Steve Nicol Interview: The Sunday Times (UK)

Didn't see this included in the daily clips in the past week, but it's certainly worth including. I couldn't find a working link so the full text is provided below:

Revolution Man: Interview - Steve Nicol
By Jonathan Northcroft, 7 September 2003
The Sunday Times (UK)
(c) 2003 Times Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved
(C) Times Newspapers Ltd, 2003

"When Alan Hansen, Kenny Dalglish and Graeme Souness were in their pomp at Liverpool, the three Scots called themselves The Master Race. Then, so they would joke, Steve Nicol spoiled it all by coming along.

The younger Nicol was the victim of affectionate teasing by the trio, and the laughs they had at his expense were legion. Souness recalled one particular example in his 1985 autobiography, No Half Measures. "The story got back about his (Steve's) exploits in a chemist's while on a shopping trip with his wife Eleanor," Souness wrote. "One of these players who can have a little problem with weight, 'Chipsy' jumped on the machine only to see the needle swing past his required weight to more than a stone in excess. He demanded to know if the scales were wrong, failing to understand the shop assistant's negative reply, until his long-suffering wife pointed out he was still carrying the shopping."

Four English League championship gongs and one European Cup winner's medal - as well as 27 Scotland caps and an English Football Writers' Player of the Year award - meant others took Nicol seriously. Now he is trying to build on the respect he has been gaining as a manager in the US where he was named 2002 Major League Soccer coach of the year for his achievements with New England Revolution. It is proving to be a fight, however.

It would appear they have the 'dreaded vote of confidence' in US football too, and Nicol was given one before last Sunday when his team went into a game against second-placed Chicago Fire on the back of five defeats and four draws, the worst run in their (albeit short) history. They turned the tide with a 5-1 win but Sunil Gulati, director of Kraft Soccer, which owns the New England franchise, says he will reserve judgment until the end of the season on whether to take up a one year option to extend Nicol's contract.

"We certainly are pleased with what Steve's done overall ...although everybody's performance is judged by the results," Gulati said prior to the Chicago match. It was very different last year when Nicol's superiors were rushing to give him a new deal. The Scot had hauled New England from the bottom of the league all the way to overtime in the championship final before losing to LA Galaxy, having been given the job midway through the season. "We're a better side now than last season," Nicol said, "but we've been suffering because we're young. After five or six weeks of playing well and losing, I kept telling the players to keep doing what they were doing and they believed in that. We didn't go crazy when we were losing and we won't go crazy just because we've won."

Two defeats in New England's slump were in overtime and another, a 4-2 loss, came about after New England had led 2-0 with eight minutes of normal time remaining, and 2-1 as the game entered stoppage time. The peaks and troughs of football - and life - are something in which Nicol is well versed. In 1989, he received his Footballer of the Year accolade, and Liverpool won the FA Cup, but it was also the year of Hillsborough, and the drama of losing the League title to Arsenal after Michael Thomas scored in the 94th minute of the final game of the season. New England still have an outside chance of following their dismal run with a late charge, just like last season, into the MLS knockout stages. Today they travel to San Jose, the leading team in the League, sitting three spots off a play-off place.

Few Anfield colleagues imagined the laidback Nicol would end up in management.

Nor, for a time, did he. "At Liverpool you did what you were told and as a younger player I was only interested in what the coaches wanted us to do. I never wondered about why. I didn't start thinking about that aspect until my last couple of years at the club. It just creeps up on you. Everybody's great on the team bus after a defeat at saying what the side should have done, but all of a sudden I found myself analysing things seriously."

His first taste of tracksuited life came quicker than planned. Having left Anfield in 1995, after 14 years there, Nicol joined Notts County and suddenly found himself in temporary charge of the club after Howard Kendall was sacked. County had no money, a hotchpotch squad and a dubious set of characters in the boardroom.

"One of the strangest things that happened to me was going from Liverpool to County. At Anfield I learnt everything about how a football club should be run. At County I discovered exactly how not to do things. They were eye-opening experiences of opposite sorts."

