Top job is right call for Clarke
THE necessary chink of light is there. That’s all it is for the moment. Steve Clarke sees himself as a club manager. He is a club manager. The training ground is his natural environment. Consider the current Kilmarnock squad — and the likes of Stephen O’Donnell, Alan Power and Eamonn Brophy, in particular — as conclusive proof of how his time-served methods there can drastically improve individual careers in pursuit of ambitious collective goals.
Day-to day coaching is where the rump of his future lies, no doubt. That unfinished business he speaks of in England is an itch he needs to scratch.
However, the very fact he is willing to consider what the SFA might have to say about the national team job is something to be going on with. And when they get him round the table — as they must now do — they have to make a damn good job of selling it to him as a link-up, even if it is only a brief one, with the potential to benefit him almost as much as them.
Fulham are expected to make a pitch for Clarke following relegation from the Premiership. Backed by billionaire Shahid Khan, who spent £100million on players alone this season, they will offer a salary in excess of what the SFA, an economic disaster zone hanging together by sock tape and bootlaces, can muster.
Where the SFA and their chief executive Ian Maxwell have to be creative is in showing the 55-year-old that a short stay with Scotland, even if it is for less than a year, can be a springboard to even bigger opportunities than that on offer at Craven Cottage, as well as the kind of experience capable of almost transcending material concerns.
What lies ahead with Scotland, despite everything that has gone on in recent months, a real once-in-alifetime opportunity. It is easy to forget that amid the negativity of late and the truly disgraceful saga of Alex McLeish’s unfathomable appointment and inglorious demise.
No matter how qualifying turns out, we remain two play-off games in March — home to Finland, as it stands, and then at a venue to be decided by a coin toss against Norway or Serbia — away from our first major finals for two decades, a competition we will be part-hosting and which has the potential to move an entire country like no football event ever before.
Any coach worth his salt must feel that is an achievable target with some of the players we have at our disposal.
To be the man to take us there, to give that gift to a new generation brought up on the stories of parents and grandparents who believed World Cups and European Championships were their birthright, would be something special, all right. You will become a bona-fide figure of national historical importance, for a start.
To then have a minimum of two Euro 2020 games in Glasgow with another guaranteed against England either at Wembley or Hampden in one golden summer of infinite possibility — and even more drink — surely stands up well against trying to get a cobbled-together Fulham team out of the brutal slog of the English Championship as a diversion worth considering.
All that, and you can easily live back down in England to spend lots of time with your grandson. With the exception of Celtic’s representatives, most of the players you should be selecting for the national squad perform down there anyway.
Of course, all this has to be worth your while financially, too.
There’s £8.2m plus sponsorship opportunities available to the SFA for getting to Euro 2020 alone, with £1.3m for a win and £600,000 for a draw in competition.
The SFA may only have £400,000, or whatever the total is, to offer Clarke up front, but there is plenty of room to incentivise the package handsomely based on achievement.
It still might not amount to what Fulham are willing to pay, but consider the exposure granted by being in charge of the opposition in England’s group in a major finals and the platform that provides to impress far more prestigious clubs than the Cottagers. Face the Three Lions, make a game of it and almost anything could open up.
Because that’s how the lunatic asylum of football works. It rides along on passing fads and little logic. How else, after all, could a guy such as Clarke end up frozen out and working for Kilmarnock when, just three years earlier, he was guiding West Brom to eighth in the EPL.
One big result, some good PR, a groundswell of opinion that you really do have the key to the game’s great secrets and, before you know it, your agent’s phone is ringing off the hook.
That’s where the element of personal risk comes in. Does Clarke believe he could not just make it to the Euro 2020 finals, but make Scotland vaguely competitive there?
The early signs are encouraging. He says he thinks the players are capable. And he is right, particularly if he can reconnect with experienced figures such as Robert Snodgrass, James McArthur, Tom Cairney and Matt Ritchie and bring some of them back into the fold.
Clarke’s playing and coaching life has been spent with top-level operators at good clubs. Quietlyspoken or not, he is not to be messed around with. Run-ins with the SFA and Rangers, for example, show he’ll fight his corner. Players respect him.
His ability to organise teams and have them punching miles above their weight is on record.
Yes, it is likely he would only be a short-term fix, but the SFA gave up on long-term planning the moment McLeish was shoe-horned into the manager’s role.
In any case, if there ever is a time to justify tunnel vision about the immediate future, it is now.
Hosting a party we don’t even have an invitation to would be the nadir for Scottish football. The final humiliation. We have to get to Euro 2020.
Clarke is a safer bet than Slaven Bilic. The stakes are too high to promote Scot Gemmill.
Look, whatever the Kilmarnock manager gets this summer, he deserves it after 18 amazing months at Rugby Park.
He can do better than the likes of Fulham, though. And Scotland looks an ideal place for him to prove it.