Dundee legend Gillie's shirt has long been hung up in favour of quiet life

FOOTBALL is littered with stories of those who have deserted the game, but few have made so successful a fist of it as Alan Gilzean, or left such a distinguished tread. When once he leapt like a salmon, now the king of White Hart Lane, and before that Dens Park, is known among his peers for having steadfastly gone to ground, retreating from view faster than his own famously high hairline.

Not even tomorrow's Carling Cup final between Tottenham Hotspur, for whom he scored 133 goals in 439 games, and Manchester United will draw him back into football's orbit; he hasn't visited Spurs in years, not since his son, Ian, made a brave attempt to follow in the footsteps of a legendary father.

"People said I used to run like him," recalls Ian now, having further invited comparison by playing at Dundee for a season in the early Nineties. In the eyes of many – even Ian – a more dynamic resemblance can be traced in the cunning movement and elegant style of Dimitar Berbatov, who will line-up for Manchester United against Spurs, his former side, at Wembley tomorrow.

ITV commentator David Pleat is one who, to mis-quote the title of a Dundee fanzine, "minds o' Gillie" when watching Berbatov, and said so on television a couple of seasons ago.

Although the player has since moved to Old Trafford, Pleat, who managed Gilzean's son at Spurs, has seen little to make him change his opinion. "It is quite an obvious comparison to me," he says now. "Gilzean had a beautiful touch, the ball appeared glued to his feet at times. But he also had this gift for hanging in the air and deflecting balls to colleagues. He had this slightly languid style in an era when Spurs were the artists."

David Lacey, the veteran Guardian football writer, wrote a column where he suggested that older Spurs fans might have seen "in Berbatov's ability to fool defenders by loitering in apparently harmless positions a glimpse of Alan Gilzean".

The BBC's John Motson shared the opinion that in the absence of Gilzean, Berbatov is the next best thing, prompting Hunter Davies, the writer who chronicled Gilzean and his team-mates' efforts throughout the 1971-72 season in his lauded book the Glory Game, to write a column about the Scot in the New Statesman. He, too, pondered the link. "Both elegant, artistic strikers, but Gilly (sic) was slimmer with a baldy head," he wrote, before noting that he had since disappeared – and suggesting, erroneously, that he now worked in a warehouse in Scotland.

Davies, of all people, might have anticipated this flight. In the Glory Game, re-printed in 2001 by Edinburgh publishers Mainstream, he includes Gilzean's response to the question of whether he might stay in football after he is finished playing: "You must be joking. When I've finished playing, that's it. I couldn't stand the aggravation of being a manager, having fans, directors, Press, everyone after you. No thanks."

Gilzean wasn't entirely faithful to this promise, delivered when he was 33 years old and in the twilight of a career which included 12 goals in 22 games for Scotland.

During a short, unhappy spell with soon-to-be-defunct Stevenage Athletic in the mid-Seventies he learned what he had suspected – management wasn't for him. "It didn't go too well. The bus didn't turn up one week for an away game," recalls Ian, when we met this week in Perth, where his father scored two goals to help Dundee win the First Division title in 1962. "Stevenage were struggling. He got disillusioned, and that was it."

As far as his football commitments were concerned, that really was it. "You move away, make a new life, and you look again to find things have all changed," says Ian, whose own football career also took him to Ireland. Gilzean senior worked for a spell as a depot manager at a haulage firm in Enfield and split with his wife Irene, a childhood sweetheart better known as Rina and who he met in their home town of Coupar Angus.

Gilzean is now living in Weston-super-Mare, content to walk dogs and breathe in the sea air. "I just think he felt he needed a break from the game – and his break has lasted thirty odd years," says Ian.

Many of his Spurs contemporaries have continued to eke out a living from football, among them Joe Kinnear and Alan Mullery.

The Dumfries-born Hunter Davies, who now alternates his football-watching between Spurs and Arsenal, this week reflected: "There are so many hospitality suites (at White Hart Lane], where all the old sweats from his period come along in their best suits on a Saturday and get paid a handsome fee to host meals and talk to the fans and glad hand. But he's never been to any old boy reunions."

Gilzean has a better record of attendance at Dundee, where he joined the celebrations to mark the 40th anniversary of the club's title win, and was also present at the club's centenary dinner in 1993. The only old team-mate he keeps in contact with is former Dundee left-half Bobby Wishart, who is based in Edinburgh.

Gilzean stayed with him as recently as last month. "We have kept in touch over the years – I am probably the only one who has to any great extent," he says. "Not that he is anti-social by any means." Whenever word gets around that Gilzean is in town, friends suddenly begin to drop by more frequently, jokes Wishart. The G-Man still has the glamour.

"I think he got let down by a journalist one time," says Wishart, when contemplating his friend's exile from football. "When Bill Nicholson was being hunted down at Spurs – he was someone who Alan had great regard for – Alan's name was mentioned along with some other people who apparently thought Bill should be calling it a day. That was not the truth. And I think he just made up his mind then: 'Nah, I am not bothering contacting people.'

"He still talks about the old days. He talks about football today, he watches matches, and he'll discuss players with you. He knows exactly what the score is. He just doesn't attend matches. I don't think he wants to get tangled up with the circus of it."

The trouble with such a withdrawal after years spent in the public eye is that it tends to encourage misinformation. A recent contributor to a Talksport radio phone-in suggested that Gilzean was currently living as a "down-and-out" on the south coast. When Gilzean heard of this slur, he laughed it off. It was left to a friend in Dundee to contact the station.

Even his age is a matter for some conjecture. His recorded birth date is 22 October 1938, but both his son Ian and Wishart do not believe he has yet turned 70.

There are now more Gilzeans in Salt Lake City than Coupar Angus – both his brother Eric and sister Thelma emigrated to the same spot in Utah. In the Tayside phone book, only three Gilzeans are now listed – in Auchterarder, Crieff and Perth.

But the low profile hasn't diminished the legend. Indeed, as is the way of these things, it has simply helped add to it. Gilzean is still a regular topic of discussion on supporter message boards, and the recent Berbatov comparison has awakened a new generation to his talents. "He is good in the air, but not as good as Gillie," points out the ever-loyal Wishart.

The debate inspired by Dundee's inaugural Hall of Fame dinner in April is likely to be heated only to the extent that the first five inductees will be made up of Gilzean and four others.

And at Spurs, when play is proving un-engaging and a hapless striker has again failed to plant his head on the end of a cross, you might still hear a faint burst of verse carried on a north London wind:

Gilzean, Gilzean, Gilzean, Gilzean

Born is the king of White Hart Lane

Out of sight perhaps, but rarely out of mind.