Facing flak holds no fears for Neil McCann
FOR a winger who made his name through his powers of evasion on the pitch, Neil McCann has no time for what he calls the ‘dance around’ off it. He has an in-built aversion to verbal sparring. ‘Given my background of going to Rangers as a Catholic, you get barbed questions and a dance around, so I learned to be very guarded — but I am straightforward in my opinions,’ he says.
In his role as an analyst and co-commentator for Sky Sports, McCann is all of this and more. He is the presumed one-time Celtic fan that many Celtic fans target for abuse. He is the one-time Rangers player who has had a public row with a recently departed Rangers manager.
There is no sign that any of this has discomfited McCann, who sits in an Edinburgh coffee house and sets out his priorities with quiet deliberation and cool certainty.
When he is pressed on his ability to make a statement or a decision and then to take flak, he accepts this as valid, but only to a certain extent, pointing out that what may to many be seen as his biggest decision — the move to Rangers — was a ‘no-brainer’.
‘The biggest decisions in my career were leaving home and waiting for a train to Dundee with my dad when I was 16, then deciding to join Hearts when I could have gone to Austria in 1996,’ he says. ‘I don’t have regrets about either of them, both shaped my future.’
But surely signing for Rangers in 1998 was a hugely difficult decision?
‘It wasn’t. It was a no-brainer,’ he insists. ‘I knew what was at stake, growing up in Port Glasgow as a Catholic. But I was ecstatic. I was delighted first of all because I repaid Jim Jefferies (Hearts manager) and the club. I said I would pay him back when he signed me. We won the Scottish Cup and I earned £2million for the club in a transfer fee. I remember Jim asking me: “What if Celtic come in for you?” I said: “I want to go to Rangers”. Jim said: “Really?”.’
Really, indeed. So why did McCann embrace a move that he knew would place him in the very eye of the storm?
‘There was something about the club at that time,’ he says, citing the manager, Dick Advocaat, and players such as Giovanni van Bronckhorst, Arthur Numan, Andrei Kanchelskis, Barry Ferguson, Rod Wallace, Lorenzo Amoruso and Craig Moore.
‘It was an easy decision. There were feelings about what could happen outside of football. But I couldn’t give a damn. I was going because it was an amazing football move. The whole religion stuff had no relevance to me, to what I was doing for my career and what I could do at Rangers.
‘I remember sitting at my very first press conference and the first question was: “What is it like to sign for Rangers when you are a Celtic fan?” People just assume you’re a Celtic fan because of your religion. I just looked at him. I thought: there’s the start of it. But I had the time of my life.’
He adds: ‘I wasn’t a Dundee or Hearts fan, but I became one when I signed for them. It was the same at Rangers.’
McCann won three league titles, two League Cups and four Scottish Cups to add to the one he had lifted at Hearts in 1998.
The most famous moment of his Rangers career came in 1999 when he scored two goals as he helped his side win the title at Celtic Park in a hugely controversial match even by the standards of the fixture.
‘I went around Stewart Kerr (Celtic goalkeeper) and knocked the ball into the empty net and my momentum took me towards the Celtic fans,’ he says of the goal that clinched a 3-0 victory.
‘I was wheeling around the back of the goal and Hugh Dallas (the referee) was tugging at me saying: “If you don’t get back on to the park, I will have to send you off”. I thought: “I have made a mark in Rangers history”.’
Other less welcome dents followed. ‘My car and house were bricked that night but, thankfully, my family and I weren’t there,’ he says.
He is also aware of the enduring depth of feeling towards him by some Celtic fans.
‘Some of the stuff that is said to me is astonishing. People in their forties and fifties, who could be lawyers, teachers or whatever, do or say some vile things,’ he says.
McCann is philosophical about all of this, content to consider the substance of his career. He thanked Jefferies for improving him as a player by giving the manager one of his first Scotland jerseys. He repaid Advocaat at Rangers with goals, assists and an influential role in a title-winning team.
Rangers moulded him as a player, a coach, a commentator and a personality.
He says: ‘I loved the training and the discipline. I loved the tactical sense. It cultivated my ideas of the game.’
Approached by Sky seven years ago to analyse and co-commentate, his recent observations on Rangers striker Joe Garner drew a testy response from Mark Warburton, the former Ibrox manager. McCann was ill-informed and short-sighted, said Warburton.
McCann, however, does not take a step back.
‘I was honest and factual with my comments on Joe Garner and I was honest about Mark’s signings,’ he says. ‘My views on Garner were backed by stats and by examples of what I said he wasn’t doing in games. This is not personal, but professional. I’m not ill-informed. I do my homework, it’s important to me.’
But he accepts the realities of working in the media, adding: ‘You are going to upset people. You will have to meet them in corridors or whatever. I have no fear of that.
‘Sometimes, you feel certain managers and players dislike you or dislike what you have said but I would like to think that the majority of them would sit down and say: “It is his opinion and he is backing it up”. These are not throwaway comments. I try to support them with substance.
‘I have had a frank discussion with Mark and it ended fine. I have seen him since. I know how he feels about what I said, but (about) me as a person? I’ve no idea. I have no problem with him. I thought the analysis was accurate.
‘I try not to court controversy, but I don’t step back from it if it means I have to be honest, otherwise you lose credibility. I won’t retreat because I might upset people, but I do believe there’s a way of saying things. I always try to be constructive.’
In the febrile atmosphere of Scottish football, he is aware that his past means his present is presented with a background of light blue.
‘I would like to think I am impartial,’
I’m Catholic, but it was still a no-brainer to join Rangers
he says. ‘You don’t play for teams and not have an affection for them, but I call it down the line. I have criticised Rangers, I have criticised Hearts and I have praised Celtic.’ There is no air of anguished justification about this. McCann simply believes in doing the job to the satisfaction of his employers and of himself. He talks about ‘arming’ himself for his television appearances. He is an avid reader and collector of statistics, believing ‘you must be able to back up your opinions’. He is also the holder of a UEFA Pro Licence and has coached at Dunfermline. ‘I wanted to be sitting in a TV studio in the position that people couldn’t question my credentials. I’ve been through the coaching badges that all top coaches have,’ he says.
He is more than content at Sky, now travelling down to England for Premier League matches, but he insists: ‘I love Scottish football. I will defend it strongly.’
His career from football to commentating has been seamless in one respect. Its motivations have been constant.
He says: ‘I believe in hard work. Be disciplined. Do your homework. You have to have details. I have always been that way inclined. You have to do things right, 100 per cent.’
In this, he has not travelled far from the boy who stood at Port Glasgow railway station ready to embark on a playing career that spanned two decades.
The dad who stood beside him then would later watch his son regularly. ‘He would tell me: “Well done today, you played well”. But often I would say to him: “No Dad, I didn’t. I wasn’t good enough”.’
That striving boy remains his own man.