TIME FOR CHANGE?
Ian Cathro on why Scottish football must embrace the new way
EVEN to someone well versed in Scottish football’s cynical approach to modern thinking, the open hostility to a fairly simple idea is baffling. Ian Cathro genuinely cannot understand what all the fuss is about.
‘I think we’re obsessed with this idea that the director of football sits in an office which is more grand than the manager’s, a level above the manager, he looks down on him — and threatens him with evil spirits,’ said Cathro with a half grin, half grimace. ‘That’s not how it works here. Not yet, anyway!
‘Seriously? What causes the confusion, causes the debate that we can’t shake in this country, is this idea that the existence of a director of football somehow dilutes the strength or role of the manager/head coach.
‘I’ve never seen that. That’s just not how it works.’
Ever since Rangers confirmed their intent to recruit a director of football as part of their future planning, plenty have argued back and forth over which type of manager can or cannot be expected to work ‘under’ a senior figure responsible for long-term decisions.
Yet Cathro, the second head coach appointed by Craig Levein at Hearts, insists he wouldn’t have set foot in Tynecastle if the current structure hadn’t been in place.
He describes the theory that only young coaches can work within this system as ‘beyond nonsense’, while explaining that he has the final say on which players to recruit — without following an ‘insane’ model that would give him unrestricted power to dish out lengthy contracts, regardless of his own commitment to the club.
‘I wouldn’t have come,’ said the rookie head coach, when asked how he felt about joining a club with a director of football — a former Hearts and Scotland manager, at that — already in place.
‘I had a variety of things in my mind about what would be important for me — and the structure that existed here was one of those things.
‘It can allow a bit more ambition, there can be more drive — because recruitment is a 24/7 thing these days.
‘You don’t wait until January and think: “Oh, we can bring a player in”. It’s every single day and it must be every single day. How you improve the different parts of the club there has to be something going on every single day. And I can’t do that every single day. I don’t want to.
‘I truly just don’t understand why we have this Scottish issue with it. Maybe it’s just not the norm here. But, in England, certainly in the Premier League, whether or not they have the title, there are people at all the big clubs doing that job. Because it would be impossible to run the operation without it. Impossible.
‘It’s something that has confusion around it, a variety of different opinions — and definitely a lack of understanding around it.
‘We get very, very sensitive about it. And I just don’t see why. Rio Ave? Structure. Valencia? Structure. Porto? Structure. It’s just normal. Seriously, it’s hardly revolutionary. It’s completely normal.’
There remains a perception that experienced managers, people perhaps used to making every major decision from academy up to length of contracts on offer to players, would be unwilling to cede any control to a figure ‘upstairs’ — be that a head of recruitment or any other titled employee.
This school of thought insists that, while up-and-coming coaches like Cathro, or before him Robbie Neilson, are happy to play along, real ‘football men’ would balk at working within this structure.
Cathro is blunt on this point, declaring: ‘That is just beyond nonsense. Beyond nonsense. That’s just not understanding what it is, and having the fear of… I don’t know what… crazy evil spirits manipulating you in the night. There is nothing real that would play a role in limiting the power of a manager.
‘If a manager at a football club is on a two-year contract, should that manager be allowed to recruit a player and sign him on a fiveyear contract?
‘I mean, that’s insane. That’s insane. How can I have a 100-percent remit for signing a player who is going to be here longer than I am, contractually speaking? That’s insane.
‘So, of course, somebody should be involved in that.
‘I’ve never seen any situation, never been involved in any situation different from that. The majority of guys I know in football work in this way.
‘It’s never a concern with how those decisions are made. They are more collective, yeah. There will be debate, opinion.
‘If there is a breakdown in that relationship, it would be just the same as a breakdown in any other relationship — it’s not because it’s that guy and that guy.
‘Relationships break down, don’t they? That happens in any structure.
‘Is ego involved? Maybe. I don’t care how others do it, that’s up to them. But they just need to get over it.’
Asked to give a bullet-point presentation on how the responsibilities between a director of football and head coach break down, Cathro kept it pretty simple — explaining that the director was responsible for ‘managing overall football strategy’ while heads of departments report to him.
On the ever-thorny issue of recruitment, specifically on who gets the final say in making a signing, the 30-year-old explained: ‘In general terms, the head coach determines the profile of the players he wants.
‘We have a collective discussion about what’s available and what our market is, what we can and can’t do. Then they go to work. A few days later, you get back together and watch DVDs, presentations about who you like and who you don’t like.
‘So the manager will say: “I’ll have him, don’t want him, keep him, I’ll think about him, I definitely don’t want him”. Then you go back to work on the next stage.
‘The financial side has always varied depending on who else is at the club. It could reach chief executive level, too, but that depends on the dynamics within the club.
‘You do most things best when you share people skills properly and do it together with no fear. If you are going to be insecure about it, that’ll be the people who don’t want to work in these environments.
‘If you know what you’re doing then you should just shut up and get on with it.’
I truly don’t understand the Scottish issue with it We get very, very sensitive about it and I don’t see why