Alex McLeish and Gordon Strachan lift lid on Gothenburg group chat as Aberdeen greats look ahead to 50th anniversary

It's fair to say the Gothenburg Greats group chat will be pinging with ever-increasing regularity as the clock ticks down to May 11 next year. The Aberdeen players who made history by beating Real Madrid in the 1983 Cup Winners’ Cup Final – the last side to beat the Galacticos in a European final – will be front and centre of the celebrations to commemorate the 40th anniversary of that rain-lashed night in Sweden.

“Aye, we’ve got a wee Gothenburg group going,” Alex McLeish says with a smile. “I don’t think we can wait until the 50th for a celebration. I think we’re on the back nine. It’s incredible. As Willie Miller used to say, a wee diddy team from a provincial city won the European Cup Winners’ Cup against the mighty Real Madrid.”

McLeish, Alex Ferguson’s stalwart centre-half, and Gordon Strachan, his mercurial, magical midfielder are talking all things Fergie and THAT night, smashing into stories like Big Eck used to hammer into tackles. The pair are speaking on BT Sport’s new podcast – Currie Club: The Scottish Football Sessions – with Darrell Currie.

“We remember all the little things about leading up to the final,” the former Scotland defender and manager says. “The week before it, I did my back in lifting paving stones, very stupidly.”

"I didn’t know you’d hurt your back,” Strachan pipes up. “I just thought you were playing rubbish!”

There’s a lot of laughter. And Strachan insists that’s the way it was back in the Dons’ glory days as well. Even if the man who led them to glory ruled with a rod of iron.

“He was an angry man,” Strachan winces. “Permanently angry. Anger was his energy and he had to have something that would make him angry and that would keep him going. Most of us can extinguish anger after a