Livingston manager David Martindale claims watching The Sopranos helped send him off the rails. The football boss grew up in gangs and was jailed for supplying drugs – but turned his life around behind bars.
Martindale has insisted TV shows that glamorise mobsters are partly to blame for enticing young men into crime.
Speaking to BBC One Show reporter Raphael Rowe on the Second Chance podcast, he said: “Sitting as a youngster watching television: The Godfather, The Sopranos, Blow. These are all films we watched growing up on the telly that, to us, were the be-all and end-all.
“These were successful people and this is how you became successful. You go back to football casuals, gang fighting. [In the] late 80s, early 90s, these were the hype and these were the films we watched.
“So, indirectly, by watching these films, it probably fuelled your fire to be successful in the same manner. People don’t understand that, academically, that avenue was gone, I’d burnt those bridges. I wasn’t going to be a professional footballer. So, subconsciously, I probably felt that I never had a skillset to do anything else and my skillset was being in the scheme.”
He added: “I’m a big believer now, with hindsight, you’re a product of your environment and that was
probably me.
“I’m not going to say I had a bad upbringing. I had food on the table, clothes on my back and a roof over my head. But I’d definitely say we had an impoverished upbringing. You always strived for those better trainers, to have a tracksuit, to have a ball. So, looking back, a lot of criminality comes from poverty or masking life’s problems.”
Martindale grew up on the Craigshill scheme in Livingston, West Lothian, and was sent to Polmont Young Offenders’ Institute after being caught up in teen gang violence. A promising career as a Rangers youth footballer crashed when he suffered a broken leg playing with his pals.
He was later lured into the world of drugs and was snared by police in 2004 as he played the middleman in the cocaine trade. He’d turned to crime after his pub and restaurant businesses started to lose money.
Jailed for six-and-a-half years, he began studying to turn his life around. He later graduated from Heriot-Watt University with a degree in construction project management.
Martindale, 48, started coaching as a volunteer at Livingston but rose up the ranks to be appointed manager in 2020, taking the club to the League Cup final months later. Livi currently sit mid-table in the Premiership.
The Godfather is the most famous crime movie of all time, starring Marlon Brando as a Mafia family head. The Sopranos tells the tale of a fictional New Jersey mob and ran to six TV series. Blow is the true story of George Jung, a promising young sportsman who became a major cocaine trafficker.
Scientists have established a link between screen violence and aggression in youngsters. The International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioural Sciences said: “In recent years in the UK, there has been an explosion of films and media reports on gang culture.
“While films like Green Street celebrate violent soccer gangs, the 2010 Peter Mullan-directed movie Neds romanticises 1970s gang violence in Glasgow.”
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