The former Liverpool striker and Wales and Real Madrid manager John Toshack has been diagnosed with dementia, his son has revealed.
Toshack, 77, has “good days and bad days”, his son Cameron Toshack told the Daily Mail.
Toshack scored 96 goals for Liverpool in a seven-year spell at Anfield that brought three league titles, two Uefa Cups and the European Cup.
He formed a formidable strike partnership with Kevin Keegan and scored 13 goals in 40 caps for Wales before turning to management.
Toshack took charge of Wales in 1994 and between 2004 to 2010, and is the only Welshman to have managed Spanish giants Real Madrid - winning LaLiga in 1990.
He returned to the Bernabeu for a second spell in charge in 1999 and also managed Deportivo, Real Sociedad and Murcia in a journeyman managerial caerer.
His son Cameron gave the Mail his permission to share his father’s dementia diagnosis.
“It’s a terrible disease,” he said. “It’s the short-term memory where we’re seeing it – I speak to him most days and if we chat in the afternoon, he might not remember that we also spoke in the morning.
“But if I ask him about the Liverpool days, or Sociedad or Madrid, the detail is amazing. The other day he was telling me about a Real Madrid game against Arrigo Saachi’s AC Milan and exactly how he tweaked his midfield to deal with Marco van Basten. The game could have been yesterday, his memory was so clear.”
