The Scottish Mail on Sunday

Gio was hard-working and honest, a real team player. Ibrox stars must love working with him

- JONATAN JOHANSSON INTERVIEW By Graeme Croser

IMMERSED in what amounts to a four-month pre-season in snowbound Turku, Jonatan Johansson is pining for match-day action again. His next fix won’t arrive until next month when his Turun Palloseura side enters the regionalis­ed group stages of Finland’s annual cup competitio­n — with all games necessaril­y played behind closed doors. A place in the sun it ain’t.

This former striker and coach of Rangers would gladly swap the inertia for the gruelling fixture schedule that will define his former employers’ prospects over the coming weeks.

‘The Finnish season ends in November and the league doesn’t start until mid-April,’ says Johansson (below). ‘We are now preparing for the indoor cup games but I’d rather play week-to-week — that’s the fun stuff.’

Although his job has required a degree of portabilit­y, his wife Jean

is the family’s bona-fide

We were young but you could see that he was very knowledgab­le

jet-setter, and is regularly in exotic locations with her television work promoting the dream of a new life in warmer climes.

Home, however, remains Inverclyde, and their 11-year-old son Jonatan Jr is an occasional attendee at soccer schools hosted at Rangers’ training centre.

Johansson’s own Scottish adventure began in 1997 when he signed for Walter Smith after a brief spell in Estonia with Flora Tallinn.

It took the arrival of Dick Advocaat and his contingent of Dutch players 12 months later to really get the forward’s career going in Glasgow and that’s why he’s intrigued to see Giovanni van Bronckhors­t settle into the hot seat at Ibrox over the past couple of months.

He suspects Van Bronckhors­t will be a success, partly on the basis of a solid start but also through intuition and what he observed more than two decades ago. Separated by a mere six months in age, together they grew as men and footballer­s in Glasgow and Johansson could see the early signs of a managerial future in the quiet yet assertive way in which Van Bronckhors­t conducted himself.

‘Gio was a great team-mate, a real team player and a really positive guy in the dressingro­om, so it was fantastic to see him getting the job,’ he says. ‘We were very young back then, so I think we both probably went with the flow. But even then you could see he was very knowledgea­ble and tactically adept.

‘He was also very honest and hard-working, so I can see that he will have a good relationsh­ip with the players. I think he will be one they will enjoy working for. I’m sure all managers take inspiratio­n from who they have been coached by and Gio played for some of the best managers in the world, be that at Arsenal, Barcelona or the Dutch national team.

‘Tactically, Advocaat was a very good manager. He taught us a lot. But you learn to be your own man, to develop your own style of work.’

Rangers fans got to enjoy seeing the JJ and Gio double act for two years before Johansson moved to Charlton for £3.5million in 2000. A year later, Van Bronckhors­t followed him to the Premier League and commanded an £8.5m fee from Arsenal.

Although hindsight allows him to view Van Bronckhors­t as an early managerial candidate, Johansson insists the instincts of his own younger self were, like all great strikers, almost exclusivel­y selfish.

The urge to bring out the best in others arrived later.

‘I didn’t really think about coaching back then,’ he concedes. ‘For me, it grew when I came out of the goldfish bubble of the Premier League and moved to Sweden.

‘I joined Malmo, which is the biggest club in Scandinavi­a, but in those days it was a much smaller surroundin­gs than I’d been used to.

‘We had a lot of very good young Swedish players coming through and I really enjoyed helping them in training, sharing my experience.

‘It was then I started to feel a real interest in player developmen­t, which is a passion to this day.

‘I was in my 30s at that stage and then I started doing my courses. But I never put pressure on myself. I wanted to go through the roles.

‘I have been an assistant, I have been a reserve-team coach, a developmen­t coach and the head

coach. I am sure there will be opportunit­ies in the future but I am equally aware that results are the most important thing. My focus is on getting TPS up and see where it brings me.’

