Would-be bosses Russian to Gorgie on wrong track

Comparisons between the Romanovs and Roman Abramovich are wide of the mark says Gabriele Marcotti

In our heart of hearts, we are simple, naive souls. Meet one wealthy Russian with a penchant for football and, naturally, it follows that every wealthy Russian in football is the same. And so it happens that various agents and middle men were able to ensure that Vladimir Romanov was presented as some kind of Roman Abramovich clone to the dozen or so men linked to the Hearts’ job.

It’s the most basic fallacious syllogism. Abramovich is Russian. Romanov is, well, Eastern European. Abramovich is fabulously wealthy and generous. Therefore, Romanov is fabulously wealthy and generous.

As stupid and illogical as the above reasoning may sound, it probably does help explain just why so many big names have been associated with the Hearts job. People tend to believe what they want to believe.

“Yes, I admit it, I thought it was an Abramovich situation,” says one high profile out-of-work manager who spoke to Hearts about the job.

“I was under the impression that they were people with huge amounts of money who were ready to pour it into the club just for their own amusement. It’s not like that. Far from it. They seem like good people, but it’s nothing like Abramovich.”

Indeed, if the likes of Sir Bobby Robson, Claudio Ranieri, Ottmar Hitzfeld and Gianluca Vialli have all been linked to Tynecastle, the basic reason is the obvious combination of out-of-work football men and the implied promise of limitless funds.

And that implied promise goes up in smoke as soon as the candidates meet or even just do a bit of research on the Romanovs. All of a sudden Hearts are only slightly more appealing than if they had a run-of-the-mill British owner.

The risk here is that the club is going down the route taken by Tottenham Hotspur two years ago, when they leaked to all and sundry that they were on the verge of signing first Rivaldo, then Fernando Morientes and then Fernando Torres. When none of these superstars materialised, Spurs rightly became, once again, laughing stocks.

Whoever is proposing the above names and/or leaking them to the press is not really doing Hearts any favours. It’s not merely the fact that the above candidates are beyond Hearts’ reach in terms of wages. It’s also the fact that none of them have any experience as “director of football”, however Hearts wish to define it.

In fact, most clubs prefer not to define it because it mean as much or as little as they like. In some cases, witness Dick Advocaat’s last stint at Rangers, it’s a place to put people when you want to sack them but don’t want to pay their compensation package in one go.

Alex McLeish became the manager and Advocaat was kicked some place upstairs, not that it mattered, since he was already involved in coaching the Dutch national team. But that kind of “director of football” is just a stop-gap solution and it appears that Hearts are taking a different route.

The understanding is that the club will have a “continental” set-up, with a director responsible for buying and selling players and dealing with contract extensions and a coach dealing with the technical side, from taking training to deciding tactics and team selection. If this is the case, then most of the “big names” mentioned above have no experience in that capacity.

Hitzfeld, Ranieri and Vialli all focused on the playing squad. Their input on signings was limited to making recommendations. In terms of negotiating fees with other clubs and dealing with agents over contract extensions they have little more experience than somebody addicted to Championship Manager.

Sir Bobby is a slightly different case, as he was obviously in charge of transfer dealings at Newcastle. Yet his signing record at St James Park – which includes £8.5m on Hugo Viana, £7m on Carl Cort, £3.5m on Christian Bassedas, £2m on Diego Gavilan... the list goes on and on – is far from reassuring.

Besides, he has always insisted that he is a “tracksuit manager”, that he wants to be involved in the every day workings of the club.

So why even think that any of these people – all of whom are coaches, not wheeler-dealers – would want to consider a “director of football” job at Tynecastle? It’s a good question and one which perhaps only the Romanovs can answer.

If the kind of “director of football” they’re looking for is a boardroom whiz, a guy who knows the game across the continent, with a network of scouts and contacts to match, a man who knows his sums and can negotiate the best possible deals for the club, a person who is not going to be pushed around by agents or, worse, collude with them to cheat the club, then they are looking in the wrong place.

If that’s the case, the person they want is an executive type, someone like Frank Arnesen or even Peter Storrie, a football professional who knows the game. But, of course, people like that don’t excite fans any more than Graham Rix does, because, frankly, nobody knows who they are and what they do.

And that’s why, increasingly, the impression is that they are simply looking for a “name”, somebody to lend their face and reputation to the club while the Romanovs go about their business, bringing in legions of new guys from Eastern Europe. After all, this seems to be the other definition of “director of football”, a face guy, someone to talk to the press and glad-hand the fans, while, in fact, making no real decisions.

If that’s the case, it does not really matter who they bring in, as long as it is somebody with plenty of credit in reserve in terms of credibility, respectability and likeability. Goodness knows, in light of recent events, he’s going to need it if he is to succeed in making Hearts and the Romanovs look good.

13 November 2005

Taken from the Sunday Herald