The hazards of foreign aid
Graeme Macpherson What’s the score?
THE Scots are generally considered to be a welcoming bunch but there are a host of foreign football managers who may beg to differ. Scottish football has undoubtedly benefited over the years from the influx of players from overseas – the two biggest stars to have lit up our game over the past few decades are arguably Brian Laudrup and Henrik Larsson – but few are the tales of managers from outside the British Isles having alighted here and gone on to make a roaring success of their tenure. It is something that may focus the mind of Pedro Caixinha as the Portuguese prepares to take up the position of Rangers’ new head coach. Scotland likes to consider itself a progressive nation, open to new ideas and ways of thinking, but some of the tales of foreign managers who have come here and failed to make a positive impact speaks to an obstructive, old-fashioned determination to cling on desperately to the tried and trusted. You only need to look at the hullabaloo that surrounded the appointment of Ian Cathro at Hearts – a Scot but one whose development took place primarily in Portugal and Spain – to see that fresh, innovative methods tend to be viewed with as much side-eyed disapproval as someone failing to get their round in at the pub. Falling short of expectation at Celtic or Rangers is not a hazard reserved exclusively for incomers but there was something particularly jarring about the highprofile struggles of Paul Le Guen and Ronny Deila. Being exotically cosmopolitan doesn’t naturally mean someone will stand out in the Calvinist backwater that is Scotland but both managers – and Le Guen in particular – arrived with CVs that suggested they were more than cut out for the challenge. The Frenchman had won three league titles at Olympique Lyonnais and taken them to the quarter-finals of the Champions League, while clubs of the stature of PSG, Benfica and Lazio had tried to entice him back into management during a year’s sabbatical. It was Rangers, though, who got their man. Deila’s backstory was not quite so glamorous but he had built up Stromsgodset from perennial relegation worriers, to cup winners and then to Norwegian champions. He was young but had expanded his coaching knowledge through visiting elite clubs throughout Europe, while Malmo were also keen to take him as their new man. Instead, he plumped for Celtic.
Both men were different in many regards. Le Guen spoke with halting English and lasted only six months in the post, while Deila, fluent from the offset, stayed for two years and won back-toback titles and a League Cup. Both, however, seemed to struggle with cultural differences as they tried to impose their methods on a sceptical and intolerant dressing room.
The determination of supposedly elite athletes to stick to a traditional Scottish diet took both managers by surprise, Le Guen waging war on crisps and alcohol and Deila going after the fizzy drinks and carb-heavy food. The resistance both met suggested neither would be given the respect they required to realise their longterm plans.
Perhaps both men would have struggled regardless of their nationality, the way Cathro is just now at Hearts. Maybe they simply didn’t have the coaching or communication skills to improve and motivate the players under their command. Being foreign, however, definitely made their jobs harder as they pushed to make changes and found the natives – and others in the dressing room, too, admittedly – pushing right back at them.
They were not the only foreign managers to struggle. Wim Jansen stopped Rangers winning 10-in-a-row and signed the aforementioned Larsson but left after just a year, as did his successor Jo Venglos. Ebbe Skovdahl failed to convince in four years at Aberdeen, Hearts had a string of eastern Europeans pass through the club in the Vladimir Romanov era to little effect, Harri Kampman barely lasted eight months at Motherwell, while Berti Vogts arrived in Scotland as a World Cup and European Championship winner and left, unfairly, pegged as a figure of ridicule. Paulo Sergio won the Scottish Cup with Hearts but again stayed in his post for only a season.
One or two have endured, even thrived. Mixu Paatelainen has been a manager at four Scottish clubs but on the back of a playing career spent primarily around these parts. The Finn is practically now considered an honorary Scot and has the hybrid accent to prove it. Dick Advocaat was an even greater success, but made the assimilation to life in Glasgow much easier for himself by surrounding himself at Rangers with a legion of his countrymen. A colossal, ultimately unsustainable, budget also helped his cause, too.
The list of the current SPFL managers suggests clubs are wary of going back down that route. Of the 42 in either permanent or temporary charge, 36 are Scots, four are from Northern Ireland and two are from the Republic. Caixinha’s arrival will add something fresh, then, to that homogenised pack. Having previously worked in countries as diverse as Mexico, Greece, Saudi Arabia and Romania, coming to Scotland should hold no fears for him. But tales from the past suggest it will likely not be straightforward.
TOMMY Gemmell’s sad passing and news of Billy McNeill’s struggle with dementia seem extra poignant as we move ever closer to the 50th anniversary of Celtic’s historic European Cup victory. That it is still held up as Scottish football’s landmark moment speaks both to the subsequent decades of underachievement but primarily to the wonder of such a feat. It can be safely said there will never be another team like the Lisbon Lions.
The determination of supposedly elite athletes to stick to a Scottish diet took both managers by surprise