Airdrieonians FC chairman (2016): “Iain, you don’t like it when people say you’ve done things wrong do you? Well, when you don’t like people saying you’ve done things wrong you should maybe do something right from time to time.”
Iain King can still vividly remember the words thrown in his direction on the Monday he was sacked from his role as CEO at Airdrieonians in 2016. In a career that had seen him initially build a name for himself writing for local newspapers before rising through the ranks of the Scottish Sun sport department and relative success as a manager in the Scottish lower leagues, his brutal sacking led to a challenging period of loss of confidence, identity and self-reflection. Now, speaking from his office in the Canadian island of Cape Breton, it would be an understatement to say that Iain has bounced back from that disappointment.
“It’s stunning, absolutely beautiful,” Iain says of the Island, the third place he has lived since making the move to Canada in 2017.
“My daughter lives on the east coast of Canada in Halifax and we came here before on vacation and thought it was unbelievable.”
Sixteen months into his position of Regional Director of Soccer Development for the island, having previously held roles at Toronto Nitros and United DFC in Dartmouth, over the course of an hour Iain delves into the lessons he learnt from that challenging period with a striking transparency and, going back further, how his journalistic background has helped shape him into the person he is today.
“I applied for journalism at Edinburgh Napier and got turned down initially. I kept going though, got accepted and then received my HND.”
Upon graduating, Iain built up his media portfolio at local newspapers alongside night shifts at the Sunday Mail, Record and the Sun, where he picked up his first tabloid gig. Having been drawn to the intensity of a newsroom, Iain thrived in this environment and picked up the role of head of sport. Leading a team of writers, creating a successful culture and building trust, Iain says, were the fundamental skills he developed during his time in the Sun’s sporting hot seat. This proved hugely beneficial for his current work in Canada.
“My role now in coaching and coach mentorship is a lot like what my job at the Scottish Sun became. Basically, the bread and butter of my job was to build a team of sport writers and teach young writers how to build their contacts. To do this, gaining their trust was integral. It’s so important to just be yourself and as authentic as possible. I made a point of ensuring that if I gave somebody my word I would stick to it, which is pretty challenging to do in a tabloid environment.”
When the media can often be met with such suspicion, how did Iain build that trust with those in the newsroom and those he was interviewing or gathering stories from?
“There were a lot of stories I could have printed at the Sun but didn’t. An example, which I can now say because it was years ago, is a story with Rangers. In the 90's the access you had to the players was unbelievable and you could go along and watch training if you wanted to. I went to a session once and Rino Gattuso had just signed and (Paul) Gascoigne was already there. Rino absolutely smashed into Gazza and sent him flying up into the air. Gazza, who fell on top of him, gave him a swift two rapid punches in the face. Gattuso’s eye was visibly marked. I happened to be the only journalist there so Walter Smith (Rangers’ manager) came across and said to me ‘you didn’t see that, okay? It was an aerial collision from a header. If you don’t write it then I’ll give you a transfer exclusive.’ I left it out and then a couple of weeks later he did give me that exclusive. At that point, a little piece of advice I was given from Ken Gallagher, a fellow sports writer, suddenly all made sense. He told me ‘sometimes the best stories are the ones that don’t get written.’”
Alongside building trust, authenticity has also been a key ingredient to his success since making the transition from experienced writer to developer of footballers.
“After coaching my son’s football team, I then coached for two years with BSC Glasgow and East Kilbride. I learnt that you’ve got to be authentic. Players and people generally are able to sniff out fakeness. If you’re not being yourself and trying to be someone else, players will see right through it. I know personally that I can’t do the screaming and shouting or the hairdryer treatment, it’s just never been my way. I am more about trying to get people to buy into what we are trying to do and finding ways for them to believe in themselves. That was successful when building a team of sport journalists and my experience of building teams as a coach too. I make a point of saying to the young coaches here that players don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. ”
After getting a taste for football coaching between 2013 and 2015, Iain decided to make the brave leap of faith to leave the sports newsroom and transition into full-time football at Scottish League One side Airdrieonians. This experience, although beneficial in the long-run, proved hugely challenging for a number of reasons.
