Lewis McLeod - TheSportsDB.com

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Lewis McLeod

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Born
1994 (30 years old)

Birth Place

Wishaw, Scotland

Position
Midfielder

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Free Agent

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Height
5 ft 10 in (1.78 m)

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Lewis Kenneth Macleod (born 16 June 1994) is a Scottish professional footballer.
He came to prominence with Rangers in Scotland and is a product of the club's academy. Macleod represented Scotland from U16 to U21 level.

Club career
Rangers
Early years
Macleod began his career with youth side Newmains Hammers, playing a year above his age-group, before joining Livingston. He signed for Scottish Premier League club Rangers as a ten-year-old in 2004. He progressed through the youth system at Murray Park and was called up to the first team squad for the first time for a league match versus Motherwell on 31 March 2012. He remained an unused substitute for the 2–1 victory. It was his only involvement in the first team squad during the 2011–12 season.

Breakthrough
After Rangers entered administration in February 2012, the Scottish Football Association imposed a transfer embargo on the club. This created opportunities for players within the youth and reserve ranks, including Macleod. Macleod made his professional debut in a Scottish Challenge Cup first round match versus Brechin City on 29 July 2012. He started the game and Rangers went through to the second round after game finished 2–1 after extra-time, with Macleod's corner providing the winning goal – a 102nd-minute header by Lee McCulloch. Macleod went on to hold down a regular starting place in the side and signed a five-year contract extension on 13 September. He scored his first goal for the club in a 4–1 victory over Montrose on 23 September, while also claiming the man of the match award. Macleod continued his starting run and good form through to January 2013 (scoring in home and away matches versus Elgin City) and picking up the Scottish Football League's Young Player of the Month award for November 2012. A knee injury suffered against Montrose on 26 January 2013 kept him sidelined until Rangers' final game of the season against Berwick Rangers. Macleod made 29 appearances and scored three goals in Rangers' 2012–13 Third Division title-winning season and won the Rangers Young Player of the Year award.

2013–2014
After three goals in 2013–14 pre-season, Macleod continued his good form into the regular season, hitting four goals in a seven-game spell, the pick of the bunch being an overhead kick in a 2–0 victory over Ayr United on 6 October 2013. He held down a regular starting place, but again his season was cut short in January, after an adverse reaction to a viral infection affected the muscles around his heart. In March 2014, manager Ally McCoist allayed fears that Macleod's career could be under threat. Macleod failed to appear again during the 2013–14 season and finished the campaign with 24 appearances and five goals. In his absence, Rangers won the Scottish League One title to seal a place in the Scottish Championship for the 2014–15 season, with Macleod receiving a winners' medal.

Macleod made a successful recovery from his health problems and scored on his comeback in a closed-doors friendly at Murray Park against Fulham in July 2014. He began the 2014–15 season in good form, scoring four goals in his first four appearances of the season and four goals in 9 games from September through to November. A match-winning bicycle kick versus Livingston on 4 October later won Rangers' Goal of the Season award and he won the Scottish Football League Young Player of the Month award for October. After suffering a serious hamstring injury suffered during a 3–2 defeat to Alloa Athletic on 3 December 2014, it was reported that Macleod would be out until 2015, but the Alloa match turned out to be his final appearance in a Rangers shirt. On 31 December 2014, it was announced that Macleod had left Rangers. He finished his involvement in the 2014–15 season having scored eight goals in 21 appearances. Macleod made 74 appearances and scored 16 goals during his two-and-a-half-years as a first team player at Ibrox. In January 2015, he revealed that "if things had maybe happened differently off the pitch with regards to the club trying to keep me when someone came in, I might have stayed".

