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SUNDAY HERALD
Patron Saint
by Bryan Cooney
05-01-03
Southampton's manager reflects on football, the importance of family and the sorry state of society today
GORDON STRACHAN kicks off with an apology. It is not one of his better days. He is feeling tired and sickly, due to one of those pernicious viruses that surge through football clubs as if conducted by the Electricity Board.
Yet the Southampton manager, who would later be celebrating his side's 4-0 trouncing of Tottenham Hotspur in yesterday's FA Cup third round, is not given to waving white handkerchiefs. The malaise on the day of our meeting is soon forgotten. The paramedics can stand down.
Soon, he is supplying colourful evidence that he and Bill Shankly would have had a riveting and doubtless percussive discussion regarding the true importance of our national game had they ever had the chance to parley. There is also a substantial clip around the side of the head for those managers who have become fanatical in their pursuit of excellence.
"I love being with football people, just love it, but football comes a long way behind the family," he confesses. "No, it's not even close. I always make time for my family. I don't go to games three hours away from here in the hope of seeing a player just for the sake of it. I'll only go to specific games if my scouts say I'll need to see such and such a player.
"Look, I've been in the game for 30 years now, but it just feels like yesterday that I was a kid running about Dundee. That's why, whatever happens, you've got to go back to your family. Fitba might stop in one year, two years, five years, but if you've not looked after your family then they're not going to be there for you. It's imperative to keep the unit. You see managers who have led separate lives from their wives, it's just fitba, fitba, fitba with them. Oh, gie me peace! There's more to life than fitba, fitba, fitba.
"I love the game because I can detach myself from it. Me and my wife Lesley are going to the cinema this afternoon. We go together at least once a week and sometimes twice. She comes to the games with me and all the rest of the stuff. I've no' got a problem with that. If I've got a weekend off, I try and take her away somewhere.
"Mind you, we went to Tenerife recently, then I thought: 'Oh, Christ, I've got a testimonial game for Kevin McAllister in Falkirk'. So I had to break it to her gently after two days that I had to go back to Falkirk in the pouring rain. We had to buy a coat for her in Edinburgh. She was freezing.
"You know, we've been together since 1975. She doesn't need to keep a firm rein on me, never needs to give me a bollocking. No chance! I like the training ground, but as soon as it finishes, I'm home. We've got three kids and now we're grandparents, which adds another dimension. Here's me at 45, sleeping with a grannie. It's grab-a-grannie night every night in my house!"
A couple of years ago, the BBC invited Strachan to guest on John Inverdale's sports talk show, On Side. The bold Gordon surprised everyone by turning up with his redoubtable wife three hours before the recording session, then charming them throughout with his patience, wit and good humour.
After the show, fellow guest Alistair McGowan asked him whether he belonged to the after-dinner speaking circuit and was astounded to discover he didn't. McGowan told him he was a natural and that it would bring him bundles of money. A Beeb exec utive recalls: "McGowan was wholly impressed, like the rest of us. Gordon kind of blew us all away that night."
Strachan, it seems, has retained his capacity to blow people away while he stimulates the Saints and takes them to Premiership altitudes at which nosebleeds may occur - currently sixth in the table and eyeing a place in Europe. And yet you cannot imagine this survivor from the intimidating streets of Edinburgh's Muirhouse spilling any of his own plasma. As a player, after all, he was accustomed to vertiginous heights with Aberdeen, Manchester United and Leeds. He flew somewhat fearlessly.
There were some who thought he might blow Scotland away in a managerial sense, long before those at Hampden Park began to think German. Strachan says this was never an option. He promotes his love of his national side by supporting them from the grandstand or from the comfort of his lounge, where he can throw missiles at the television if he thinks his heroes are letting him down.
"Scotland manager? Oh, dear, dear, dear," he smirks. "Besides, I don't think I could handle the phone-ins in the Daily Record. Just think, that unnecessary pressure of drunk people phoning in and telling you things are crap. I think I'd be tapping the phones to find out who those drunks were."
There are many disparate managerial characters in the Premiership, but perhaps none so disparate as this man.You spend an hour with Strachan in his football home for the last year and leave convinced you've been introduced to a cast of thousands. Strachan has many guises. Loud, brash, excitable one minute, polite, phlegmatic, almost deferential the next. Then he's away again, taking you seamlessly from Marx Brother zaniness to the seriousness of a Labour politician discussing Red Rose dinner accountability.
You can take your pick which you prefer. Trust me, all elements of this cornucopia are fascinating. There is no equivocation over which one he prefers, however. He tells you that he has built his life with the bricks and mortar of humour. "Laughter comes easy to me," he says. "I can find something to laugh about all the time. I'm not scared of growing old, but I'm scared of losing my humour, because once you do I think it's time to depart.