“I met the owner Tom Wotherspoon when I was writing Barry Ferguson’s book. Tom asked me if I planned on sticking with journalism all my life. At the time, print journalism was dying and deals were being struck at the Sun to get rid of some of the top earners. He told me he was thinking of buying a football club and asked me if I wanted to be the CEO.”
After some persuasion from Wotherspoon and going against his own wife’s trusty guidance, Iain decided to give it a go. The club were in the process of transitioning from becoming a part-time club to full-time. Naturally, this came with its fair share of excitement, but also a great deal of pressure to get it right quickly.
“I really enjoyed it overall. I made a million mistakes and we got hit with so much stuff that season. We brought in Eddie Wolecki Black, who had been head coach at Glasgow City women’s team. It proved a bit controversial because he was coming in from women’s football to men’s and some people didn’t like that and I had to take the flack and be a lightning rod for it. It was going really well, he won the respect of the dressing room and was doing amazing considering there was a lot of pressure on him to get promoted that season.”
After Wolecki Black began to win over those initial critics, genuine tragedy occurred.
“I remember we played a game at Cowdenbeath and we were getting a lot of flack whilst sat in the stands with people chanting ‘you don’t know what you’re doing’ and things like that. We went in at half-time with the lead and I remember looking at Eddie and it looked as if he had been crying, it was really weird. I never thought anything of it though. I then went in with Donald Findlay, the Cowdenbeath chairman, for a drink at half-time and a guy came up to me and said to me ‘you need to come down, one of your staff has taken ill’. I went down into the anteroom just before the dressing room and turned to my right and saw the gaffer lying on the floor. The whole left side of his face had gone down. He’d had a stroke. He got rushed to the hospital, blue light status on the ambulance to indicate that it’s beyond the normal ambulance status because he took a brain bleed on his way. It was absolutely horrible and he almost died that night.
“I had never experienced that kind of thing before and it was so horrible seeing it happen to one of your best mates. The most challenging part of it though was that we still had a job to do. He was lying there in hospital with so many tubes in him and we had no idea if he was going to survive the week, but we had to find a manager.
“We hired Danny Lennon as caretaker manager, who was a great guy but the place was in a state of shock. We then lost four key games on the bounce and because this had all happened in March, those were four key matches during a really important period of the season. Towards the end of the season we did manage to get some results back together but on the final day at Somerset Park against Ayr United, we lost a deflected goal and lost out on the play-offs.”
Fortunately, Wolecki Black made an incredible recovery from the stroke and a few years later re-entered the women’s game managing Motherwell and Celtic. After a draining season for Iain, that deflected goal and missing out on the play-offs saw him get sacked.
“I looked at the owner when the goal went in and the way he just looked at me, I knew I was going to get sacked. It was the first time in my life I hadn’t been successful at something.
“I’d been stupid and went into it without a contract which I shouldn’t have done in hindsight but the way I was sacked, I’d honestly never been spoken to before like that. Basically, I was branded a total failure for not being promoted.”
Following the dismissal and being left with the words included in the introduction to brew on, this sparked a hugely testing period for Iain mentally.
“It was really difficult. For the first two weeks I had a cocker spaniel called Crunchie and I walked the legs off of him. When I look back now, I was pretty depressed. I had a real loss of confidence and genuinely had no clue what I was going to do next. I came away from journalism, which in itself was dying. I went from a practiced and experienced journalist who knew all the ropes to being a guy who had no clue what he was doing in a new field. I was completely stripped bare for three to four weeks. Everything I had done up to that point, you need to have a little bit of an ego to be successful in it, you need to have a bit about you because you can’t be a shrinking violet in tabloid journalism, but my confidence had just completely gone to be honest.
