McInnes can secure his legacy in Lisbon
OPPORTUNITY knocks for Derek McInnes in Portugal this week and he is right to be excited by it. Normally, his job as Aberdeen manager leaves him on a bit of a hiding to nothing. Given their wage bill, the Dandy Dons should be expected to finish third in the Premiership every season and it is clearly a failure — as it has been over the past two years — when they don’t.
Same goes for cup semis and finals. McInnes has made them part of the furniture at Pittodrie after a long spell in which they were as rare as hen’s teeth, but they have still delivered just one trophy in the shape of the League Cup back in March 2014.
St Johnstone, Inverness Caley Thistle, Hibs and Ross County have all won silverware with far less investment in the intervening period too.
Whatever he does, it tends to feel like the 49-year-old is pretty much just scrambling to shoot par.
Sometimes, when coming fourth in the league behind Kilmarnock and Motherwell, he’s a good bit below. Other times, when knocking Rangers out of tournaments, he’s a good bit above.
The shouts for his head that accompanied the premature end of last term, though, suggested that a growing number of supporters no longer feel it’s enough.
Sporting Lisbon in the Jose Alvalade Stadium on Thursday night — providing local authorities give the game the go-ahead — offers him a real shot at blowing all that out of the water.
This is a moment in which McInnes can really secure his Aberdeen legacy with a night that will echo down the ages. It is also the perfect chance to prove he is a Scotland boss in the making and a man the SFA can turn to when Steve Clarke decides — maybe sooner rather than later, the way things are going — that he wants a return to his more natural home of the club game.
What he needs before his time is up in the Granite City, though, is a truly defining result. One that properly electrifies a fanbase that has given the impression of being underwhelmed for a while.
You could argue that winning the League Cup at Celtic Park six years ago fulfilled that brief. It was Aberdeen’s first trophy in 30 years. Yet, there’s a sense the overriding sensation afterwards was relief as much as exhilaration.
The final with Inverness was turgid, settled on penalties after 120 goalless minutes. In the run-up, the Dons defeated Alloa, Falkirk, Motherwell and St Johnstone. Morton had taken care of Celtic and Rangers were still on their famous ‘journey’ round a cul-de-sac.
There was no slaying of giants, no destroying of reputations. No memorable goal that marked the capture of silverware like John Hewitt’s header in Gothenburg or Neale Cooper’s toebash into an empty net against Rangers in 1982.
Football fans feed off matches and moments — and managers — that lead them to places unimaginable, to those rare results that defy logic and induce euphoria.
Just consider the way many Dons fans reflect fondly on Jimmy Calderwood’s time despite the way it petered out in his final season. His defining moment? That fantastic adventure to the last 32 of the old UEFA Cup, of course, and the highs that still endure.
Grabbing a draw against Dnipro in Ukraine to get through the qualifiers. Thumping FC Copenhagen 4-0 to escape a group that included Atletico Madrid, Panathinaikos and Lokomotiv Moscow. Drawing 2-2 at home with Bayern Munich in the knockout stages.
McInnes has achieved far more at Pittodrie than Calderwood. He hasn’t lost four goals in a semi-final to Queen of the South, for starters. However, he hasn’t really had that one truly transcendental occasion destined to live in the hearts of punters for ever.
Lisbon might just be that night. Look, there is no valid reason to believe Aberdeen will win there. Sporting have more money, better players. In normal times, you wouldn’t give the Dons a hope in hell.
Yet, these are not normal times. Sporting haven’t played a competitive game. Their coach Ruben Amorim has Covid-19 and is in isolation. Eleven others — at least seven of them players — have also tested positive.
Fresh from his own club’s well documented corona crisis, McInnes has dragged their campaign back from the precipice in admirable fashion with six straight wins.
Ross McCrorie is just one sign that recruitment has been better this year. Confidence is high.
Put simply, if there is ever a good time for Aberdeen to meet Sporting Lisbon, it is now.
A winnable play-off with LASK or Dunajska Streda at home lies on the other side. And a return to the group stage after 13 years would create the kind of unbridled excitement absent for way too long at the Reds.
McInnes, breaking from the norm, was talking about the thrill of going to Lisbon before his team had seen off Norwegian side Viking in midweek. He is salivating. And so he should be.
His reign needs an injection of the kind of glamour a big result against renowned opposition would bring, but European success on his CV would be no bad thing in the circumstances either.
He did give Real Sociedad a fright at Pittodrie in 2014 and pushed Burnley hard in the Europa League qualifiers two years ago. Getting past Sporting and into that wonderland of the groups, though, would be something else.
McInnes was in contention for the Scotland job when Clarke got it. He admitted then that managing his country is ‘part of the plan’.
Scotland needs a guy with proven ability to make players punch above their weight and win, though.
McInnes does have big victories over Rangers on his record, but Rangers are notoriously flaky.
Against Celtic, he has been less successful.
Aberdeen could have pushed them harder under Ronny Deila’s wobbly tenure. In the last four seasons, despite close calls and a heroic display when losing the 2017 Scottish Cup final to a late Tom Rogic goal, McInnes’ record against the champions reads won one, drawn one, lost 17.
The Scotland job seems a realistic progression for him. Where else does he go after turning down Rangers a couple of years back?
Yet, the Tartan Army maybe need a little more convincing. They need to see him get the kind of barnstorming result against higher-ranked opposition that the national team will need to get out of the mire.
McInnes has nothing to lose and everything to gain against Sporting. As well as rekindling a love affair between Aberdeen and its fans in the way he discussed this summer, it also holds the potential to be an audition for the next stage of his life too.