I’m up for any fight at every level in Scotland I want to be a manager one day and this experience is very important
WHETHER a young buck aiming for the top or an old-timer playing for fun at the bottom, you don’t get anywhere in Scottish football if you aren’t ready for a battle.
If Massimo Donati needed a reminder of that, it came when he took up the invitation to start playing for former club Hamilton Accies’ newly-formed Over-35s team back in March.
A nice opportunity to stay fit in Division 2C of the Central Regions Friday Night League, he told himself. A chance for a wee laugh with the ageing amateurs of the mighty Strathaven Dynamo and Gartcairn Thistle, he thought.
‘There was just one problem,’ Donati concedes now. ‘A friend had asked if I fancied playing Over-35s and I said: “Yes”. I thought it was just about going along and enjoying it.
‘The first game had two red cards and five yellows. Honestly, it was a surprise. There’s a fight every week.’
Donati, now with a title-winner’s medal in his collection after a successful debut season for the Accies’ old boys, diplomatically describes his parallel existence in the amateur ranks as ‘a challenge’.
In many ways, it sounds like it was good preparation for what he walked into at Kilmarnock just months later when joining fellow Italian Angelo Alessio’s coaching staff following a year out of the professional game after leaving St Mirren.
A handful of games into Alessio’s tenure, it looked like his goose was cooked. Knocked out of the Europa League qualifiers by Connah’s Quay Nomads and, having lost to Rangers and Accies in the Premiership, there was talk of open revolt, pending transfer requests, crisis talks among the players and friction within the staff.
No one present at Hamilton that August afternoon, watching most of the Kilmarnock squad blank the head coach as they walked off the field after a 2-0 defeat, could possibly have imagined Alessio would be the proud owner of the Ladbrokes Manager of the Month award for October ahead of the next league meeting between the two sides at Rugby Park today.
Donati doesn’t attempt to deny there were issues in those early days.
It would be silly to pretend otherwise. However, when it comes to conflict resolution, there is clearly more than one way to skin a cat.
Criticised for being too expansive against Connah’s Quay, Killie set about returning to the ordered, organised approach that brought such success for Alessio’s predecessor Steve Clarke. Squad members were brought into the conversation.
As Donati concedes, the new coaching staff and the old regime’s players — with Clarke’s assistant Alex Dyer part of the equation, too — eventually agreed to meet somewhere in the middle and start afresh from there.
Kirk Broadfoot, after leaving for St Mirren, slaughtered Alessio, claiming his training was so flat, so obsessed with walking the team through shapes, that certain players were doing extra sessions on their own to get fit.
Asked if the one-time Scotland defender’s remarks sum up a clash of cultures that created such problems back then, Donati replied: ‘I can say maybe, yes, but that’s not all of it.
‘There were other situations that it is not good to explain, not nice to say. These situations are to be spoken about just in the dressing room.
‘Maybe that was his (Broadfoot’s) idea and his thoughts, but that is not the real story.
‘Sure, at the start, there were some things that were too different from what the players had done in the past.
‘When you have a manager from another country, it is normal that it’s different, but, after that, we found a compromise.
‘We were trying to make a lot of changes to the team, but the group is a good group. They work very hard. We then realised we didn’t have to change a lot.
‘The first thing was to have real compactness and be defensively very good. We changed and, now, we are stronger.’
Recent defeats to Motherwell and Aberdeen can be excused as a result of every single centre-back on the books coming down with injury.
Prior to that, eight clean sheets in ten games had helped propel Killie high into the top six.
Donati admits it is ‘almost impossible’ to better Clarke’s thirdplaced finish from last term, but he has a desire to emulate those achievements and wants the players to marry their nowestablished defensive solidity with a more considered, intelligent approach further up the field as they endeavour to improve their scoring rate. More craft, less graft, if you like.
‘Defensively, in terms of compactness, we are in a good moment,’ said the former AC Milan and Celtic midfielder. ‘I think the players understand what we want. One thing we have to improve is recognising moments in the game. We appreciate the fact the team are very hard workers.
‘Sometimes, though, they run too much. There is no need to run like this.
‘You need to think about why you make a certain run or make a certain pass.’
Alessio, former No 2 to Antonio Conte at Juventus, Chelsea and the Italian national team, certainly gave plenty of people food for thought when striking out on his own to become manager of Killie in the summer.
One report last week claimed he even travelled to Spain to scout out living accommodation last October when Conte was fancied to replace the sacked Julen Lopetegui at Real Madrid.
Donati asked a mutual friend to give him Alessio’s contact details after news of his appointment at Rugby Park. A two-hour chat led to a formal interview and a job offer.
Wasn’t there a degree of shock, though, that a guy who could well have been working at the Bernabeu was kick-starting his managerial career just a stone’s throw from Burns Mall?
‘I was surprised, but in the right way,’ said Donati. ‘When you are with Conte and in teams such as Chelsea and Juventus, why do you have to leave? It is perfect there.
‘However, I understood after we spoke that he was in a comfort zone and wanted to be a No1. I want to
be a manager one day as well and this experience is important for me because I can learn a lot. I hope my knowledge of Scotland can help Angelo, too.
‘The first period of my life as a football player is over. Now, I am like a baby. I am following a new dream.’
Donati always planned to begin his coaching career in Scotland, taking charge of Hamilton’s
Under-15s in addition to being a first-team player after returning from Italy in 2016, seven years after leaving Celtic for Bari.
‘I have a connection with Scotland, but I don’t know the reason exactly,’ he said. ‘I have a joke with my family and friends that, in another life, I was William Wallace or something like that. When I came to Scotland with Celtic, I felt good with the people. I like the style of life.
‘Two of my children were born here and the kids don’t want to go back to Italy.
‘Mind you, I don’t see a lot of my family right now because I am always at the stadium. We spend every day from 8am to 5pm, watching games, talking among the staff, going into the small details that can make a big difference over a season.’
Further shaping of the squad looks likely in the winter market, too.
‘We want to be ready for any situation,’ said the 38-year-old. ‘In January, maybe some players are not happy and want to leave. If someone says he wants to go, we want to make sure we have someone to come in.’
Before then, though, Donati has the small matter of trying to win more silverware in Hamilton colours with the Scottish Over-35s Cup final against Possil YM taking place at Broadwood in less than a fortnight.
He said: ‘We’ve won the league and we now have the Scottish Cup final on November 22. I’ll be there, of course.’
Sure proof that an early culture shock need not be any impediment to longer-term success, Donati’s fun with his friends on a Friday night might have more in common with the serious business of the day job than he thought.