It's fair to say the Gothenburg Greats group chat will be pinging with ever-increasing regularity as the clock ticks down to May 11 next year. The Aberdeen players who made history by beating Real Madrid in the 1983 Cup Winners’ Cup Final – the last side to beat the Galacticos in a European final – will be front and centre of the celebrations to commemorate the 40th anniversary of that rain-lashed night in Sweden.
“Aye, we’ve got a wee Gothenburg group going,” Alex McLeish says with a smile. “I don’t think we can wait until the 50th for a celebration. I think we’re on the back nine. It’s incredible. As Willie Miller used to say, a wee diddy team from a provincial city won the European Cup Winners’ Cup against the mighty Real Madrid.”
McLeish, Alex Ferguson’s stalwart centre-half, and Gordon Strachan, his mercurial, magical midfielder are talking all things Fergie and THAT night, smashing into stories like Big Eck used to hammer into tackles. The pair are speaking on BT Sport’s new podcast – Currie Club: The Scottish Football Sessions – with Darrell Currie.
“We remember all the little things about leading up to the final,” the former Scotland defender and manager says. “The week before it, I did my back in lifting paving stones, very stupidly.”
"I didn’t know you’d hurt your back,” Strachan pipes up. “I just thought you were playing rubbish!”
There’s a lot of laughter. And Strachan insists that’s the way it was back in the Dons’ glory days as well. Even if the man who led them to glory ruled with a rod of iron.
“He was an angry man,” Strachan winces. “Permanently angry. Anger was his energy and he had to have something that would make him angry and that would keep him going. Most of us can extinguish anger after a month – he could keep it going for maybe 20 years!
“We all need a drive and he had that. He used to play cards with us and he’d cheat. We had a snooker competition. He thinks he’s great at snooker and he wasn’t bad but Joe Smith beat him in the snooker tournament and was transferred to Motherwell a month later, so he put himself back in the tournament.
“He got beaten by Ian Fleming. Guess what? He got transferred as well. I’m not suggesting that’s why but he put himself back into the tournament again!”
Fergie was certainly angry when Strachan told him he was leaving Pittodrie at the end of season 1983/84. “There was a kind of friction because Alex had never had anybody leaving him at the end of the season and it didn’t go down too well, to be honest with you,” Strachan admits.
“He didn’t speak, really, but when he did it was, ‘Do you think anybody will sign you? No chance.’
“He’d send me to the most ridiculous Player of the Year events. Where was the furthest away... Strachan, you and your wife are going there.’
“It was kind of tense. There was an undercurrent of silence, just a ‘Why are you leaving me?’ kind of thing. But I had to make some money!”
“But he actually took me down to Manchester United when I was signing for them. When I was there, he’d phone me to ask how it was going and what was it like. I was telling him the boys do a bit of drinking. Fantastic at drinking, never seen anything like it in my life – not thinking he was going to turn up!
“He used to get youth team players like Bryan Gunn and Eric Black and babysitting for the likes of me on a Saturday night. That made sure the kids like Bryan weren’t out on a Saturday night but it also made sure that he knew where me, or Mark (McGhee) or Willie (Miller) were.
“On the Monday, he’d ask the kids like Neale Cooper: ‘Where was Strachan? What time did he get in on Saturday night? Was he with McGhee? What were they eating? Curries? CURRIES?’ So he killed two birds with one stone. He had them petrified but he made sure he had a tracking device on us.”
McLeish jokes that he stayed with Aberdeen because he didn’t have the nerve to follow Strachan out the door. “I’d had a couple of phone calls from one or two teams in England. Tottenham was one of them,” he says. “I was going to walk out with Gordon but I bottled it in the end!
“He said, ‘I want you in here, get this contract sorted. I’m going my holidays on Monday and want it sorted before I go away.’
“Instead of going in and saying that I wanted to go, I just said: ‘I don’t think you’re paying me enough money.’ He puffed out his cheeks and said: ‘You and Willie Miller are bleeding this club dry. I’ll give you another tenner. And somehow I shook his hand on another three-year deal.
“He’s the best sports psychologist in the world,” Strachan insists. “As a manager, players watch you every moment of the day, your body language.
“It’s not Churchillian speeches... it’s things like seeing him in the tunnel and he taps you on the shoulder: ‘Glad you were playing today, son.’ That’s all you needed.
“His big thing was: ‘Never let your team-mates down and never let your family down.’ If he went for you, it was usually because you were letting your team-mates or your family down.
“It’s only when you step back from it you realise that I literally laughed every day I was there.
“I have no idea where my medals are. I have no idea where my strips are. But if you ask me to tell stories about the players in that dressing room, I’ve got all of them.
“You cannae buy that. A selfie cannae help you with that one.”
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