Glory Hunt

Simon Hunt does not do many interviews and does not get his picture taken if he can help it. We are fortunate to catch up with Burley’s assistant manager and chief scout at all. Last week he was overseas, taking in three games across Europe, another three the week before. He talks extensively and in fascinating detail about the process; flying out to Poland or the Czech Republic or Argentina, renting a car, finding the stadium, watching the game.

Then the real work starts. If Hunt likes a player he sees, he has to get around the language barrier and find the people with the right stuff, without giving the game away. “You have to be in the right places to get the information from the right people,” he says. “It’s like being a spy.”

He has nailed it. This is footballing espionage, the most exciting job this side of the white line. Like any good field agent, Hunt is an expert in interrogation, and there are questions he will not answer, but today he is willing to part with some classified information. For starters, the purpose of his latest mission. “Everything is geared towards January,” he adds. “There are other players we are looking at. We feel there are areas that we need to strengthen, and hopefully we can. But who knows where we will be in January?”

At 21, Hunt had been a first-teamer at Wrexham but he had the wanderlust and, in 1984, joined Elfsborg in Sweden on what he thought would be a one-season stint. It was the beginning of a 19-year stay in the country that saw him play in Europe with Brage, move in to player-management at the age of 30, meet his wife and start a family. Life was not always rosy, though, and he fell off the managerial merry-go-round at Kalmar in 1999. He was considering an offer from elsewhere in Europe when he took an unexpected telephone call from Suffolk.

“Ipswich Town were looking for somebody to start a network in Europe, looking for players,” recalls Hunt. “We had just gone up to the Premiership and we knew we could never compete with the big boys in the same markets. We needed to have a knowledge of foreign players without taking a gamble.”

The relationship between Burley and Hunt is at the foundation of Hearts’ explosive start to the season and its foundations were formed in those early months. Hunt was moving across first Scandinavia, then further across Europe, reporting every day to Colin Suggett, the chief scout at Ipswich. “I brought together reports on players that they realised were very good. We couldn’t get them, but that convinced them to trust me.”

When Burley joined Derby County in 2002, he made Hunt his chief scout. At the start of last season Hunt’s expanding network of contacts delivered three big players for Derby that took them from a relegation fight to the playoffs. Inigo Idiakez, who Hunt had first spotted at Real Sociedad — “He was out of our range then” — and was at the end of his contract with Vallecano, is perhaps the best striker of a dead ball in the Championship.

Hunt was tipped off that Grzegorz Rasiak, a Polish striker recently sold to Tottenham for £2m, was having trouble with his registration in Italy. “Poland were playing England that week, I saw him give John Terry a few problems, we got him over. The whole thing was done very quickly.” He knew Morten Bisgaard, a Danish international midfielder with Serie A experience, from his time in Scandinavia, and knew his deal with Copenhagen was expiring. Derby had three top players and had not spent a penny on transfer fees.

Hunt describes the process by which a whisper on the grapevine becomes another name on his list of potential targets. He breaks every step of the process into a series of questions. Some refer to the qualities of the individual: “What are we looking for, a left-back? What kind of left-back? What kind of mentality does the lad have? Does he have a girlfriend? Does he have kids?”

Some prepare him for a trip: “What is the climate like? How important is a cup game in Slovenia compared to Scotland?” Then there are the pit-falls: “Will George like him? Is he within our budget?”

Hunt knew the answers pretty well by the time he discussed the team Burley would build at Tynecastle. He had a list of players who were below the radar of his competitors. He knew the markets that were not yet exploited by the big guns. It was no coincidence that three of Hearts’ signings, Rudi Skacel, Roman Bednar and Michal Pospisil, were Czech.

“We know that market,” he says, nodding. “I have said for a long while to George that we know the Czech mentality is good. We know that they are sound physically. We know coming to Scotland is an adventure for them. They adapt to the conditions here, the climate, the training, the food. That wasn’t a gamble.”

Hearts have provided Hunt with a new challenge in one respect; the enthusiasm with which Vladimir Romanov engages in the club’s transfers. He had watched both Fyssas and Jankauskas, for example, but these are players he believes Hearts could not have signed without the collaborative input of their Russian backer. The last two additions to the squad, Samuel Camazzola and Ibrahim Tall, were unknown to Hunt prior to their arrival, although he had compiled a dossier on both within 24 hours, the result of a series of calls to France and South America.

This team is bankrolled by Romanov and built by Burley, but don’t underestimate the role of this international man of mystery in the operation. “Over six years I have taken it as far as I can. There are only so many people you can trust,” claims Hunt, “only so many people who have the goods.”

Here, at least, Hearts have a big edge over the big two.

Taken from timesonline.co.uk