France 98 was great finale to fightback

Jim Leighton recalls his career highs and lows – and the biggest fight of all

Jim Leighton can remember the struggle he faced after being discarded from the first team at Manchester United 30 years ago.

The Gothenburg Great has never forgotten how he slipped “into the doldrums”, how his children kept being told “their old man was crap” by the other kids at school and how he believed for a time that he had “fallen off the end of the Earth”.

That was an understandable reaction while the 91-times-capped Scotland goalkeeper languished in the reserves at Dundee in the early 1990s and reflected on the contrast between that and savouring European Cup Winners’ Cup glory with Aberdeen just a decade earlier.

In recent times, Leighton, 62, has had more to worry about than defending corners and stopping strikers in their tracks. Two years ago, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, which subsequently spread into his lymph nodes and required him to undertake 37 gruelling sessions of radiotherapy.

Although he has now been given the all-clear by the medics at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, he said he was now determined to campaign for greater awareness of the illness which kills a man every 45 minutes in Scotland.

As Leighton said: “Just think about it – during the course of one football match, two more lads lose their lives to this disease in this country, and yet it’s as if nobody wants to talk about it.

“I’ve heard it often enough from people around me. We say we’ll go to the doctor, but then we put it off to next week and then the week after that.

“It’s always next week, for men being men. Then suddenly, next week doesn’t come.”

Four World Cup squads

The Scot experienced the full gamut of emotions through his lengthy career and, barring a remarkable transformation in his country’s fortunes, few of his compatriots will ever be able to say they were chosen for four World Cup squads in 1982, 1986, 1990 and 1998.

That latter campaign marked redemption for Leighton, following the downturn in his fortunes after he notoriously fell out with Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson – the pair haven’t spoken for three decades – and left Old Trafford to return to his homeland.

While at Dundee in 1992-93, the prospect of further international honours seemed remote. But Leighton, a meticulous, competitive individual with the attitude that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains, refused to accept he could not rise again.

A move to Hibs reaped dividends, as the prelude to him returning to his old haunts at Pittodrie and gaining a place in the squad for the 1998 World Cup in France, where Craig Brown’s team were pitted against mighty Brazil in the opening game of the tournament.

No wonder that, even now, Leighton still speaks about this contest, which his side lost 2-1 despite acquitting themselves well, with something approaching wonder.

He was on the brink of turning 40, yet remained as lithe and committed to training as throughout his career.