Johansson’s time at Charlton is remembered with warmth by both parties, to the point where he was quite heavily linked with a return to the club following the sacking of Nigel Adkins in October.

‘I don’t know if there was so much in that,’ he says. ‘Sometimes people put two and two together but I was there for six years and am very fond of the club. I want to see them back at the level they used to be at.

‘Like a lot of people, you want to manage the clubs you have been with as a player. I played for TPS twice, so I have a real connection here. I have that feeling about Malmo and I’d love to manage in Sweden at some point. I have a great relationsh­ip with Charlton, so one day….’

Which brings us back to Rangers. If Johansson isn’t quite so explicit about wishing to manage in Glasgow, it’s probably because he has already sailed close to that particular sun — and had his wings duly burned.

He was working as assistant to Markku Kanerva with the Finnish national side when he was approached regarding a return to Ibrox as part of Pedro Caixinha’s backroom team in April 2017.

He accepted and was later retained as assistant to Graeme Murty through the remainder of a troubled campaign that forced chairman Dave King’s hand into pushing the boat out to land Steven Gerrard.

‘I learned so much during that time,’ reflects Johansson. ‘It was such a great learning curve, although you don’t see that at the time because of the pressure.

‘It’s a massive club and a massive job. With Pedro leaving, the responsibi­lity became bigger and I just had to grow with it.

‘I started as first-team coach and then was assistant to Graeme, so I was not under the same pressure and microscope as the manager.

‘But you want to support the man in charge and you become close working as a team. There were times when the manager was getting a lot of stick and I felt part of that.

‘I looked in the mirror and asked how I could help him but I was never under the same scrutiny as my focus was on the training pitch.

‘It was turbulent. Celtic were obviously way ahead at the time, it was difficult to compete with them and get the results that everybody at Rangers wanted.

‘I worked with some fantastic players and picked up so much. I’m very proud and pleased that I did it.’

After leaving Rangers, Johansson managed Morton for a season before embarking on his latest career phase in 2020. If he felt at the centre of a storm at Ibrox, the onset of the pandemic brought on feelings of isolation back in his homeland.

‘Last year was hard because there were very few flights and, as a head coach, I couldn’t risk being a positive case myself,’ he adds. ‘My wife Jean travels a lot anyway, so she was here a lot and my son was here for six months with me in school.

‘We’ve made it work but it’s tough, especially in the dark months of winter.’

As he plots and schemes to make the club’s centenary season a success, all efforts are concentrat­ed on achieving promotion back to the Veikkausli­iga, the top tier of Finnish football.

‘TPS is one of the classic clubs of Finland but we have been a bit of a yo-yo club over the past ten years,’ he explained. ‘We’ve tried to rebuild and change strategy to focus on local and younger players. It’s a work in progress but I’m confident we can get up this season.

‘It’s our 100-year anniversar­y, so it’s always been the aim to be back in the top league for next season.

‘I believe we can do it. Last year was my first in a Finnish winter for 25 years and I learned a lot.’

Johansson has faith in his old club and colleague, too. On Tuesday, Rangers dropped their first Premiershi­p points of the Van Bronckhors­t era in a 1-1 draw at Aberdeen but Johansson reckons they retain enough strength to hold off a resurgent challenge from the other side of Glasgow.

‘Celtic look much stronger now, so it will be a tough season,’ he admits. ‘But, of course, as a fan I believe Rangers are going to win it.’

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 ?? ?? BLUE-EYED BOYS: Johansson and Van Bronckhors­t celebrate a win over Celtic in 1999 and take on David Weir, then at Hearts, in the same season. Two decades on, Van Bronckhors­t (right) is Ibrox boss while Johansson is in charge at TPS Turku
BLUE-EYED BOYS: Johansson and Van Bronckhors­t celebrate a win over Celtic in 1999 and take on David Weir, then at Hearts, in the same season. Two decades on, Van Bronckhors­t (right) is Ibrox boss while Johansson is in charge at TPS Turku
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