Ally McCoist MBE
About
Ally McCoist is a retured footballer turned pundit and TV presenter.
Ally McCoist inducted into the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame in 2007. He is also a member of the Scotland Football Hall of Fame, having gained 61 international caps.
Rangers
McCoist had a highly successful spell with Rangers, becoming the club’s record goal scorer and winning nine successive league championships.
Ally made his competitive début for Rangers on the opening day of the 1983–84 season against St. Mirren. He scored twenty goals that year. The highlight was a hat-trick in the 1983 Scottish League Cup Final victory over Celtic. With Rangers still a team very much in the doldrums, McCoist managed 18 goals the following season as he began to endear himself to the club’s fans.
When Walter Smith took over from Souness, McCoist returned to the fore and won both Players’ Player of the Year and the Sportswriters’ award after scoring 34 goals in season 1991–92 as Rangers completed a domestic double. Those goals won him the European Golden Boot – the first time a Scot had won the award – and he repeated that feat a year later.
International Career
McCoist made his Scotland debut on 29 April 1986, in a 0–0 friendly match against Netherlands.
McCoist started just one game at the 1990 World Cup in Italy after being an integral part of the qualification bid.
He captained Scotland once, against Australia on 27 March 1996. McCoist went on to score the winner in a 1–0 win at Hampden Park after 55 minutes. He is Scotland’s fifth-highest scorer, with 19 goals.
A Question of Sport
McCoist is also known for his television work. He was a team captain on the BBC’s A Question of Sport from 1996 to 2007, making a record 363 appearances on the show.
Punditry
McCoist was also a regular pundit for ITV Sport’s football coverage. McCoist, along with John Motson, are ex-commentators for the FIFA video games series by EA Sports.
In 2010, he stood alongside English football commentator Martin Tyler as co-commentator for matches such as Germany vs Australia in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa for television cable sports network ESPN.
Management
McCoist joined the Scotland coaching staff under his former manager at Rangers, Walter Smith in 2004. He turned down the managerial position at Inverness Caledonian Thistle in 2006 as he wanted a job nearer his Glasgow home.
McCoist returned to Rangers as an assistant manager to Walter Smith in January 2007. After Rangers’ victory over Queen of the South in the 2008 Scottish Cup Final, Smith revealed that McCoist had been in charge of the team for the entire cup campaign. On 22 February 2011 Ally McCoist was announced as the new Rangers manager, with effect from June 2011.