Alan Gilzean

Alan Gilzean
Personnel
Surname	Alan John Gilzean
birthday	October 23, 1938
place of birth	Coupar Angus ,  Scotland
date of death	July 8, 2018
Place of death	Weston-super-Mare ,  England
position	Center Forward
Juniors
Years	station
	Coupar Angus Juveniles
	Dundee Violet
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
1957-1964	Dundee FC	134 (113)
1964-1974	Tottenham Hotspur	343 0(93)
1974	Highlands Park
National team
Years	selection	Games (goals)
1963-1971	Scotland	22 0(12)
Stations as a trainer
Years	station
1975-1976	Stevenage Athletic
1 Only league games are given.

Alan John Gilzean (born October 23, 1938 in Coupar Angus , Perth and Kinross , † July 8, 2018 in Weston-super-Mare ) was a Scottish football player . As a center forward , he first won the Scottish championship with FC Dundee in 1962 , before moving to the English elite league two years later as a record scorer. There he won both the FA Cup and the UEFA Cup for Tottenham Hotspur and is still the seventh most successful goalscorer in the history of the "Spurs" in competitive games.

Athletic career

Dundee FC (1957-1964)

Gilzean first learned to play football at the small clubs "Coupar Angus Juveniles" and "Dundee Violet" before joining Dundee FC in January 1956 as a 17-year-old amateur. At the beginning of the 1957/58 season he signed his first professional contract there and developed as a center forward to a central player in the emerging team, which set out to be the two dominant clubs from Glasgow ( Celtic and Rangers ) serious competition. Gilzean scored more than 100 goals in the Scottish league until 1964 and was instrumental in ensuring that the "dark blues" won the only Scottish championship in the club's history in 1962. Further respectable successes came with the entry into the semi-finals of the European championship competition in the following season and another year later reaching the final in the Scottish Cup , which was finally lost 3-1 to the Glasgow Rangers.

On November 7, 1963 Gilzean, who had previously played three times for the U23 of his country and for a league selection, made his debut for the Scottish national team , but remained there despite the 6-1 victory over Norway there still without his own goal. In the following twelve months, he completed four more internationals and attracted particular attention at a charity game on White Hart Lane . There he scored two goals for a Scottish national team that faced Tottenham Hotspur after the tragic death of Scots and Spurs player John White in July 1964.

Tottenham Hotspur (1964-1974)

Due to his good performance in the charity game, he aroused the interest of the Spurs, who were still looking for a successor to long-time center forward Bobby Smith . In December 1964 Gilzean moved to north London for a transfer fee of 72,500 pounds and made his debut on December 19, 1964 in a home game against Everton . He quickly found his way around his new team and the formerly "simple" goal scorer became more and more a playfully demanding and creative offensive player, who was above all an ideal complement and preparer for crowd favorite Jimmy Greaves . Gilzean won the FA Cup in 1967 and remained a regular player, although in January 1968 he faced high-profile competition with the signing of Martin Chivers from Southampton .

When Greaves moved to West Ham United in March 1970 , Gilzean formed a new storm duo with Chivers, which had similar goal yields as before with Greaves. In a new high phase of the club at the beginning of the 1970s, Gilzean won two editions of the League Cup (1971 and 1973) and the UEFA Cup (1972). In his last season for Spurs in 1973/74, Gilzean was on the verge of repeating the UEFA Cup success, but then lost to Feyenoord Rotterdam in the final .

After Gilzean announced his resignation during a club tour to Mauritius , he was rewarded with a farewell game in November 1974 due to his ten years employment for Tottenham Hotspur. For Scotland he completed 17 more games until 1971, making a total of 22 internationals in which he scored twelve goals. After retiring from the "big stage" he played for three months in South Africa and returned to England to train at Stevenage Borough . A permanent change to the coaching bench did not materialize, however, and Gilzean worked after his active career for a transport company that was located in Enfield not far from White Hart Lane.

successes

• Scottish Champion : 1962
• UEFA Cup winners: 1972
• FA Cup Winner: 1967
• English league cup winner: 1971, 1973

Web links

• Club career data on sporting-heroes.net

Individual evidence

1. ^ Alan Gilzean in the database of barryhugmansfootballers.com (English). Retrieved August 16, 2020.
2. ^ "Alan Gilzean - A Squad" ( Memento of September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (Scottish Football Association)