"I think humorous people are quite intelligent because they have to be to come from all different angles. They must also have a great imagination. But once the humour goes, the imagination goes and the life goes. That's when I'll start to panic, I think, because I know fine well I'll be on the receiving end from my grandchildren and not be able to answer them back."
You ask Strachan what his targets are before those powers begin to diminish and his progeny begin taking liberties. With his face comprehensively inscrutable, he tells you that he has zero ambition. "There are bits around management that I don't enjoy because some of them are very political and I'm not a political person. Indeed, I'm useless at it. I mean, I can go to board meetings and start a fight within 10 minutes. I've only been at two such meetings in my life. There are political coaches, political managers and political chairmen. It's not for me. Ambitious people scare me, yeah, because those with that kind of target usually only think about themselves.
"My ambition is to be the best I can on that day. I've got to make sure everyone knows their job and prepare them, mentally and physically, for tomorrow. That to me is doing my job right, then I go in the next day and start again. I've got no target for six months, and I don't know where I want to be in four years. I just float along and see where I go.
"Ambitious people have a target, whether they want to be Scotland manager, Celtic manager, the best coach there is. If they don't get there they become bloomin' pests. I've met them all. On their way up, they have this blind ambition to be taking over the rest of the world. To get to where they want to go, they've got to trample on others. That worries me. I've seen it too often. They end up without mates, without family, it affects their health because of the stress they're putting themselves under. There's enough stress in this game without putting yourself under any more. I've never stood on people's heads as a manager or as a player. I never did anyone down to get a game with Aberdeen. I just played. The same at Man United and Leeds. I've got no ambition to be Scotland manager, no ambition to be the Leeds manager, or indeed any of the teams I played for. I'm just going along and seeing where we end up. As I say, ambitious people scare me."
You wonder whether Strachan, all red hair and low-slung bum, is capable of scaring anyone himself? There were reports, for instance, that he charged around Hampshire public houses seeking out St Mary's miscreants like some hellfire preacher. Does this man of protean moods have more than a touch of the evangelist about him?
He smiles and invites you to inspect his caring side. "It was one pub actually. Someone had phoned complaining about the behaviour of one or two of my players. Now it's easy to make a telephone call, but you need to look in the eye of the people who were there to find out what really went on, so that's what I did. My wife was in the car. It was a day off and I could have been doing better things than sitting for about an hour questioning people right, left and centre as to what went on."
So what actually went on? Strachan for once pleads the fifth amendment. It's the secrets of the dressing room and all that guff. "Oh, there was a result, and I got to the bottom of it, but I wouldn't ... it was only the once. No, the boys get Saturday night off. I just make the rules that nobody is allowed to be in a bar or drinking 24 hours before a training session. You get fed up fining footballers, so you've just got to try and show them examples of what can go wrong. You scare them with stories, with videos.
"Maybe even with a video of Jimmy Johnstone. You tell them: 'Watch that, son.' And this player was 10 times the player you are. Come to think of it, whatever player I've got here, Jimmy Johnstone was 10 times the player they are. I think it penetrates, it does go in. There's no drinking culture left in football, really. Oh, there are still a few dinosaurs lurching around, but they'll be gone within the next two or three years. These boys are not a problem now.
"Other substances? I couldn't tell you about them. Listen, look at the back-up staff sitting over there. Sports scientist, nutritionist, masseurs, they know what's going on. They just keep their eyes and ears open. But these fellas [the players] look after themselves. In the old days we [the managers] used to be sitting outside hotel bedrooms and all that.
"You can leave the players on their own nowadays, tell them to go to the cinema on a Friday night and things like that. They're fine, not a problem. It's a different world nowadays." Substantially different, it must be said, to the one occupied by Strachan and Johnstone back in the early 1970s when they were both players at Dundee. One day, being injured and seeking a palliative, they embarked on a pub crawl. Instead of a cure, they found their manager seething and their heads threatening to explode.
"I don't really drink now. I might have one beer, maximum, on a Saturday night. If you've got problems, there's nothing worse than waking up with problems plus a hangover. I was just a baby in those days. I'd always wanted to be Jimmy as a footballer. I couldn't manage that, so I tried to be the same as him as a drinker. I couldn't do that either, I was just wasting my time. I think Jimmy introduced me to a glass of wine that day, and I still get a memorial sore head every time I think about it."
