WALTER SMITH knows more than most about the ‘genius’ of Paul Gascoigne.
And it turns out he noticed similarities between Gazza and a certain British music icon – and wasted no time in letting them know.
Smith is arguably Rangers‘ greatest ever manager alongside Bill Struth, having led to the club through the majority of their success in the nineties and returning for another trophy-laden spell between 2007 and 2011.
But he loved his music too and one artist he was fond of was Richard Ashcroft, the former lead singer of The Verve.
The English rocker revealed he even used to sneak Smith into some of his gigs and that he would join him backstage on occasion.
Ashcroft, 54, was appearing on talkSPORT and was asked to name the “maddest” footballer that he’d met at his gigs.
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And in a perhaps unlikely choice, he said it was Smith.
He said: “Walter Smith came to a number of my gigs in the last few years of his life and he really enjoyed them.
“He was a surprising one, sometimes I had to sneak him into certain gigs!
“But he genuinely loved those gigs.
“You wouldn’t think Walter at that age would be that into it, but he was, he was bang into it.”
Ashcroft recalled one day in 2018 when Smith personally rang up the singer-songwriter’s manager to tell him he had “the genius of Gazza in him”.
Smith, who had not long had an operation, was watching TV and saw Ashcroft appearing on the BBC Breakfast show.
The interview took a bit of a wild turn when the Break the Night with Colour singer started climbing over the sofas and walking around the Beeb’s set.
Smith, watching on, couldn’t help but think of his former player (who he managed at both Rangers and Everton) when seeing Ashcroft’s antics.
Ashcroft said: “When I was being a bit crazy on BBC Breakfast one morning, Walter had just had an operation and he was coming out of anaesthetic and he looked up at the TV and I was jumping over the couch on the BBC.
“He rang my manager and said ‘Tell Richard he’s Gazza. He’s got the genius of Gazza in him.’”
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