A CAREER OF BROLLY UPS ... AND DOWNS
SOCIAL media can inform and entertain in equal measure but it can also distort the truth and distract us from reality. Just ask Steve McClaren.
Type the Englishman’s name into a Google search. No prizes for guessing the top answer is that excruciating faux Dutch accent he piloted during a TV interview shortly after moving to work in the Netherlands 12 years ago.
Aside from opening up an umbrella at Wembley during his ill-fated reign as England manager — launching
Sportsmail’s legendary headline ‘A wally with a brolly’ — those affected words to camera will doubtless be the 59-year-old’s greatest regret from a lifetime in the game.
It will always be the first thing people in this country think of whenever his name and FC Twente are mentioned in the same sentence. Which is quite something when you consider the extraordinary success the Yorkshireman enjoyed there.
Arriving in the city of Enschede in 2008, McClaren joined a club who’d been unable to break free from the psychological headlock Ajax, PSV Eindhoven and Feyenoord (De Grote Drie/The Big Three) had held them in since their formation in 1965.
The club had almost gone out of business five years previously. Under new ownership, they’d regained their self-respect but expectations were still modest.
McClaren immediately got Dutch football. Embracing the 4-3-3 system favoured there, by the end of his first year Twente would finish 11 points behind champions AZ Alkmaar. Twelve months later, having recalibrated the squad, they won 16 out of 17 home games and held off Martin Jol’s richlyresourced Ajax side by a point to win the title. Who’s the wally now?
‘People say that to achieve this with Twente is a miracle but it’s more than a miracle,’ McClaren said at the time. ‘I must admit I’m pretty pleased with myself.’
A modestly-sized club in a small country defying the odds to beat the big boys?
There are many reasons why Dundee United believe the 59-year-old may be the right man for them at this juncture but none more so than this.
Coming after his failure to get England to Euro 2008, those two years in Holland redefined McClaren as a masterful tactician rather than a YouTube figure of fun.
This, after all, was a man who’d been assistant to Sir Alex Ferguson between 1999 and 2001, a period which encompassed the Treble and three successive titles.
He had arrived in Manchester to replace Brian Kidd having been assistant to Jim Smith as Derby won promotion. Memorably introduced to the media as ‘Steve McClaridge’ by then chairman Martin Edwards, the experience was to be life-affirming.
‘The key wasn’t just the cultural environment or anything that was created at Manchester United, but a single person: Sir Alex. He was the biggest influence on me,’ he recalled. ‘Firstly, it was his work ethic. I thought I worked hard but he was there at 7am and attending meetings at 7.30am. There was no way I could beat him at work. ‘He was always working for Manchester United. ‘Second thing of him was he was brutally honest. He wanted discipline maintained at every level and every job. ‘The third most important thing for me was his trust. He gave me a clean sheet everyday to go and work with the players. That’s the trust he had in me. He helped everyone as much as possible.’ That stunning success at Old Trafford launched his managerial career at Middlesbrough. He won the 2004 League Cup, the club’s first major trophy, and reached the final of the 2006 UEFA Cup. Already a coach with England, he was seen as the natural fit to succeed Sven-Goran Eriksson as national manager. A dismal 3-2 home loss to Croatia at a sodden Wembley put paid to that theory and inevitably his tenure.
‘It felt like I’d let the nation down,’ he said. ‘That’s what I’ve had to live with.
‘It was difficult in the beginning, in the middle and difficult at the end.’
But his time at Twente suggested England had only been a misadventure. He was again viewed as a manager of talent and substance.
A decade on, ascertaining McClaren’s true worth in the modern-game is far from easy, though.
Winning the Dutch title ought to have been the springboard for unimaginable success. At the time, McClaren seemed set to follow in the footsteps of his great friend Bobby Robson by embarking on a trophy-laden tour of Europe.
It’s certainly been quite the episode: Wolfsburg (sacked), Twente second time around (resigned), Derby (sacked), Newcastle (sacked), Derby again (sacked) and QPR (sacked).
It would be wrong, however, to claim that each posting was as indifferent as the next.
He took Derby to Wembley for the 2014 Championship Play-off final — ‘I’ll tell you something. I won’t be taking a bloody brolly’ — only to lose to a late Bobby Zamora goal.
‘I’ve lost some games in my career but that is the cruellest,’ he reflected. ‘We didn’t deserve that.’
There was no such hard luck story at St James’ Park. Knocked out of both cups early and embroiled in a relegation scrap, he lasted just ten months of a three-year deal, fired before the club inevitably went down. McClaren made little impact at Derby second time around and there was no renaissance at QPR where he was sacked last April. With each P45, the golden days with Twente and Boro have drifted further into the distance.
Are they gone for good or have they just moved behind the curtain? For Dundee United’s owners, it’s the toughest of calls.
It has to be said McClaren, should he be confirmed, is certainly a long way from the up-andcoming Robbie Neilson type the club first had in mind when they set out on this road ten days ago.
Yet it’s not difficult to see why United would be drawn to his vast experience.
It’s one thing the club rightly putting its academy at the top of its list of priorities.
But having only retuned to the Premiership after four years, the main goal has to be to stay there.
At a stroke, if a deal is struck, the Englishman would become the top flight’s most senior figure both in terms of age and experience.
He has worked with the Beckhams and Gerrards of this world. He was on the bench in the Nou Camp when Ole Gunnar Solskjaer turned the ball into Bayern Munich’s net. He has both witnessed and created footballing history, known feast and famine, been ridiculed and revered.
His has been the broadest of football educations. In so many respects, the City of Discovery seems so right.