A BOOK which attempts to answer why Scotland has produced so many of the best football managers in the world is being launched tomorrow by two of Scotland’s leading sportswriters.
Based on exclusive interviews with the many of the managers themselves, their players or close friends and family, the Sunday Herald’s Michael Grant and the Scottish Daily Mail’s Rob Robertson reveal the huge contribution that Scottish managers such as Sir Alex Ferguson, Sir Matt Busby, Bill Shankly, Jock Stein, Tommy Docherty and Jim McLean, as well as a host of others, have made to the world game.
Excepts from the book, ‘The Management: Scotland’s Great Football Bosses’, appeared in Scotland on Sunday and features what is claimed to be the first-ever interview with Jock Stein’s two sisters, who give an insight into his life and death.
Publisher, Birlinn, in the book’s blurb, points out: “With an analysis of the role of mining, heavy industry and politics in producing these tough, natural leaders; witty anecdotes on the great managers’ run-ins with the media; a comprehensive roll of honour showing everything they have won; and an assessment of whether Scotland will continue to produce charismatic and successful bosses in the future, The Management is insightful, measured, revealing and utterly unique.”
Grant has been a football writer for more than two decades. He worked in Inverness before moving to the Press and Journal in Aberdeen, and then, in 1999, became chief football writer of the Sunday Herald. He has been chief football writer of The Herald since last year.
Robertson is a former Scotland Young Journalist of the Year and Scotland Campaigning Journalist of the Year, and has held staff jobs at a number of Scottish newspapers – including the Evening Express, Aberdeen, the Evening Times, Glasgow, the Evening News, Edinburgh, Scottish Sunday Mail and The Herald.
Robertson has written books on the rise of Scottish tennis star, Andy Murray; the inside story of how Vladimir Romanov took control of Heart of Midlothian football club; and co-authored The Don, the autobiography of Willie Miller, the current director of football and former captain of Aberdeen FC.
