IT WAS the morning of March 27, 2013, and the two old friends looked across the breakfast table at each other and knew they couldn’t go on like this. The previous evening, Scotland had lost 2-0 to Serbia on a quagmire in freezing, drab Novi Sad. It followed swiftly on from the 2-1 loss to Wales at Hampden. Gordon Strachan, Scotland’s manager, and Mark McGhee, his assistant and confidant, were the only ones left after the squad and staff dispersed.
Raised on the ferocious standards set at Alex Ferguson’s Aberdeen, they knew something had to change after just two competitive matches in charge. “We were sitting together having breakfast and feeling a bit shellshocked to be honest,” recalls McGhee. “It was a real eye-opener for us and we said, ‘if nothing else, we’re going to do it our way’.”
What has unfolded since has restored Scotland’s respectability on the international stage, although the tricky part of actually making it back to a major tournament has yet to be achieved. That is something that Strachan and McGhee will be acutely aware of this week. Friday’s fixture away to Georgia is the sort that Scotland have struggled with in the past. In October 2007, after defeating France home and away to give themselves a serious shot at reaching Euro 2008, they slumped to a 2-0 defeat in Tbilisi against a Georgia team containing three teenagers. “It’s coming to the crunch and we are under no illusions that a lot of what we have achieved so far will dissipate if we don’t beat Georgia,” admits McGhee.
McGhee has known Strachan since he signed for Aberdeen in March 1979 and was invited round to his ‘home’ shortly afterwards. “I’d never set foot in Aberdeen. I actually signed in Glasgow because they were down for the League Cup final and I met them at their hotel. The first time I went up the road after that, I was staying in a hotel right next to what they [Strachan and his wife Lesley] said was their house and they said, ‘come round’. They had this big, unbelievable sandstone villa full of antiques. I was like, ‘My God, what kind of signing-on fee did he get?’ But it was a wind-up and they were looking after it for friends of theirs. From that point on, we were mates.”
Nowadays, they can be found playing Scrabble together at Mar Hall, Scotland’s hotel. That is, when the team are not out training — as they often are. McGhee has referred to Strachan as a “hobbit”, amongst other things, when reflecting on how well he takes defeat in these encounters. When it comes to the decisions, he will play “devil’s advocate”, setting out the alternatives to Strachan, to make sure he’s sure. When Strachan says he is, McGhee backs him to the hilt. “The guy that’s the assistant is usually a career assistant. I like to think because I’ve been a manager my whole career, I’ve never been an assistant, that I bring a slightly different understanding to the subtleties of what he needs. But one of the things, and this is really crucial, is having been a manager, I have a sense of when I’ve got to back him.”
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Since those setbacks against Wales and Serbia, Strachan’s Scotland have played with a consistent system and style and shown spirit and resilience on the road. In the current campaign, they have secured draws in Poland and the Republic of Ireland and were unlucky not to take something from Germany in Dortmund. Coupled with home wins over Georgia, the Republic and Gibraltar, who they face away in the final fixture, it has provided their best chance of reaching a finals automatically since that near miss of 2008. “We were determined that we should emerge with a style that’s recognisable,” reflects McGhee. “That you know when you come to see us what to expect. The standard of the performance will vary, but how we’re trying to play won’t vary and I think we pretty much have got that. That, for me, is probably the biggest achievement.”
It includes an attacking threat that has stopped Scotland being bullied on their travels. “I don’t think it’s to do with defending better, it’s to do with punching back. We’ve become a team now, with the likes of Kech [Ikechi Anya], who, as he showed in Germany, can run away and score a goal, so we are a threat away from home when we possibly weren’t previously. ”
It’s easy to forget now that McGhee was a serious contender for the Scotland manager’s post himself back in January 2008. He had worked impressively at Motherwell and handled the on-field death of Phil O’Donnell compassionately. He lost out to George Burley after making the shortlist and his insistence that he would see Motherwell through until the summer after the O’Donnell tragedy perhaps counted against him.
He also rejected a chance to take over at Hearts, sensing, correctly, that there would be too much interference from Vladimir Romanov. When he did leave Fir Park, in June 2009, it was for the sentimental pull of Pittodrie, but he got that one wrong and failed there. “I left Motherwell at the right time to leave Motherwell, but did I go to the right place? Probably not, in the sense that I did no due diligence. It turned out it was a different club than I imagined it would be. I didn’t enjoy my time at Aberdeen, I don’t mind saying that.”
Yet he retains ambitions to be a manager again. “I feel totally unfulfilled. I feel as if I am getting to a point now where I am starting to think if I have wasted my career. I imagined that I’d always manage in the Premier League and I spent half a season in it [with Leicester in 1995]. It’s not what I set out to do.”
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What he set out to do with Strachan is take Scotland back to a major finals. After Georgia, Germany and then Poland visit Hampden. McGhee believes the latter match will be the pivotal one for Scotland. As a former Hamburg SV striker, he still gets a German perspective on a group they were expected to stroll but which instead threatens to become a dogfight.
“I spoke to someone in Germany this morning and he’s saying, ‘we think the manager has made a mistake, he’s went with the same group, they are tired, they are not playing well for their clubs, the morale is not great’. He thinks they are vulnerable against Poland [who they face in Frankfurt on Friday night]. They are doubting the Germans at the moment and unless they bounce back we could end up in a scrap with them. Regardless of that, if you are sitting here today and saying we’ve got to beat either Germany or Poland to qualify, who would you choose? I’d still pick Poland. All being well, I thought it would come down to the Poland game.”