Second chance Steve

A tale of redemption in the most unlikely of places

Taking a national team job can often be a poisoned chalice. That is, if you take over as manager of the country that you call your own. Obviously you’d take it, if you’re a patriotic fellow - the chance to lead your fellow countrymen to glory can lead to instant hero status. But then it can just as easily (and far more often) lead to instant villain status.

That was what happened with Steve McClaren after his failure as head coach of England. I still know people that can’t stand him to this day and that hold him personally responsible for the fact that England weren’t able to go to Euro 2008. Maybe it was his fault, well some of it, if he was guilty of anything though it was merely being a man out of his depth and who didn’t have the charisma or profile to handle the intense media spot light that comes with sitting on the Wembley bench. Quite often, I think we forget that he wasn’t exactly helped by a bunch of senior-pro’s at the peak of their pompous, ego driven, sense of self-entitlement phase.

What many argued in fact was that McClaren was a good coach, who forged a strong reputation as Alex Ferguson’s number two at Manchester United. His record at Middlesboro was solid if not spectacular, although one only has to look at them now to wonder if he didn’t deserve a little more credit when he was there. He did achieve some top half finishes, won a trophy and got the club to an unlikely final of the then UEFA Cup after all (although it could also be argued that the rot the club currently finds itself in had already begun to set in during his reign).

With his reputation in tatters, and having failed with the country’s national job, he’d become something of a managerial pariah. Sure he wasn’t a Mourinho, but when you’re getting passed over for jobs by Paul Ince you know your standing has hit rock bottom. You might say then that going abroad was his only option but it was still a decision that took courage. After seeking the advice of the late Sir Bobby Robson, the Yorkshireman decided that the Dutch town of Enschede and its team FC Twente was the unlikely place to rebuild his tarnished name. What’s followed must have been above even his wildest dreams.

Building on a strong base established by the previous manager Fred Rutten (Twente started McClaren’s first season already in the Champions League qualifiers) it was argued the club had already reached their peak. Despite this (and selling a number of key players, such as Dutch international Orlando Engelaar) the former England coach took the club to an even better finish, 2nd place as well as the Dutch Cup final. While that was impressive, this season things have gone from strength to strength. Despite being hunted down all the way by a rejuvenated Martin Jol led Ajax (finishing the season with a 14 game winning run and positive goal difference of +86) Twente led from the front, finishing the campaign with 27 wins from their 34 league games and just two defeats. A remarkable achievement.

Yet some are still being quite ‘sniffy’ about his success, it’s clear the stench of failure with England will take a long time to rub off for some people. ‘It’s an easy league’ it’s been said, well maybe, maybe if you’re Ajax or PSV it is but this is FC Twente. They’d never won the league before. The way McClaren has described it himself perhaps sums it up best; “It’s like Blackburn winning the title in 1995 – only without Jack Walker’s money”.

Success has come from shrewd coaching and some great transfer business (namely the signing of the prolific Costa Rican front man Bryan Ruiz from Belgian football and the loan signing of diminutive Chelsea winger Miroslav Stoch). Success has also come from McClaren going it alone – resisting the temptation of importing a shed load of English journeymen and coaches (see Souness, Graeme at Benfica) and doing it with a Dutch backroom staff. That takes guts from a man who must’ve been pretty badly scarred from his time with the FA.

"There's not a day goes by I don't think about England” he said in the aftermath of the title celebrations “I had a big, massive failure but I've had the strength of character to come and coach in a different country without English assistants and the rewards have been unbelievable...winning the Carling Cup with Middlesbrough was special but this is pretty much right up at the top of anything I've ever done...to win a championship in a foreign country with foreign coaches, I think it's made me stronger."

Despite this success, it’s still hard to shed a bad reputation and I think that if you said to a number of English football fans, that Steve McClaren was taking over at their club you’d still get a lot of negative reactions. He’s been linked with a move home to West Ham, but there’s a large part of you that feels that fans of the East London club would turn their noses up at that possibility. Perhaps that says more about unrealistic expectations at many English clubs but if he continues to be linked with clubs like the 2009 German champions Wolfsburg, former European Cup winners Hamburg or enjoys more campaigns in the Champions League like he is set to with Twente then he might just think that staying abroad, rather than battles for 16th place in the Premiership might be a more preferable option. He’d probably get more credit there to.