From Notts County, Nicol went to Sheffield Wednesday and then Doncaster Rovers, just as the Yorkshire club dropped out of the Football League. As a player he could not go much lower. It was time for a new start. "I was looking for coaching opportunities and there was nothing that appealed in Britain. When I was asked if I fancied the US, I thought it would be a good experience for me and my family."

The proposal had come via his agent, John Kerr, an American who had played for Millwall and Portsmouth, and the job available was that of player-coach of the Boston Bulldogs, who were playing in what amounts to America's Third Division.

Promotion quickly followed, and at the start of 2002, New England brought Nicol on to their coaching staff to assist Fernando Clavijo, whom he ultimately replaced.

His principles are straightforward. "The biggest influence on me is obviously Liverpool, and under Bob Paisley and Joe Fagan, you grew up being told the simple things are the most effective. We'd all love to see 40-yard overhead kicks landing in the top corner but passing is what wins matches. A football team that can control possession of the ball will always have a good chance of winning any game.

"I ask my players to pass it, get the ball wide, get it into the box, and keep working. People always mention the work ethic as if it's something amazing but it's pretty basic. If a team doesn't work it has no chance."

Just as Paisley sifted through the Ayr United youth ranks to discover the teenaged Nicol, so he has demonstrated an ability to spot gems. The hat-trick hero of the 5-1 triumph was Chris Brown, a 26-year-old journeyman striker signed two weeks earlier from Kansas City Wizards, who had spent much of the season on the bench for his previous club and arrived with a record of 10 goals in 104 MLS games.

Taylor Twellman, the young US international who is Nicol's top scorer, was injured as was Joe-Max Moore, the only New England player familiar to British fans.

"The MLS is probably on the same level as the middle of England's Division One.

The top players could play in the Premiership but your average ones would struggle. But football here is getting stronger and stronger," Nicol said. "The majority of reporters I speak to from the UK don't really know what's going on here. After all, the US are ranked ninth in the world. England are eighth. There still seems to be an impression (that) America's a place for old stars to finish up but if you look at the foreign players we have now, they're not flash guys.

Even Hristo Stoichkov (of DC United) has come over and had to work very hard."

The MLS's problem, he says, is the number of top Americans - Tim Howard joining Manchester United being the latest - who move abroad. Other difficulties include the travelling between games (the way to San Jose is 3,200 miles from New England's home town of Foxboro) and the lack of purpose-built football stadiums.

"We get 10,000-12,000 fans at home matches but we play at the Gillette Stadium, which holds 68,000, so it's difficult to generate an atmosphere. Dallas Burn, Chicago Fire and Columbus Crew all have their own 25,000-30,000 grounds and they are really taking off."

Nicol has no plans to take off for the foreseeable future. If New England extend his contract, he would be happy to stay. Eleanor, and children Michael, 18, and Katy, 16, are settled at the family home in Hopkinton, Massachusetts. "I'm getting my green card," he said. "That's the major thing. That means that if we want to stay here, we can. Katy's into her horses and Michael's going to college to play American football. He's a big bastard - 6ft 3in and 250lbs - and he plays tight end."

He has "not even thought about" returning to British football. "If I got a job there I'd have as much chance of getting the kids to come with me as the Pope has of turning Protestant."

Still only 41, there is plenty of time. Dalglish is out of management and Hansen won't be budged from the television studio - "he always had more sense than the rest of us" - but who knows? Maybe, in a Premiership dugout, Nicol will be able to get his own back on Souness one day."

- end -

 

"Magpie: can you spell 'copyright infringement?'"

Let me see....

c-o-p-y-r-i-g-h-t.... i-n-f-r-i-n-g-e-m-e-n-t

;-)

Hey, I did my best to try and find this story on-line, only able to reproduce it courtesy of an archived version through Factiva/DJI. If you or someone else can pull up an active link I'd be happy to pull the full text.

The Magpie

 

"Tell that to the judge. She'll be amused, but hardly sympathetic..."



... do that again young man and I'll force you to listen to John Meterperrel commentate a 24-hour curling tournament!



The Magpie

 

Strangely enough I can imagine hearing Monty sing this... it's not a good thought mind you ;-)

The Magpie