MYSTERY MAN
From Forfar to Mexico and now a key part of Northern Ireland’s Euro 2016 success, meet Scottish football’s
UNLESS you happen to be an aficionado of Forfar Athletic, the chances are Austin MacPhee’s name will not ring any bells. By his own admission, the Fifer’s playing career was forged on modest ability. Yet the imprint he has made on the game at all levels since hanging up the boots is hard to comprehend.
So much so that after an hour’s conversation with the 36-year-old, you are tempted to ask if he hasn’t consider cloning himself to cope with the herculean workload he so readily undertakes.
An entrepreneur by nature, the St Andrews resident runs a successful sports travel business, AMsportstours, that allows aspiring footballers and/or their parents to train with, play against and watch the best clubs on the planet.
Closer to home, he has also formed AMsoccer Club, the Fife equivalent of Spartans, if you like, which sees 500 players of all ages and abilities being put through their paces by his growing army of coaches. An application for the first team to join the Lowland League is i n the post with a 25-year lease on Cupar cricket pitch the beginning of the club’s very own field of dreams.
And then there’s the primary reason Sportsmail was awaiting him at Edinburgh Airport before he j etted out to St Louis on business this week — the small matter of Euro 2016. As an assistant coach to Michael O’Neill’s Northern Ireland, the Scot is presently engaged with the task of ensuring the impossible dream lives on beyond a group containing Germany, Poland and Ukraine.
A Scot coaching at the Euros after all then? How did it all come to this? As innovative and intelligent as MacPhee clearly is, he gives due credit to the many travels which have broadened his mind.
Those run-outs at Station Park in the late ’90s led to him moving to a scholarship at the University of North Carolina where he spent four years studying for a psychology degree while playing for Wilmington Seahawks.
Then it was off to little Braila in Romania — ‘a couple of hundred quid and a roof over your head’ — with Japanese si de Nagoya bookending his nine years abroad.
He may not have made a fortune from his low-key playing career but when he returned to Scotland he was enriched with ideas.
‘It shifted my perception,’ he said. ‘There are a lot of differences between those three countries plus Scotland. It was like having a menu of ideas where you can pick your best ones. To be innovative without seeing other things working is quite difficult.
‘When I came back, I did think kids’ football in Scotland was poor and that’s why I started AMsoccer Club. I could save 1,000 words by saying we are like Spartans but smaller.
‘In essence, we are 15 small towns and villages in north- east Fife.’ If it sounds remarkably similar to what Ian Cathro did on the other side of the Tay Bridge around the same time then MacPhee welcomes the comparison.
Like Cathro, MacPhee’s novel approach to enhancing the skill sets of young footballers seemed to fire the imagination of the growing number of attendees.
‘It goes back to school — you learn things in an order,’ he said. ‘You can’t learn where and when to use a full stop until you learn words. It’s also a more questioning approach rather than telling. And everything is with the ball.’
It didn’t take long for the beat of the jungle drums to be heard at Hampden. The curiosity of Stewart Regan, the SFA chief executive, and Mark Wotte, t he t hen performance director, got the better of them and both l eft the sessions very impressed.
Wasn’t there a danger, though, the governing body might be put out by someone ripping up their coaching manual?
‘I don’t think it really is competing with the SFA because they are not saying to our recreational footballers: “This is how you should do things”,’ explained MacPhee. ‘They regulate us but they don’t say that you must teach kids in a certain way.’
By that stage, it wasn’t just the players of tomorrow that MacPhee was influencing. His first managerial post with Cupar Hearts came at the age of 27 and he led them to the Amateur Cup Final and victory in the Fife Cup.
While studying for his UEFA B Licence, he met Danny Lennon and his r ecommendation of two players to the soon-to-be Cowdenbeath boss opened the door.
When Lennon moved to St Mirren in 2010, MacPhee followed him as a coach a year later.
ON the eve of the 2013 League Cup semi-final with Celtic, MacPhee persuaded his manager to hand a debut to Esmael Goncalves — a Cathro advocacy from Portuguese side Rio Ave.
Housed in the same hotel as the player, MacPhee insisted he was better taking Goncalves along to his parents’ silver wedding celebration in Glasgow the night before the game rather than leaving him to his own devices. Lennon — who had enforced a curfew — disagreed but eventually relented. Eight minutes into the lunchtime kick-off, Goncalves scored on his debut as Saints won 3-2.
‘He’d have gone out into Glasgow anyway, so it was better to have the loose cannon with me,’ smiled MacPhee.
Within a year, it had all predictably gone sour in Paisley. But MacPhee’s role in the club winning the League Cup against Hearts had not gone unnoticed by the man who would soon be spearheading Northern Ireland’s Euro 2016 campaign.
‘There was no previous connection between myself and Michael,’ explained MacPhee.
‘We were at a Celtic v Aberdeen game because St Mirren were due to play Aberdeen and he was there watching Niall McGinn.
‘I was taking some notes. He approached me and said he was interested in chatting to me about work on top of what I was doing at St Mirren. But I was looking to move on at that time anyway.’
The instant rapport led to a gentleman’s agreement being struck. Northern Ireland would get the benefit of MacPhee’s wisdom in the fullness of time but, by a bizarre twist of fate, World Cup-bound Mexico would get there first.
A business flight to Canada sat MacPhee beside an agent who was r ecruiting f or Mexican si de Galeana. After a lengthy talk, MacPhee agreed to fly directly f rom Canada to Mexico, was interviewed and offered the job.
‘Just before we moved over they were taken over and brought in all Mexican staff,’ he explained. ‘With hindsight, it might have been a wee bit foolhardy.’
All was not lost. One member of the Galeana board, who was also prominent in the Mexican FA, had been so impressed by MacPhee’s presentation on opponent analysis that he recommended hiring him to detail Croatia ahead of the Group A clash in Recife. A 3-1 win proved it to be a shrewd move.
‘It gave me the belief at that point that I could comfortably operate at that level,’ reflected MacPhee.
And so it began. Expectation among Northern Ireland fans was virtually zero.
NINE points from a possible nine, including a win in Greece, changed all that. Tellingly, a loss to Romania was treated as no more than a bump on the road. By the time the Greeks were defeated for a second time at Windsor Park, the country celebrated like it was 1986 — and with a game to spare.
Is it too easy to look upon the addition of the Scot to the party as being the difference? Modesty would prevent him saying so.
What we can say for sure, however, is that his coaching input (don’t dare call him an analyst) had the undivided attention of some of the English Premier League’s finest.
‘The culture within the Northern Ireland squad has been dictated by the attitude of the best players,’ added MacPhee. ‘It’s almost like going in for extra homework. The culture is analysis.
‘ The top managers haven’t played at the top level, they have degrees, they’ve been involved in other things in life.
‘Look at Michael. He finished playing at 35 and didn’t touch football for five years while he was a financial adviser. He’s operated and managed people in the real world. That changes you.’
In that sense, it’s not hard to see what drew O’Neill to MacPhee in the first place: both can be said to be very modern football men but arguably their greatest strengths are their real-life experiences.
O’Neill is said to be close to agreeing a four-year contract with the Irish FA and doubtless MacPhee would follow suit.
‘He’s got a sixth sense with players,’ reflected MacPhee. ‘I’ve never heard him announce a rule. The players police themselves because they respect them. It’s different but successful.’