This is the light side of Strachan, so light it might be filo pastry. The dark side is just around the corner, and you would need a whole box of Swan Vestas and more than a few candles to illuminate it. He despairs at the society of which he is part. He sees it close-up every match day. If only he could look away.
"Britain's become nastier," he says. "Twenty years ago, all the nutcases were in one corner signing and shouting, the rest of us just got on and enjoyed the game. But watch any game now and examine the evidence. Whenever the ball goes out for a throw-in, there are people telling you you are a w*****. It's everywhere, lack of respect. The phone-ins, the letters, the e-mails, they're available to every halfwit. And the bigger halfwits print it. You've got to try and keep away from it. The long walks to the dugout can be a nightmare. At Coventry [Strachan played and managed there for almost five years] it was a scary walk. Archie Knox once saved me from a nutcase who tried to jump over the barrier and get me.
"But it's not just Coventry. Every club has their yobs and mentally unstable people. But society is now scary. Decent manners and principles have gone. In the cities, it's a mess. Sometimes you just give up on society. You're actually scared now when you go out lest somebody looks at you the wrong way.
"As for football, even the guys with the shirts and ties have turned into yobs. They sit there and drink for three hours before the game, then they take their seats. They're actually the worst. I think we'll need to move somewhere just to enjoy ourselves, find an island somewhere and plonk ourselves down.
"The yob culture is affecting our children. There's yob television, yob newspapers, yob radio stations, and that scares me. I'd be old fashioned about it in a bid to stamp it out. I'd bring back the belt in schools, have national service and the rest of it. More discipline is needed in the schools and in the home. It used to be years ago, people would ask you to sign their autographs. They'd thank you and use the term 'Mister'. Now it's: 'Hey, Strach, sign that!' You hear the language and, oh, dear. The remedy, of course, is that you don't sign until they say 'please' and 'thank you'. I tell them that. On the other hand, if they are polite, I say: 'Well, done, you've been brought up well,' especially if their mums and dads are there. But really you're just fighting a losing battle."
Strachan provides assurances that the platform from which he is speaking is formidably built and could not be brought down easily. He takes you back to the early 1960s in Muirhouse to provide the evidence of a tough upbringing. Everyone was part of it and therefore no one identified the hardships.
"We all lived like this, great, it was not a problem. I thought everyone got soup then custard for their tea on a Wednesday. Thursday night we were just hingin' in for Friday. For Friday night was fish and chips when my Dad brought the money back. 'There you are, mother.' Woosh, I was away for the suppers. It worked brilliantly for two days, then we hung on grimly for the next five. I didn't think there was another world out there."
But there is another world out there and Strachan, like an intrepid explorer, has found it. He has settled on a lucrative, if precarious profession. He has a good wife and a firm family unit. His sons, Gavin, 23, and Craig, 20, both footballers, have turned out to be "better people than me. They're far more caring and nicer lads than I ever was. I'd like to be them instead of me." Then there is daughter Jemma. "She's 17, going on 37. See all these lines I have on my face? They're not laughter lines, they've got nothing to do with football. They're all to do with Jemma. Seriously, though, they're spot-on kids, they make me very proud."
And if the whole football world collapsed, you can visualise Strachan as one of the survivors. "I'm nowhere near as fit now as I was as a footballer. I walk on to a football pitch and go: 'How did I ever run up and down this?' It seems like Arizona to me. But if it was all over tomorrow, I'd get by. I'd like to coach kids between 15 and 20, maybe in Australia and America. I'd like to see the world at the same time. I'd watch Countdown. Hey, there's nothing worse than being in the room on your own and getting the conundrum. There are no witnesses. There again, I've got my grandson I can visit, I could watch my sons playing football, I can go for walks. I want to do the West Highland Way in the next four or five years because I think we're knackered after that. I don't think I'd do it in Rab C Nesbitt fashion, with two dozen lager cans strapped to my back. I'm away past that age. Whatever, I'd survive."
You take your leave from St Mary's. The bells may not be ringing, but the incomparable Strachan is singing in my right ear. It's Scotland's 1982 World Cup anthem. "We have a dream..." he warbles. Memo to music lovers: it is not the kind of sound that will alert the Pop Idol ear of Pete Waterman. Strachan stops singing as abruptly as he began and tells you the song was written by fellow Scot BA Robertson, who sometimes comes to Southampton games. "BA got in touch with me and I asked him: "Was it you who wrote that crappy Scotland song?' Do you know, when we were recording it, I couldnae stop laughing. I got chucked out of the recording studio."
The Wee Man is off home to his beloved Lesley. The cinema beckons. The five o'clock show, of course. Less yobs, you see. He's beginning to feel a whole lot better. Who the hell needs paramedics?
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