Hearts set sights high with Vialli No1 target as director of football

GRAHAM BEAN

GIANLUCA Vialli, the former Chelsea manager, is the man Hearts want as their director of football.

The Tynecastle club installed Graham Rix as first-team coach this week and Rix is understood to have recommended Vialli to the Romanovs. The pair worked together at Stamford Bridge, enjoying great success, particularly in cup competitions.

However, the Lithuanian family which controls Hearts faces a formidable task to persuade the former Juventus striker to come to Scotland to help realise their ambition of taking the Edinburgh club into the Champions League.

Vladimir Romanov, Hearts' majority shareholder, has restructured the management set-up at the club to bring it into line with the continental model. While Rix will devote his time to coaching and picking the team, the director of football, or sporting director, will be responsible for identifying and signing new players. It is a division of duties which works well abroad but has yet to prosper in this country.

Hearts hope to have a director of football in place within a fortnight but will need to convince the candidate he will be free to go about his duties without the intervention of the Romanovs. Recent events at Tynecastle suggest otherwise and this could prove to be the biggest stumbling block to bringing in the big name the supporters are demanding.

As one leading agent put it last night: "Who would want to go and work for Mr Romanov knowing what goes on there?"

The demise last month of George Burley as manager will be enough to put many off. The former Scotland defender built a new team inside four weeks and took them to the top of the SPL, winning eight and drawing two of his ten games in charge. Giving Hearts their best chance of winning the title in 20 years was not enough to keep Burley at the club and there will be plenty of managers who view the challenge of working with the Romanovs as an unnecessary risk in what is already a precarious line of employment.

The fact that Burley's agent, Athole Still, also represents Vialli suggests the Hearts negotiators will need to be at their silvery-tongued best if they are to persuade Still's client that the regime that disposed of a manager, chief executive and chairman within ten days is not as ruthless as it appears.

Rix was not the big name the supporters were hoping for and the pressure is now on Hearts to deliver a sporting director with a genuine European pedigree.

Vialli's credentials are impeccable. As a player he won three European trophies, including the 1996 Champions League, and featured in two World Cups, helping Italy finish third at the 1990 tournament. He went into management at Chelsea, initially as player/manager in 1998, and won the League Cup and the European Cup-Winners' Cup in his first season in charge. He steered the club to FA Cup success two years later but was sacked by Ken Bates at the start of the 2000-01 season.

He had a short spell in charge of Watford but was dismissed in June 2002 and has since worked as a pundit for Sky Sports in Italy and England. He is keen to return to the game but may have his sights set higher than Hearts.

No official approach has yet been made to Vialli, but his spokesperson confirmed he was interested in a return to the game. "Gianluca is looking for the right job and if it came along then he would consider it," she said. "But we will wait for a formal approach and then think about it."

Vialli was delighted that Hearts offered Rix a route back into football after months in the wilderness but a lot of persuading will need to be done by the Edinburgh club if they are to reunite the former Chelsea pair.

While Vialli's reputation as a manager remains more or less intact, Rix's stock has plummeted since his days as the Italian's sidekick at Chelsea. His imprisonment in 1999 for unlawful sex with a 15-year-old girl has reduced considerably his standing in the game.

Vialli stood by Rix while he served his sentence and visited him three times in Wandsworth jail. It was also the Italian who was waiting for Rix when he was released at dawn in September 1999 after 184 days inside.

The bond between the pair was strong. During their Chelsea heyday, Vialli famously said: "For me, Graham is vital. He has become my right arm.... I would not want to lose him."

Whether he feels the same way now remains to be seen, but it is a relationship Hearts certainly hope to rekindle.

Taken from the Scotsman