LEVEIN IS HANDED THE KEYS
Damaged ex-Scots boss in full command
UNLIMITED power at a club where he is still, despite all that international nonsense, considered a great f ootball man worthy of immense respect. Tell us, Craig, what first attracted you to the idea of becoming director of football at Hearts?
When Craig Levein is presented before the media at Tynecastle this morning, there will be no need to ask why the former Scotland manager jumped at the chance of a Gorgie comeback.
To put it mildly, his reputation was badly damaged by his time in charge of the national team. We know Scotland has a way of doing that to a man. But this guy’s standing in the game took a hammering; it’s going to take time — and maybe something remarkable — to erase some horrific memories of turgid f ootball and abysmal results.
So Hearts is a good fit, then, for a manager unlikely to be on the wanted list of any big club with ambition. So what were his other options?
What makes this particular job at this specific moment especially attractive, of course, is that Hearts are handing him the keys to the entire football department.
It will be interesting to hear how Robbie Neilson views his position as first-team coach — most certainly not manager, that much was made clear by Ann Budge yesterday — under the guidance of his former gaffer.
It i s understood that Levein (right) will pick the team. And decide on the tactics, and the signing and selling of players. Which kind of l eaves Robbie collecting the bibs and laying out the cones…
The new owner revealed yesterday that Levein will have ‘ total responsibility for everything to do with the playing side of the business’, adding: ‘He will be responsible for putting in place an end-toend strategy for how we are going to i mplement a youth- driven playing policy within the club.’
That actually might work for a manager who, during his time at Dundee United and then Scotland, was always l ooking beyond the narrow remit of a traditional head coach. At United, he brought in revolutionary youth guru I an Cathro. When employed by the SFA, Levein was a driving force in pushing through s o me of the reforms now in place — systems at least partly responsible for a new blossoming of talent in t he national youth teams. Sure, he was an unmitigated disaster as the boss of Scotland. An apparently blinkered character who insisted that he was making ‘ progress’ as our qualification campaign crashed and burned without even making i t off the runway.
But if you think, as Budge clearly does, that his time with the national team was merely a blip, and Levein has the qualities to oversee a strategic overhaul of a football department left seriously weakened by administration, then it all makes perfect sense.
That Levein is Budge’s man has been apparent for some time. A Hearts fan who always admired him during his first spell at the helm — an era when he managed to balance shrinking budgets with an ambition to finish as ‘best of the rest’ behind the Old Firm — Budge didn’t look too far for that necessity of every club owner: a football consigliere.
When you are the person signing the cheques and querying signing-on fees, perhaps even questioning why results are not up to scratch, there can be a tendency of even the most respectful ‘football people’ to either patronise you with generalisations — or bamboozle you with coaching talk,
knowing that you’ll not follow most of the fine points.
To counter-balance this, every owner has one person — usually an old pro, a former manager who has achieved something in the game — they can turn to for advice and explanations. Someone to cut through the bullshine.
For long enough, despite the denials, we’ve known that Budge’s touchstone was Levein. So now the new owner — with the approval of senior figures in the Foundation of Hearts — has her adviser in-house. And in charge.
Successful enough in his first spell as Hearts boss, a good enough Dundee United manager to be swept into the Scotland job without too much of a public protest from doubters, the man who also spent time as boss at Cowdenbeath, Leicester City and Raith Rovers will find the club much changed; even the ‘reduced circumstances’ he worked in from 2000-04 may come to seem like a time of glorious excess.
Still, he’ll be delighted to have been handed this shot at redemption. And glad to be back in among his ain folk. Some of whom, despite everything, still quite like him.