{"id":573753,"date":"2025-11-16T08:28:22","date_gmt":"2025-11-16T08:28:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/573753\/"},"modified":"2025-11-16T08:28:22","modified_gmt":"2025-11-16T08:28:22","slug":"northern-ireland-football-john-mcclelland-recalls-going-from-fourth-division-to-world-cup-in-12-months-and-rejecting-sir-alex-ferguson-twice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/573753\/","title":{"rendered":"Northern Ireland football: John McClelland recalls going from Fourth Division to World Cup in 12 months&#8230; and rejecting Sir Alex Ferguson twice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Northern Ireland's John McClelland takes on England ace Gary Lineker during a European Championship qualifier in 1987\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/tyImages-1245229916.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_caption1 beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_secondary beltel-66f0fec7_regular beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_marginleft0 beltel-1d70522a_marginright0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop3 beltel-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Northern Ireland&#8217;s John McClelland takes on England ace Gary Lineker during a European Championship qualifier in 1987<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">John McClelland went from being a player in the old English Fourth Division to a World Cup hero for Northern Ireland in just over a year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">That remarkable rise is one of many highlights in a fabulous career that saw him win 53 caps, skipper his country, play for Rangers, win the League title with Leeds United and keep the iconic Diego Maradona at bay at Wembley.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Northern Ireland&#8217;s John McClelland takes on England ace Gary Lineker during a European Championship qualifier in 1987 John&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":573754,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[98,1144,8538,1946,30649,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-573753","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-manchester-united","9":"tag-northern-ireland","10":"tag-northern-ireland-football-team","11":"tag-rangers-fc","12":"tag-steven-beacom","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115558436346390268","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/573754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}