotland's young talent and the future of the SFA. Now Chair of the Elite Football Academy in Fife, he is now help-ing to implement one of the main recommendations in his 2010 report.