If BBC Scotland had really thought about it they should have run this programme on Scottish football icons on Aberdeen, Spurs and Barcelona striker Steve Archibald directly before rather than after the show on commentator Archie Macpherson.
Anyway, if that was a missed opportunity, it's fair to say that Archibald himself didn't miss many of the opportunities which came his way in front of goal. A prolific striker with three top teams in Scotland, England and Spain, he scored goals and won trophies wherever he went.
His beginnings were humble, starting out as a motor mechanic in Glasgow, before he found his feet, literally in football, first joining lowly Clyde FC., before hitting the big-time as a free-scoring striker in Alex Ferguson's fine Aberdeen side of the early 80's. The great manager Fergie doesn't make many personal TV appearances these days in his old age, so for him to pop up here and speak so admiringly of Archibald says a lot.
Later in his career he moved on to Spurs where he formed a dynamic strike partnership with Garth Crooks, winning two FA Cups and the UEFA Cup in the process. Next he was off to Barcelona and he helped to transform the fortunes of the Spanish giants, scoring a stack of goals for them as they won La Liga for the first time in 12 years. It was there however that he had his biggest career disappointment, being substituted by their maverick manager Terry "El Tel" Venables in the 1986 European Cup final and ending up on the losing side.
I always liked Archibald as a player, he was a shameless poacher who lived to score goals. He came across here as a determined individual who set himself high personal standards and didn't suffer fools gladly. Amongst his other admirers here were ex-team-mates Willie Miller, Crooks and Gary Lineker.
Perhaps not the first person from that era you would automatically think of as an icon and Archibald himself is big enough to big up other Scottish strikers of the day who competed with him then for an international place, but when you consider the success he had at the top level in those three countries I think he's as good a candidate as anyone for iconography.
And of course his other claim to fame was making two separate appearances in the one episode of the TV chart show "Top Of The Pops".
Beat that Erling Haaland!
