Jim Leighton MBE talks to Robert Blair about his career

Twenty four years since he last pulled on the gloves, Jim Leighton MBE is still grateful for the footballing journey that began way back in Renfrewshire all those decades ago

Generally speaking, legendary Scotland, Aberdeen and Manchester United goalkeeper Jim Leighton doesn’t do interviews. A man who was always far more focused on the footballing glory he sought to obtain than the fame attached to his prestigious tenure on the pitch, his motto has always been that he simply wished to play the game he loved and provide for his family.

With those two objectives more than fulfilled, there’d be no need for him to talk to the press ever again if he decided not to. But, such is the reverence he feels for the place that he called home for the first eighteen years of his life that he permitted Mill Magazine a rare audience with the man that Brian Clough once called “a rare bird – a Scottish goalkeeper that can be relied on”. 

That might sound like a backhanded compliment, but from a charismatic curmudgeon like Cloughy, that was close to complete adulation.

“I was born in Thornhill Hospital in Johnstone,” Jim says of his often overlooked roots in Renfrewshire. “I lived in Kilbarchan till I was 10, then I left to move to Houston Place in Elderslie where I stayed right up till I moved to Aberdeen. My primary schools were St Margaret’s, St Anthony’s in Johnstone and then St Cuthbert’s. I loved school. I didnae want to leave (laughs), but I suppose I had to leave eventually. 

Jim with Alex McLeish, Aberdeen v Rangers, May 1982

“I left and went to work for the civil service in the employment benefit office on Paisley Road Toll for two years. When I think back, I think it stood me in good stead for football as it let me know what it was like to work all day. Back then, football was just a morning thing. Once Fergie and Archie [Knox] came, that changed a lot but I knew what it was like to work all day. 

“Even when I was kid, I played for the school, as well as a team in Johnstone, then another in Glasgow on a Sunday. So, I played three games a week and trained all week, it was all we knew. I stayed not far from the golf club in Elderslie, but my parents couldn’t afford for me to join, so it was just football all the time.”

“It’s such an honour to play for your country, I can’t explain to you how proud I was pulling on that first Scotland jersey”

After a spell training under Alex Wright at Dumbarton, it was their goalkeeper Lawrie Williams that got Jim his start at nearby Dalry Thistle. There, Jim would come under the tutelage of Erik Sorenson, a Danish international who played for Rangers and Morton. As it turned out, this would be a pivotal turning point in his life. 

“He obviously saw something in me he thought he could develop,” Jim recalled. “I used to get the 10 past 5am Ayr bus and they’d be dragging me off the training pitch at 10 o’clock. I was frightened to tell him if I had a day off from work as he’d just batter me all day long. Without him and Lawrie, I wouldn’t be anywhere near here.

Jim representing Scotland in 1989, photo by Alan McGregor

“Erik changed my game completely and it was the best apprenticeship I could’ve had. I had 30-year-old South Ayrshire miners battering me the whole game then by the end they’d say ‘all the best when you go to Aberdeen son’. Billy McNeil was the manager when I went up there and I was farmed out to Deveronvale in Banff for a season where all the farmers and fisherman kicked the sh*t out of me too (laughs). 

“That’s when Fergie came in,” Jim clarified of the man who he’d previously trained under at St Mirren but never signed with until he headed to Pittodrie.

“I never even played a game for the reserves, I was just straight into the first team.” 

From there, Jim would cement himself into the annals of Scotland’s footballing greats, alongside Aberdeen winning the first division in two consecutive seasons before going on to win the European Cup Winners Cup in a historic night in Gothenburg where they bested none other than Real Madrid.

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“It’s amazing how fate comes in and opens these sliding doors,” Jim says of the moves that led him to Aberdeen. “A week after I’d signed to Aberdeen, there was interest from Celtic in trying to get me under contract but I’m not complaining. When I first went up to the North East, I headed there on the same train with Alex McLeish who I’d known since I was 12 years old and playing for Glasgow United with him.

“I was asked quite recently about beating Real Madrid,” Leighton declared. “I said, I’ve got a three-year-old grandson who lives in England and he’s going to be a Tottenham fan when he grows up. I always think, ‘how is he going to understand that his old grandpa beat Real Madrid when he was at Aberdeen? Not Man United, Aberdeen.’ He won’t because that just doesn’t happen now.

“We’re the last team to beat them in a European final because they know how to win them. So, how am I going to convince him? As well as beating Bayern Munich before that (laughs). What we achieved will never be repeated again. Plus, I was probably on about 300 quid back then! I think the worst thing that happened is money coming into the game as it can knock ambition out of players. If you’re earning 350 grand a week and you don’t win, so what? I had to win to pay the mortgage.” 

Jim Leighton at Tannadice, season 1981/82

Alongside his time at Manchester United, a brief spell at Dundee and four years under Alex Miller at Hibs which he describes as “the best I played in all of my career”, Jim Leighton is also renowned for his heroics in goal for Scotland and holds the second most caps of any player for the national side behind Kenny Dalglish. 

As well as looking back fondly upon those days, Jim also has hopes that the team heading to EURO 2024 will go down in history by progressing further than their footballing ancestors could. 

“It’s such an honour to play for your country,” Jim proclaimed. “I can’t explain to you how proud I was pulling on that first Scotland jersey. You put it on, but you’re almost bursting out with pride. You get one and then you get greedy, so you want as many as you can get.

“All those days in St Cuthbert’s where I got in trouble for daydreaming and looking out the window thinking about football paid off in the end. I don’t care if ten people beat that record I hold, it’s 91 more games than I ever thought were possible. People say why didn’t you try to beat Kenny’s record, but it was my decision to leave and 91 sounds pretty good to me.

“For this Scotland team, everybody will be cheering them on,” Leighton concluded, “and if they can do what I never managed to achieve by getting past the group stages then I’ll most happily take my hat off to them. We’ve thought every group was the one to do it, so it’s long overdue for us to get there and I’ll keep my fingers crossed.” 

Q&A with Jim Leighton MBE

Favourite football stadium to play in? Santiago Bernabéu, Madrid.

All-time Favourite Defenders? Willie Miller & Alex McLeish. 

Personal Goalkeeping Hero? Bobby Clark, who actually became my predecessor at Aberdeen. I was lucky enough to work with him too. He wasn’t flash, he just did it all right. 

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