Paul banks football dream

Scotland had John Robertson, who went on to glory at Hearts, England had Paul Rideout. We won 5-4 in a game which stirred the blood and in which the captain of the youngsters was the astounding Paul McStay.

If, perhaps, McStay has not entirely reached the world-class level which aged spectators like myself wished for, his has been, all the same, a glittering career. But there were many remarkable young boys playing in that team. His team-mate for Scotland, and for Celtic Boys' Club, was also a major prospect. His name was Nicholas, not Charlie, for Charlie was his cousin. His name was Paul.

I first met Paul Nicholas when he was three and the very late sibling of his brother John, who has been a close chum of mine for many years. I was John's best man, I am the godfather to his children, I have known the Nicholas family for more than 30 years. A clever family they were and are, and Paul was academically bright, too. At Holyrood Secondary in the South-Side of Glasgow, the biggest school in Scotland, Paul managed to come out with six Band 1s and, much to the chagrin of his older brother, a mere B in geography. (John was the principal teacher of geography at Paul's school.) Paul started at the University of Strathclyde, signed for Celtic, and both trained and studied hard.

Perhaps it is true what many a European footballer has told me: we don't value education enough in Scottish, or even British, football. Certainly it is not unusual for a Dutch or German, or even a Brazilian, maestro to spend the early days of his football career learning more than how to behave like a hooligan in a chip shop in Alexandria.

Anyway, Paul was a bright lad and it may be so that he was not cut out for the hurly-burly of the Scottish League.

I am told by many who saw him then, back in the days when Paul put the green-and-white hoops over his head, that this wasn't true. Sean Fallon, the ex-Celtic coach and talent scout, once told me that Paul was ``maybe a wee bit polite.'' Which was true.

I once saw him collide with a wee lad from Drumchapel Amateurs at the Eastercraig Tournament in Glasgow, then a most prestigious event. Paul turned, left the ball for a minute, and asked his opponent: ``Are you all right?''

Certainly, what was true was that he was a prospective star. Yet his young life had been somewhat tragic really. His mother, Rose, had been dying of a terminal disease for some years and Paul grew up with that. In a dreadful tragedy his father, Tommy, his best pal really, died of a brain tumour, but a few days before his mother passed away. I remember seeing the young and bemused Paul, aged 13, at the funerals. It is astounding that he became the Scottish footballing prospect that he did, let alone the academic. Paul, now aged 31, doesn't want me to tell you this, but I have to, because a lot of young people out there need to see what other young people can manage out of difficulty. And one of them, eventually, was that Paul was freed by Celtic.

Andy Roxburgh, then a youth coach, spoke to an American college coach. The legendary American soccer chief Jape Shattuck, was looking for a young Scottish player to take up a soccer scholarship at the august Harvard University in Boston.

Young Nicholas knew a little of the place, helped a little by his elder brother, who was by now bringing him up, so to speak.

``I knew JFK went there,'' Paul told me the other day, ``and saw it in Love Story.'' I've known Paul since he toddled and know when I'm getting the mickey taken out of me. ``Aye, okay, I made that up.'' Nicholas assiduously retains his Scottish accent, partly because it might just help in his job in the States.

What is his job? Let us get to that.

Paul played for a Portuguese team in Boston: Faielense they were called, mainly Latin immigrants, playing only two months in the year. Washed dishes. His fees were $4000 a year and it wasn't easy, but Paul started work in New York, after a rather richly spectacular economics degree.

At Harvard he found a lot of things, attending J K Galbraith's lectures - he even had dinner with the great Canadian. He went off to the seminars of Seamus Heaney's even though he wasn't in his faculty. The world of the inarticulacy of the average Scottish footy player had receded (though this can be greatly exaggerated: Pat Nevin was the year above Paul at his primary school, John Ogilvie's in Easterhouse, and Nevin has made something of a career out of being the only soccer player who uses predicated sentences with a verb).

In 1987 Nicholas graduated from Harvard. By rights he was part of the Eastern Establishment, one of the Ivy League.

Nicholas now works for a major merchant bank in New York, lives well in Manhattan, works long, long hours, knows what he's doing. Oddly, he is anything but the capitalist yuppie: he often wishes to come back to Scotland to do law and work for a Labour Party which he feels has lost its roots. He still plays football, and will always play it well.

The other day in Darcy's bistro in Glasgow's Princes Square, we meet for lunch with a lot of his pals (Nicholas keeps his pals, despite 13 years in the States, and gets horribly chaffed by them: Jim Cavanagh and Ian MacDonald, ex-Celtic Boys' Club colleagues, are not only pals, but regular visitors to his Manhattan penthouse flat). His old chum, Tosh McKinlay, who played with him back when they both were 12, for Celtic Boys' Club, and who is now playing blinders for the East-end club, told Jeff, our photographer, who was taking a portrait: ``You'd better use a wide-angle lens for the size of him.'' Actually, Paul has just filled out a bit and looks shockingly photogenic.

But he is the living proof that football doesn't have to destroy your life when you leave the top levels. Nicholas could probably have maintained himself at the top, who knows. He just decided to fill out a bit more than soccer in Scotland generally allows. Now there's a schoolboy's dream to think about.