Former Scotland striker on replacing Maradona at Barça, scoring 30-yard goals in training and Venables not getting enough credit
The day Steve Archibald walked into the Barcelona dressing room he found Bernd Schuster holding his shirt. He had always worn the same number and the contract he had just signed guaranteed he still would, but the German was not letting go. Not because Schuster was attached to the No 8, but because he was desperate not to wear the other available shirt, sitting there untouched: Diego Maradona’s No 10. “I realised something then,” Archibald says, “about the club, Maradona and the pressure.”
Other people’s pressure, that is. “The only pressure I ever felt was Clyde vs Ayr United, my debut,” he says and if there is a recurring theme over a long conversation looking back on a fascinating life on and off the pitch, it is how tough he is, the sheer bloody-mindedness.
