MacFarlane has kept up his underrated but not unnoticed trait
A lynchpin in Levein’s Hearts side, former midfielder is now playing a major role behind the scenes at Brentford
NEIL MacFARLANE knew what he was as a player. For Queen’ s Park, Airdrieonians, Aberdeen, Queen of the South and, most prominently, Heart of Midlothian. Dogged, hard-working, reliable. A fan favourite, not really. An important component, no doubt. In the early 2000s, he was part of one of the most underrated Hearts sides in generations. He was someone Craig Levein knew he could turn to when it mattered.
“I was a defensive midfield player that broke up play,” MacFarlane says. “Listen, I think it is also important for any player, even the boys I am coaching now, to know what they are. I knew what I was. I knew myself I wasn’t the most creative at times but I knew I could be reliable for a manager, I knew I could play in the big games, handle pressure in the big games.”
When Hearts went to De Kuip to face Feyenoord he was in the starting XI. As he was in key games against Bordeaux and Braga. And a regular when Hearts played the Old Firm.
He added: “That’s what I am preaching to my players just now, you need to keep improving, keep getting better technically and tactically but you have to have that attitude and desire whereby the manager can rely on you. I think that’s a big, big thing and at that point, I felt he could.”
MacFarlane is manager of Brentford B, a position he will have held for five years this year. It is clear he also knows what he is as a manager. Intense, passionate and relentless. Even just chatting over the phone those qualities were evident.
The 46-year-old spoke warmly of Hearts, of his time at Tynecastle Park from 2002 to 2006, and of the impact and influence of Levein. But it was when conversation moved on to coaching that the tone shifted.
“When you first go on to the grass as a coach you are teaching yourself, learning off the coaches you’ve been working with and continuing to work with, looking for all the wee things to improve you,” he said. “That’s what I am like, I’m pretty relentless to keep getting better.
“It has been 10 years of really, really good experiences, unbelievable experiences, experiences that you can’t get unless you are involved in them. Having to deal with so many different scenarios, whether it is in Britain or in Cyprus, and then going into this project and continuously looking to make the players better and myself better.
“I just want to keep getting better and maybe there will come a point where there is a new chapter but currently it has been really good.”
MacFarlane’s career trajectory in football is an interesting one when viewed on the surface. It becomes all the more intriguing when you delve deeper.
Now he is part of a Premier League club that achieved a mixture of both notoriety and praise for their decision to remove their academy in 2016 to focus on just two teams (the first team and MacFarlane’s B team), and as a player MacFarlane did not emerge through the traditional route, either.
He was spotted playing for Glasgow Amateurs Under-21s by Queen’s Park. It was a grounding he would not swap and included a Scottish Third Division title with the Spiders before a move to Kilmarnock and then on to Airdrieonians.
“In this project at Brentford we’ve got the B team and the first team, so the pathway is there for all the young players, which is the most important thing,” he said. “The biggest thing at any football club is recruitment. We will look and pluck boys from academies who have been let go and need to find the missing link or a bit like the pathway I had myself where we’ve found players over the last two to three years playing in the non-league and grassroots because the recruitment is so good at our club and they’ve gone on to really flourish and get through to the first team and go that way. There are many, many different paths. It is being openminded on these things and when you get the opportunity to coach these boys you want to prepare them for first-team football.”
MacFarlane is the ideal coach for players who have had setbacks early in their careers. Under Ian McCall at Airdrie, MacFarlane was a key player as the Diamonds finished second in the second tier behind Partick Thistle, while also winning the Challenge Cup. But there was so much more to that season. It culminated in insolvency. On a personal level, the midfielder’s season was cut short due to a cruciate ligament tear. Such an incident rarely leads to the country’s third-biggest club picking up the phone.
“At the end of the season I received a phone call from Craig Levein, who had been watching me closely throughout the season at Airdrie,” he said. “He invited me in on a noncontract basis to re-establish my fitness and give me the facilities to do that on the basis that they liked what they saw in me as a player and if I could get back to fitness they would negotiate the contract to stay longer. That’s exactly what materialised.
“Craig was brilliant for me that way, he gave me an opportunity and at such a huge club. I worked so hard every single minute of every single day to get myself fit. We had an amazing Scottishbased team, did so well in Europe and competed well against Rangers and Celtic, who were so strong at the time.”
Under Levein, Hearts achieved back-to-back third-place finishes in the top flight. It was the first time since 1958-1960. It has not happened since. And it was all done while the wage budget had to be slashed due to financial issues.
“Hearts have had really, really good teams,” MacFarlane said. “I just know that team was so close together, terrific characters in the dressing room. I went on to work with Steven [Pressley] in a coaching aspect. As a captain he was fantastic.”
MacFarlane’s coaching ambition began to take hold two years on from his time with Hearts. It was at Queen of the South, whom he helped guide to the Scottish Cup final in 2008 as a player, where the transition into the next phase of his career in football started to develop.
“Turning towards the 30 mark I had always enjoyed local coaching,” he said. “I always really studied games intensely. I always had a real passion for making individuals and teams better. I wanted to go that way.”
He would make his first real inroads at Falkirk as an under-18s coach before stepping into the assistant manager role when Lee Bullen left for Sheffield Wednesday. It would begin a partnership with former Hearts captain Pressley that would take in the Bairns then Coventry City, Fleetwood Town and Cypriot side Pafos.
He swopped one former Hearts colleague for another when he became part of Robbie Neilson’s coaching staff at MK Dons. Then it was time to go out on his own. There was a short spell with Kidderminster Harries prior to his move to Brentford B where he has held an intriguing position at a forward-thinking club that has, over the last decade, grown from a League One outfit to the Premier League club it is now.
“I had been working as an assistant for a number of years and then really wanted the opportunity to try something different,” MacFarlane said. “What they do at Brentford is they interview you four times, it is a really rigorous process. At that point in time, the co-director of football was Rasmus Ankersen along with Phil [Giles] and Thomas [Frank]. We met one, two, three, four times. We shared the same beliefs, the same principles and fundamentals of how we wanted the game to be played, it married up really well and they offered me the job.
“It’s been an incredible job for me, I’ve loved every single second of it. It’s an amazing football club with stability. That is hugely important, stability is massive and secondly, recruitment is huge at any football club. They have terrific recruitment.”
For years, MacFarlane played an understated and underrated role in the Hearts midfield. He is now doing the same as a coach in the Brentford system. And will continue to do so until the next chapter requires to be written.