“I gained a sense of perspective though. I’m now much better at looking after myself. Even though I’m still pretty job obsessed I am a bit better at switching off. That experience, I’m glad I went through it because it knocked me down a few pegs. Although I’d been a working class kid from East Kilbride I’d had a lot of good breaks, done well and had all the stuff that goes with it like watches, suits, cars and money. Then all of a sudden you get a smack around the face like that.”
After being contacted by sport journalism lecturer at University of the West of Scotland (UWS), Liz McLaughlin, Iain turned his HND into a degree whilst lecturing on the side. Additionally, an opportunity to get back on the bike in a footballing sense done wonders to restore his confidence.
“Scott Leitch asked me to take Motherwell U15’s with him, which was exactly what I needed. It was a good level and they had a really good team. In fact, the only game we lost that season was against Celtic. Going to UWS and coaching for that year, I found out a bit about myself and started to look to the future again with optimism.”
Coming to the conclusion that he did not fancy a return to full-time journalism, he decided to turn his passion for the coaching side of football into a career.
“In terms of the coaching and development side of football, I already had my A license and started looking into possible full-time coaching because I knew how much I enjoyed it. In Scotland the money just isn’t there to make it a full-time career at youth level so I looked into going over to the United States and, obviously, ended up in Canada.
“My uncle Malcom was here and we used to come on vacation every couple of years when I was a kid. I’ve always loved it as a country and when I had that time out after Airdrie, I had a lot of time to think. I was at a critical age, 49, my kids had grown up and I really needed to think about what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”
After submitting an application for the role of senior technical coach at Toronto Nitros and a Skype interview later, it was time to make the dream of full-time coaching abroad a reality.
“It was the second interview I had ever done. I remember being offered the job and going downstairs to tell my wife Lorna. We then decided that I would go out first for five or six months and then she would join me. It was quite a brave thing to do because my wife had been a journalist too but wanted to work in a Veterinary Clinic. Nearing 50, we both decided to move abroad and have a go at what we were passionate about, something we’re both quite proud of.”
In his current role, tasked with encouraging the youngsters of Cape Breton to take up soccer and develop them on and off the field, Iain has found a role that suits his strengths, passions and traits to an absolute tee.
“Trying to sell the game to people over here, I feel like some kind of soccer missionary. You are dealing with terrific multi-sport athletes, which makes trying to convert them all the more appealing. If I can get them into playing soccer, that is amazing raw material to work with. Plus, you’re coaching kids who are really coachable. You’re not fighting with as many voices as you would in Scotland.
“Within this provence, the big star is Jacob Shaffelburg for Nashville. He just scored his first goal for Canada against the US in the Gold Cup. The success of Alphonso Davies at Bayern Munich and Christine Sinclair, the world’s top scorer in the women’s international game are big inspirations for youngsters too. Also, the fact that the World Cup is coming here in 2026, for 10 games, is really helping to grow the game.”
One thing that Iain appears to thrive off in Canada is that his role is far less binary than it had been in previous footballing jobs. No longer is football purely defined by wins and losses, promotions and relegations, instead, it has a far more holistic feel to it with development at the forefront.
“The main thing we want to continue to do is grow registrations and make it more professional each year. If I can get a kid a scholarship and take the onus off of their parents to pay for their education, I know I have done my job right. Primarily, I want all of the kids to enjoy it and for every player to leave the programme a better player than when they entered it.”
Quickfire Questions
Describe yourself in three words: Motivated, authentic and kind.
How would your family and friends describe you in three words? Stubborn, impulsive and thoughtful.
Are you more introverted or extroverted? Extrovert.
What is your biggest personality strength? Resilient.
What is your biggest personality weakness? Fragile to criticism.
What is your death row meal? Dinner: Buttermilk chicken mac and cheese. Dessert: Key lime pie. Drink: Pinot grigio.
What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given? That Ken Gallagher one about trust. He said, “sometimes son, the best stories are the ones you never write.”
