'A Great Experience' - Ali Mauchlen On His City Career

This year marks the 40th anniversary of crowd favourite Ali Mauchlen signing for Leicester City. He went on to play 273 games for the Foxes, many as captain, before continuing his association with the Club in a variety of roles.

2025-12-02T15:00+00:00

by John Hutchinson

Published

02 Dec, 2025

'A Great Experience' - Ali Mauchlen On His City Career

This year marks the 40th anniversary of crowd favourite Ali Mauchlen signing for Leicester City. He went on to play 273 games for the Foxes, many as captain, before continuing his association with the Club in a variety of roles.

John Hutchinson

2025-12-02T15:00+00:00

'A Great Experience' - Ali Mauchlen On His City Career

This year marks the 40th anniversary of crowd favourite Ali Mauchlen signing for Leicester City. He went on to play 273 games for the Foxes, many as captain, before continuing his association with the Club in a variety of roles.

John Hutchinson

2025-12-02T15:00+00:00

'A Great Experience' - Ali Mauchlen On His City Career

This year marks the 40th anniversary of crowd favourite Ali Mauchlen signing for Leicester City. He went on to play 273 games for the Foxes, many as captain, before continuing his association with the Club in a variety of roles.

John Hutchinson

2025-12-02T15:00+00:00

'A Great Experience' - Ali Mauchlen On His City Career

This year marks the 40th anniversary of crowd favourite Ali Mauchlen signing for Leicester City. He went on to play 273 games for the Foxes, many as captain, before continuing his association with the Club in a variety of roles.

John Hutchinson

2025-12-02T15:00+00:00

In conversation with Club Historian John Hutchinson, Ali recalled his early football journey which led to his signing for Leicester City on 10 August, 1985.

“I was born in Kilwinning in Ayrshire,” Ali began. “But I lived in West Kilbride which is a little fishing village.

“When I was 15, dad took me to watch West Kilbride Amateurs play. They were short of a player so their manager put me on the bench. We had to drive back home to get my boots, so I started my career there which was very young because it was a proper man’s game.”

“When I was 18, Morton and Queen of the South were interested in signing me but Kilmarnock came in for me.

“In my first season there I went on loan to a local team called Irvine Meadow who were a big name in junior football. My year there hardened me up. It was men’s football and a good standard because a lot of ex-pros drop back into junior football in Scotland.

“After a year at Irvine Meadow I made my Kilmarnock debut, playing in central midfield at home against Raith Rovers.”

After a relegation from the Scottish Premier Division followed by a promotion at Kilmarnock, Ali was signed for Motherwell in October 1982 by Jock Wallace, who had left as Manager of Leicester City three months earlier.

“Hibernian came for me before Motherwell,” Ali continued, “but they made a poor offer and I turned it down.

“Then Jock Wallace came along. He was very positive. I drove to Motherwell to meet him and got lost! When I turned up my Kilmarnock manager Jim Clunie and Jock Wallace were sitting in the office waiting for me. I was about twenty minutes late. Panic stations!

“Motherwell paid £35,000 for me. We all shook hands. Jim Clunie suggested we went to lunch, but Jock said: ‘No. He’s going to go straight up to Hamilton Racecourse for training’. That was the start of my life with Jock Wallace.

Ali Mauchlen's roles at the Club are varied and wide-reaching, including helping maintain our heritage collection.

“He was a big rough guy. I was his type of player. Tactics and technical stuff were not his forte. He was a great motivator. There was no finesse to his training. It was all about getting fit.

“I’d heard that he used to run Leicester City players up and down a sand hill at Wanlip when he was at Filbert Street. At Motherwell we’d go to the sand dunes at Gullane near Berwick and we had to run up and down time after time. I’ve seen players on all fours throwing up after this training. Also there were no holds barred in his five-a-side matches in training, even though they were played on the Friday afternoon before the Saturday match.”

Motherwell were relegated from the Premier Division in 1984 but the following season Ali captained the side back into the top-flight.

