He won 14 caps for England, scoring six goals, including all five in a European Championship qualifier against Cyprus. After Fulham came Luton Town, then Newcastle, and finally Arsenal. 'I think I needed to feel I was indispensable.'He proved exactly that. Then he decided that 'full-backs were 10 a penny' so he set about turning himself into a striker. He was a Londoner, a Fulhamite in fact, who remembers spending 'a wonderfully free childhood', all coats-down in the local park and dreams of being Johnny Haynes.Fulham was where Macdonald started his League career, but as a full-back, not a forward.

The other part just wanted to go home and mow the lawn.'As with Cole, the fact that Macdonald was not a Geordie did nothing to diminish his appeal. And the twists and turns on the way have taken their toll on someone whose true nature seems to bear no relation to the buccaneering figure who used to storm past defenders and try to burst the net with his shooting.That, he says, was always so, though we perhaps did not realise it at the time 'It's a dual personality thing Part of me enjoyed being larger than life. He loves the city, 'so vibrant, and the people are so honest, so full of life'.The story of how Macdonald, now 44, comes to be in Italy is a troubled one. No player since Jackie Milburn 20 years previously had so fully satisfied St James' Park's craving for heroes, and it's taken another 20 years for them to find, in Andy Cole, a centre-forward they can feel as strongly about. While the legend of Supermac lives on in Newcastle, the man himself does so rather further afield - in Milan, where his home is a five- minute drive from the San Siro stadium. It is 18 years since Malcolm Macdonald was banging in the goals for Newcastle United - 95 of them in five seasons between 1971 and 1976. But one thing has not changed: the famous walk, the bow-legged, hip- swinging swagger with which he marked his formidable presence on the football field. A pair of small, rectangular, metal-framed spectacles adds to an overall impression of studiousness.