Brentford
On 31 December 2014, Macleod moved to England to sign for Championship side Brentford for an undisclosed fee on a three-and-a-half-year contract, effective 3 January 2015. The fee was later reported by The Sunday Post to be £850,000, with add-ons raising the amount to up to £1.3 million. Having failed to recover from the hamstring injury suffered in his last match while a Rangers player, Macleod's recovery suffered further setbacks when tripping over a twig and accidentally stepping down a rabbit hole in separate incidents. He finally made his first appearance in a Brentford shirt with 45 minutes in a Development Squad defeat to Nottingham Forest on 28 March 2015, but two weeks later, manager Mark Warburton ruled Macleod out of first team contention for the rest of the 2014–15 season. In an apparent U-turn, Macleod won his maiden first team call-up for Brentford's playoff semi-final first leg versus Middlesbrough on 8 May. He remained an unused substitute during the 2–1 defeat and was replaced on the bench by Chris Long for the second leg, which resulted in a 3–0 loss that ended Brentford's season.

Macleod's rehabilitation away from the first team squad saw him miss the entire 2015–16 pre-season. He returned to the Development Squad in October, making seven appearances either side of a recurrence of his hamstring injury in mid-November 2015, before finally making his first team debut versus Brighton & Hove Albion on 5 February 2016, replacing Josh McEachran after 82 minutes of the 3–0 defeat. Later that month, Macleod suffered a slight medial ligament injury in training, but returned to fitness before the end of the 2015–16 season and crowned his return to match play by scoring Brentford's first goal of the 2016–17 pre-season versus Boreham Wood. He made his first competitive start for the club on the opening day of the 2016–17 season, playing 82 minutes of a 2–1 defeat to Huddersfield Town, before being replaced by Philipp Hofmann. Macleod made 12 further appearances before suffering a serious knee injury during a West London derby versus Queens Park Rangers on 28 October 2016. In December 2016, he signed a one-year contract extension, which will keep him at Griffin Park until June 2019.

After recovering from the knee injury and a subsequent hamstring problem, Macleod was named in the matchday squad for a league match versus Birmingham City on 1 November 2017 and remained an unused substitute during the 2–0 victory. He made his first appearance for over 13 months as a second-half substitute for Sergi Canós in a 3–1 victory over West London rivals Fulham on 2 December 2017.

International career
U16–U19
Macleod has represented the Scotland national team from under-16 to under-21 level. He won six under-16 caps, which included three of Scotland's 2009 Victory Shield matches. He was an under-17 regular between January 2010 and March 2011, winning four of his seven caps in Scotland's unsuccessful 2011 European Under-17 Championship qualifying campaign. By April 2012 he had progressed to the under-18 squad and won two caps in a pair of friendlies against Serbia, scoring his first international goal in a 4–1 win in the second match. Macleod made five appearances for the under-19 squad in September and October 2012 (scoring in a 4–0 2013 European Under-21 Championship qualifying rout of Armenia) and scored his second under-19 goal in a 2–2 elite qualifying draw with Belgium on 24 May 2013. His under-19 career ended after his sixth and final cap against Georgia on 26 May 2013, a 3–1 defeat which ended the under-19s' chances of qualifying for the tournament finals.

U21
Macleod made his under-21 debut while a regular of the under-19 team, receiving his first call up for a friendly versus Portugal on 14 November 2012. He made his debut in the 3–2 defeat, coming on as a 75th-minute substitute for Kenny McLean. On 14 October 2013, Macleod scored his first goal for the under-21s in a 2–1 loss to Georgia and made six appearances in Scotland's unsuccessful 2015 European U21 Championship qualifying campaign. After nearly two years away from international football due to injuries, Macleod was recalled to the under-21 squad for two 2017 European U21 Championship qualifiers in September 2016, but withdrew due to injury.

Full
On 4 November 2014, manager Gordon Strachan called Macleod into the senior Scottish squad for the first time, ahead of a Euro 2016 qualifier against the Republic of Ireland and a friendly against England. Strachan stated that Macleod was "not just coming along to make up the numbers", but he failed to make an appearance in either match.

Style of play
Macleod stated that he likes "to get forward, but I also like to help out defensively too. I like to play either a number 8 or a number 10 role”.

Personal life
Macleod attended Newmains Primary School in Wishaw and is a former pupil of Coltness High School. His father Kenny played junior football for Wishaw and was on the books at Barnsley as a youth. As well as football, Macleod also excelled in golf at school, playing for his school team and winning tournaments. He is the cousin of David McEwan – a former goalkeeper for Hamilton Academical and Dumbarton.