Thinking back, Ali continued: “I captained the promotion side. We also got to the Scottish Cup Semi-Final against Celtic. We drew 1-1 and we should have beaten them, but we lost the replay at Hampden Park. Playing at Hampden was a great experience though.”

Ali became Motherwell’s captain in his early 20s. Reflecting on this, Ali continued: “Everywhere I played, I always led by example. I felt that if I played a certain way, it would motivate and encourage my team-mates to be a little bit more like me.”

In the 1985 close season, Ali, together with his promising young team-mate Gary McAllister, left Fir Park to join Gordon Milne’s Leicester City side, who were in the English old First Division.

At one stage though it looked as if Ali might move to Glasgow Rangers, managed by his old Motherwell manager Jock Wallace, rather than to Leicester City.

“I had a good relationship with Jock,” Ali explained. “For about six weeks, I was in conversation with the Rangers chairman and Jock but they needed to reduce their wage bill. Also Motherwell didn’t want to sell me to another Scottish club, so that made the deal even harder.

“During the summer (of 1985) Jock was trying to phone me from his holiday home in Fuengirola but it was hard to get the deal over the line. As a Rangers supporter, playing for Rangers was my dream.

In action for the Foxes during his impressive career at Filbert Street. Image: Colorsport/Shutterstock.

“At this time, I’d also been made aware of Leicester’s interest. In Scotland I was falling foul of the referees because of my aggressive style of play. I’d been sent off a few times. A friend of mine, a Glasgow tabloid journalist, phoned me up to recommend that it would be in my best interest to go to Leicester because referees in Scotland wanted to make an example of me and that the next time I got sent off, I might be banned for a considerable amount of time.

“Then (Leicester City manager) Gordon Milne flew up from East Midlands airport with (Club Secretary) Alan Bennett. He wanted to sign Gary [McAllister] and myself. He met us at a hotel. He told us to mull over his offer and said: ‘I've got a flight leaving Glasgow at five-to-five. If a deal's not done by then, there'll be no deal'. He left Gary and I out in reception. We both looked at each other and said: 'Let's go to Leicester'. And we both signed. I was 25 and Gary was 19.

“Going to Leicester was a bit of a culture shock. Leicester were in the old First Division and it was a massive step-up in standard. The first game we witnessed was Leicester beating league champions Everton with Gary Lineker, their new signing from Leicester, playing for them. We won 3-1. Mark Bright scored two goals. I looked at Gary and said: ‘How are we going to get into this side?’ It was quite daunting!

“The standard of football was better in England. I really had to work hard on my first touch and stuff like that. When I first came to Leicester, I was a bit rough around the edges and Gordon [Milne] and coach Gerry [Summers] worked hard with me doing extra sessions after training on fine tuning my game. When I watched Gordon, who was ex-England and Liverpool, playing in five-a-side games, I could see that even at his age, his touch was better than mine and I’m thinking, ‘I need to sharpen up here’.”

Including his full debut, against Arsenal at Highbury in August 1985, Ali played as a midfielder in all but two of the remaining 38 league games that season.

Ali Mauchlen spoke, in a separate interview, in depth on his role helping Club Historian John Hutchinson, exclusively on the LCFC App.

“That first season was tough but it was a great experience. I’ve kept a lot of my programmes from my playing days and occasionally I look at them and have to pinch myself because I’d sometimes forgotten what great players I’d played against and what great grounds I’d played at.”

Following his arrival at Leicester 40 years ago, Ali went on to play for the First Team for the next six seasons and was captain for many of them.

In subsequent years he was prominent in local football as a player, coach and manager at several clubs. He was Chairman of the Leicester City ex-players’ Association, raising money for all sorts of charities. He also skippered the Leicester City Masters side to success, twice winning the Grand National Final in 2005 and 2007. Today he works for the Club, fulfilling a range of responsibilities, including hosting the Champions’ Club on matchdays, being involved in a range of corporate events and working on developing our extensive Heritage Collection. His work is characterised by being extremely professional, well organised and well prepared, with a meticulous attention to detail.

He has been a huge asset to the Club over the last 40 years. Long may this continue.

Lead image: Colorsport/Shutterstock.

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