Glasgow life has Kranjcar enjoying the game again
PASSING by Kinning Park on Paisley Road West, instead of Central Park on Manhattan, was Niko Kranjcar’s route to work yesterday. Much as he is not surprised to be mocked for that decision, the Croatian is entirely comfortable with the call to reject making New York home.
‘Glasgow is beautiful,’ he said. ‘You might laugh but I do prefer it. For me, it’s got a lot more soul.’ At the core of his snub of the Big Apple, where his girlfriend entertained acting ambitions, is a desire to atone for three years of under-achievement when he should have enjoyed peak seasons in football.
Staying in the United States for any longer and featuring in the second tier North American Soccer League was no kind of solution to a nagging problem brought about by an unhappy spell at Dynamo Kiev and two troubled loan campaigns with Queens Park Rangers. Kranjcar is 32 in a fortnight and the two-year deal with Rangers offers the perfect answer.
He hasn’t relished being in the thick of a title race since winning with Hajduk Split 11 years ago and fully expects Saturday’s home opener against Hamilton to be the onset of a thrilling pursuit of Celtic’s crown.
‘I’m not happy with the last two or three years of my career,’ said Kranjcar. ‘So I can’t be happy with myself in the last few years.
‘Unfortunately, the Dynamo Kiev move wasn’t the best for me. It’s a fantastic club but it didn’t click between myself and club.
‘I had a couple of nice loan spells at QPR but we got relegated. So the massive motivation is to finish my career on a high. To be at a big football club like Rangers sets me up to do it. It was a great opportunity to be in focus again, footballwise.
‘The last time I really competed for a title was when I was 20. I could say Spurs but we faded away at the end. We were up there but never really challenged. That’s why it was such a big thing for me to come to a club which was going for a title. I still think I’ve a good couple of years in me. This is a golden opportunity to come back to the form that I had before. And everything I do is geared towards that goal.’ If the form he speaks of, before the ill-fated £7 million transfer to Ukraine, does return then Kranjcar (below) could be the class creative act who unlocks enough Ladbrokes Premiership defences to lift Mark Warburton’s men to the title. His sublime talent dovetailed with Gareth Bale, Luka Modric and Rafael van der Vaart in the Tottenham team that twice finished fourth in the Premier League before he starred for Croatia at Euro 2012 in Poland and Ukraine. With that in mind, Mark Warburton jetted to New York for an evening with Kranjcar, a 2008 FA Cup winner with Portsmouth, in a bid to persuade him to bring those skills to Scotland. It turns out that a Skype conversation would’ve sufficed, such was the obvious draw of becoming a Rangers player. When asked about his manager’s flying visit, Kranjcar revealed: ‘I couldn’t understand why. It’s Rangers. ‘So, obviously, I’d be interested! I didn’t need much convincing. But it plays to your feelings when he decides to fly out and spend one night, one day and fly back. And I think he was impressed by what he heard from me. Who isn’t aware of Rangers? The whole world knows.
‘So the club hasn’t exceeded my expectations at all. It’s the same with Celtic. No one has to explain it. I didn’t see myself getting an offer from a better or bigger club than Rangers at this stage in my career.
‘I feel really comfortable. I’m enjoying my time. And I don’t need to even comment on the pitches — it’s like a billiard table out there compared to artificial grass.
‘It’s beautiful to play football in this type of environment. I like it when it’s wet and not too hot, I can run around!’
That last remark can be construed as a nod to his reputation for, to put it bluntly, laziness. Admitting that ‘obviously my defending isn’t the best’ suggests that Rangers are likely to rely on busier midfielders such as Jordan Rossiter, Joey Barton and Andy Halliday to produce the graft while Kranjcar provides the craft.
However, his manager fully expects a balance to be struck. Warburton said: ‘You don’t get 80-odd caps for Croatia and not be in the bracket of a very talented ball player. But he also knows he’s got responsibilities to the team.
‘You can’t say to one player: “You work hard” and another: “You don’t”. It doesn’t work that way, so the work we’re doing every day in training is not geared to one individual, it’s about us as a team.
‘Niko knows his job, knows when he hasn’t done it and the implications of that.’
From what the Croatian has witnessed so far, including the discovery that winger Barrie McKay is ‘a magnificent talent’, Kranjcar believes Warburton’s game is an impeccable fit for him.
‘The style of play has exceeded expectations,’ he said. ‘I knew about it, I’d read about it. I knew about how the manager likes to play football. But I’ve been really impressed and I believe it’s the way the game should be played. I’m so happy to be part of it.
‘I have to admit that meeting the group and seeing the style the manager wants us to play has given me a new joy in playing football.
‘The manager wants to play the ball out from the back, based on a lot of interchanging, passing and possession football. For selfish reasons, this is the style of football that suits me the most.’