“I just want to show that football isn´t just about a Saturday sport. It´s much more than that and it can be such a good thing for society if done in the correct way.”

His story testifies to the importance of football in an age where the beautiful game can be disfigured by the eternal obsession with money and ruthlessness, its constant companions.

‘I always wanted to do something in sport as a career but the problem was that, academically, I was struggling because of the dyslexia.’ He had a refuge. ‘I was pretty rubbish at football,’ he says. ‘But I loved it. Lived for it. I was a defender.

#football #paulmcneill #footballsavedmylife #scottishfa