Smiles and handshakes with Vlad

Michael Grant spends an evening in the company of Vladimir Romanov, joining in the guessing game over the Hearts owner’s every enigmatic utterance

HAVING spent a couple of hours in the company of the Hearts owner in Lithuania the other night, it seems reasonable to suggest that Vladimir Romanov treats his guests better than his managers.

Food, drink, smiles and handshakes were plentiful as Romanov held court in a Kaunas restaurant, in his element as his extended entourage – including his wife, sister, and assorted associates and lackeys – looked on in amiable bemusement at the Scottish football media he had welcomed to his home city.

Watching him grin and chuckle his way through the evening, posing for endless pictures with his arms around one fellow or another and a glass permanently raised, it was hard to reconcile the small man in a pastel coloured pullover with the figure whose features periodically darken as he decides it is time to scythe down another Hearts coach.

Unless we all learn Lithuanian, or he owns up to having a greater command of English than he currently lets on, Romanov will continue to be a contradictory and enigmatic character. At the end of the reception I saw him drive away in his black executive saloon, so those glasses he raised couldn’t have contained enough booze to put him over the drink drive limit. But, as ever with Romanov, sober or clear-headed were not the descriptions that came to mind when we tried to decipher what on earth he was on about during an informal, on-the-record briefing between drinks.

Whenever Valdas Ivanauskas’s number is up, for example, does Romanov envisage going the whole hog and sitting in the Hearts dug-out himself? “That is my dream. Yes, of course.” Disappointingly, that apparent bombshell was delivered with a smirk and a twinkle in the eye.

“No, that is my joke. Seriously, my dream would be to have a coach who shares the same spirit as the rest of the club and cares about the club and thinks about it and devotes all his time to it. That’s my ideal coach. Surprise, surprise – I already have this coach at Hearts. He is in charge of everything and he is helping Valdas and he is helping the players. Actually it is not just one person. I will give you one name, and another name when we become champions! Number one is Steven Pressley, the captain of the team. The other person’s name I will tell you when we become champions.”

Romanov may have been referring to coaching consultant Eduard Malofeev or director of sport Anatoli Korobochka, whose names are already in the public domain, or to someone else entirely, even himself.

“All I am saying is that in about half a year I can easily go to visit Celtic and Rangers and upgrade their level of football. But let me finish the season first and get our championship, and then I can go to help Celtic and Rangers.”

That had been another of his little jokes, his interpreter told us, but Romanov’s tendency to goad the Old Firm and the Scottish Football Association creates the delicious prospect of him being hauled to Hampden to explain himself when the governing body finally has enough of his scattergun approach to attributing blame on referees and officials in general. The SFA recently closed a loophole and is now able to hold club owners such as Romanov accountable for their public comments.

“I try – even if I am breaking some federation rules – to speak openly about what is going on at the club. Although sometimes I perhaps damage myself by being so outspoken, that’s the way I do things. I am still learning the rules in Scottish football, about what I can say and what I can’t. Maybe you needed such a person who, even without knowing all the traditions, could come in with a new look and some new opinions, even if I’m not a Scot and don’t know the culture as well as you do. I think it’s your job to correct me sometimes and help me.”

Help him? An appeal for support to the very people he recently mocked as “Glasgow media puppets”? So that’s why the old fox had made sure we were fed and watered …

Taken from the Sunday Herald