The long road back to PARADISE?
Parkhead favourite and Spartak assistant Hinkel still holds out hope he can help out his old club in future
ANDREAS HINKEL may be over 1,600 miles away, but for the Spartak Moscow assistant manager, Glasgow and his former club remain at the forefront of his mind.
“I always tell friends that the first international game was in Scotland between Scotland and England,” notes the former Celtic defender with a laugh. “Everyone always assumes it was in England, but it wasn’t.”
Indeed, the 39-year-old former German international does not need much encouragement to fondly look back on his three years in Scottish football and reveal how much of an impact the club and the city made on his life.
Although Hinkel made the move to Celtic in 2008, this particular love affair began five years earlier when the young defender faced Martin O’Neill’s team in the second leg of a UEFA Cup fourth-round tie, playing for VfB Stuttgart. At a packed Celtic Park, the Scottish side pulled their German rivals apart in a 3-1 victory. Despite the defeat, Hinkel was smitten.
“That was a really, really big experience for me,” admits Hinkel. “I was 20 or 21 and it was an unbelievable atmosphere. I had never experienced anything like it before and it was of course something that influenced my decision to move to the club as well. I knew what was going to happen on the European nights.”
Five years later, Hinkel was looking for a new club following the emergence of a young, Brazilian wing-back by the name of Dani Alves at Sevilla. However, despite an offer to return to Germany and join Borussia Dortmund, the defender opted for Celtic instead. Thanks, in part, to the supporters that wowed him that night in the east end of Glasgow.
Despite constant phone calls from Peter Lawwell in the summer of 2008 and a meeting with Gordon Strachan to gain assurances about playing time, Hinkel mostly remembers the warm impression the city and the club’s fans had on him.
“The supporters and the people – not just Celtic supporters – in Glasgow all gave me a very warm welcome from the moment I arrived in the city,” he says. “Even before I had signed the contract to join the club. There had obviously been rumours about me joining because I got emails and messages from supporters. From the first day until the last day myself and my family felt really good in Glasgow.”
Although managerial changes and a serious anterior cruciate ligament injury robbed Hinkel of a proper farewell at Celtic, the German has kept in touch with the club as he continues his development as a young coach.
Shortly after retiring as a player at Freiburg in 2012, Hinkel returned to Celtic for a week-long practical study of how the club’s youth academy and coaching system worked.
And just two years ago he arrived at the club’s Lennoxtown complex to further study how Celtic scout and buy players for the first team, as part of his FIFA coaching licence. Despite leaving the club almost a decade ago, few individuals in European football will know how Celtic works as well as Hinkel.
However, his studious approach to his post-playing career is not just out of love for Celtic. His interest in every facet of a football club helps his versatility as a coach, which was apparent when he returned to his boyhood club Stuttgart as a youth coach in 2013.
After taking on the role coaching the Under-12s, Hinkel was promoted through every age group, before he was placed in charge of the club’s second team in 2016. Before long he was assistant
manager for the first team and was briefly interim head coach before he made the move to Spartak to become Domenico Tedesco’s assistant manager.
In Russia, Hinkel’s versatility has also come in handy. Following numerous disciplinary suspensions to Tedesco, the former Celtic man has had to step in as the club’s first team manager on at least 10 occasions since arriving in October 2019.
But Hinkel seems to take it all in his stride.
“Maybe you can say it’s different at higher levels but I know I can do everything,” he says when asked about his numerous coaching roles at Stuttgart and Spartak. “Because if I’m the head coach then I’ll act like a head coach. I think I’m flexible.
“Maybe one day I’ll instead manage a team at a higher level but I know how to do this job like I know my own living room. Of course as a head coach, it’s a different role, but it’s nothing new for me to do.”
If it sounds like Hinkel is ready to make the next step in his coaching career then that is probably because he is. He and Tedesco are set to move on from Spartak at the end of the season and from there the continent is their oyster.
The pair have already been linked with replacing the outgoing Adi Hütter at Eintracht Frankfurt this summer, but a managerial posting could certainly tempt Hinkel elsewhere. Especially at a former club that are still searching for their next manager.
To help build a new structure at Celtic would be a pleasure. It would be a big honour
“Of course,” answers Hinkel when asked if managing his former club would be high on his list of priorities after Spartak. “It would be a big, big honour to be the head coach sometime in the future and to help Celtic.
“I can imagine doing many, many different things, you know, in football. But to help Celtic in some way, to help build a new structure at the club would be a pleasure. It would be a big honour for me to help with that.”
Perhaps 2021 is too soon for a proper reunion, but in
Hinkel there may be a bright, exciting young coach who not only has strong ties to Celtic but also knows how the internal structure of the club works.
It seems inevitable that his and the club’s paths will cross again one day.