"It's a terrible disease. If we talk in the afternoon, he may not remember that we also talked in the morning." That's Cameron Toshack, speaking about his father — John Toshack, one of the most respected football minds Europe has produced — and what daily life now looks like at 77.
The news emerged through an interview Cameron gave to the Daily Mail. John Toshack has dementia. Short-term memory is where the deterioration is most visible: conversations forgotten within hours, days that blur into each other. Cameron speaks to him almost every day and still has to account for the gaps.
The past stays sharp — the present slips away
What makes it particularly striking is the contrast. Ask Toshack about Liverpool in the 1970s, or his spells coaching Real Sociedad and Real Madrid, and something else entirely happens. The details come flooding back — tactical, specific, vivid.
"The other day he told me about a Real Madrid match against Sacchi's Milan and how he modified his midfield to deal with Marco van Basten," Cameron said. "It's as if the match was yesterday."
That's not a sentimental detail. It reflects something well-documented in dementia — long-term memory, especially emotionally embedded memory, can remain intact long after short-term recall deteriorates. For a man who spent decades thinking about football at the highest level, those memories are apparently deeply wired.
Toshack's career earned that kind of permanence. As a striker he was central to Bill Shankly's and then Bob Paisley's Liverpool, winning multiple titles in the 1970s. As a manager, he built Real Sociedad into genuine La Liga contenders and took charge of Real Madrid — twice. He later managed the Welsh national team. Few coaches of his generation moved across so many different football cultures and left a mark in each.
Cameron says his father has better days and harder ones. The disease doesn't move in a straight line. But the direction it moves in doesn't change.
