Dedicated follower of passion
Caixinha is no stranger to hostile environments and is set for battle at Pittodrie
PEDRO CAIXINHA could quite easily be spending his Sunday absorbing some Middle Eastern sun and counting his dirhams. We can only take him at his word when he says he’ll be much happier soaking up a different kind of heat at Pittodrie.
Caixinha’s job at Al-Gharafa in the Qatar Stars League afforded a safe and well-remunerated existence far removed from his past football experiences in the hotbeds of Greece and Mexico.
A coaching academic, the Portuguese enjoyed the tactical nuances of the post but, come match day, there was something missing.
‘There were 100 people watching the game, sometimes 200,’ recalls the Rangers boss, almost a month into his new role. ‘Maybe we might have 1,500 for a special match but no more than that.’
Panathinaikos v Olympiacos it was not. Neither was there any of the awe inspired by a visit to the fabled Azteca Stadium in Mexico City, where he would take his Santos Laguna team.
And there was certainly not the special kind of welcome reserved for a visiting Rangers manager in Aberdeen.
‘I’m an intense guy, I’m a passionate guy, so I definitely missed that,’ he insists. ‘Just the other morning I was reviewing our last match and thinking to myself that I had missed this environment.
‘I was missing the passion, having people supporting us at games and others being against us. This is football.
‘This is one of the challenges that brought me here. I could be in Qatar where the temperature will be a lot higher than Glasgow and you receive fantastic wages.
‘That’s not what brought me here. I came for challenges and the main one is raising Rangers to the position they deserve.’
Ultimately, Caixinha wants to be atop the Premiership table but, for this season at least, the very best he can hope for is a tilt at the runners-up berth.
As luck would have it, today’s opponents sit second and seem disinclined to give any encouragement to their rivals, least of all the team hailing from Glasgow’s blue corner.
Derek McInnes’s side have chalked up an impressive 12 victories from their last 14 Premiership fixtures, form that in any other season might have formed the basis of a genuine title challenge.
As it stands, the Dons sit a comfortable second to champions Celtic, 12 points clear of Rangers in third. In the circumstances, logic would dictate that rather than
aiming upwards, Rangers might be better served glancing over their shoulders at St Johnstone who hover a mere three points back in fourth. That’s not how Caixinha operates. ‘I always look up,’ he says, gesturing towards the ceiling of an office at Rangers’ training base. ‘When I’m beginning my way, and this is the first step, I’m only going in one direction.
‘I’m not like a crab that goes side-to-side. I don’t go back. I only look at what is in front of us. It will be difficult to catch Aberdeen because of the points difference. We definitely need to beat them twice. Besides that, we still need them to lose points in other matches.
‘But if you can finish second, it’s better than finishing third. I always think like this. If you can try for as much as you can get, it will always be better for you.
‘Nobody cares that we have been four years out of this situation. The history and the demands of the club are so massive that we need to respond on a daily basis. So trying to finish second really matters.’
Caixinha is clearly intent on conveying the impression that he ‘gets’ what it means to manage Rangers, a matter on which his predecessor Mark Warburton often appeared aloof and unconvincing.
Nevertheless, the Portuguese must tread a fine line between ambition and realism. Not until the summer will he have an opportunity to recruit his own players and lay the groundwork for a concerted effort towards tangible improvement.
By contrast, Aberdeen are a finely-tuned machine which has been honed by McInnes over four years of management. Caixinha turned up for his Friday Press briefing armed with a fact sheet on today’s opponents and, somewhat oddly, two separate tactics sheets each conveying a different Dons line-up and formation.
Caixinha went to watch McInnes’s team play at Dundee in last weekend’s round of fixtures and was treated to a formidable display in which Aberdeen scored seven times without reply.
‘I saw six of the goals but left when the traffic was a bit quieter,’ smiles Caixinha. ‘At the moment, they’re in the moment.
‘They’ve had 10 (home) wins in a row and they are a team who have been three years in the making — same manager, same squad and the same style of play. We need to understand what we’re going to face.
‘I’ve watched a lot more than that one game. I’ve also watched the game against Rangers on September 29. Rangers were far better than Aberdeen and ended up losing.
‘We take some interesting points from that game. We want to recall that moment because we were really good. We’ve done a lot more recent analysis and they’re definitely a very strong side.’
While Aberdeen have a knack of finding a way to win, Rangers travel to Pittodrie on the back of two draws, the latest a goalless affair at Kilmarnock in midweek.
Afterwards, the 46-year-old coach was at pains to stress the need for his players to develop a ruthless streak, something he knows today’s opponents possess in some abundance.
‘I see that mentality in Aberdeen,’ he admits. ‘I look at them and see one entire squad fighting for the same goal all the time, constantly.
‘That’s one of the reasons I’m taking this game as such a challenge in order to see the way we are going to react. Even better,
The history and demands on this club are so massive. We need to respond
let’s see if we are going to be proactive. That’s a fantastic challenge.’
As Caixinha states, Rangers turned in one of their better Premiership performances at Pittodrie in the season’s first meeting of the teams only to concede a late decisive goal from a contested James Maddison free-kick.
Today the manager will get a chance to see first-hand how they cope with what is certain to be a quite hostile environment in the north east.
A spell coaching with Panathinaikos in Greece taught him plenty about operating in unwelcoming arenas, while he also managed Santos Lagunas in Mexico, a country whose stadiums specialise in their own unique forms of hospitality.
‘I like games with that intensity,’ he says.
‘The most hostile situations I’ve been involved in would include Olympiacos and Panathinaikos. I got a little bit scared! The bus was being hit with objects when we arrived at the stadium.
‘Benfica-Sporting could be the same. Mexico was similar. There can be a lot of violence.
‘The supporters use a lot of fingers in their gestures! I’d count them and say: “We are already losing 20-0”. Football is like this when you have clashes between cities or clubs with rivalries and I love to work under those circumstances.
‘I’m sure the players will enjoy it, too.’