If one passage of play could sum up the frenetic violence it probably came in 1988 when a scene of increasing malevolence at Pittodrie ended with Neil Simpson’s challenge shattering Ian Durrant’s knee. Vendettas were well-nourished under the system of four league games per season against each club and talent could be marginalised amid the mayhem. Midfielders such as John Collins and Gordon Strachan were sent to the wings at Hibernian and Aberdeen. Probably for their own safety.
Eventually both decided to escape from Scotland completely. Strachan could have gone to Cologne until some brinkmanship from Alex Ferguson secured a move to Manchester United instead and a larger fee for Aberdeen in 1984. Monaco, meanwhile, provided a sanctuary for Collins. If Scottish football did not leave permanent physical scars on them, it certainly left a mark in their minds. Strachan, for instance, has no doubt he would enjoy the current era more than the one in which he actually played.
“I watch the games from the 1970s and 80s on Celtic TV or Rangers TV and basically it’s Rollerball,” he said. “It’s different now. The pitches are better and that helps. We used to go to Paisley, and these kind of places, and the ball would stick, your boot would come off and you would be looking for it in the mud. People were allowed to belt you from behind. Everybody got their first tackle for free, saying, ‘That’s the first one’, to the referee who would reply, ‘Aye, that’s fine’, but then you had the whole back-four getting their first one in on you until you had a hole in your ankle. Nowadays, it is far more civilised. Everything is conducive to better football.”
Strachan and Collins have returned to manage in the Premierleague determined not to perpetuate the methods which drove them away. It would be wrong therefore to term today’s meeting between Hibs and Celtic at Easter Road as a clash. Rather it will be a summit of two teams practising a similar style. Collins is the Celtic fan in charge of Hibs, while Strachan is the Hibs fan in charge of Celtic. Although Strachan put Mark McGhee forward for the Hibs job, both would surely approve of each other’s stewardship of the clubs.
The brand of attractive, attacking football played under Tony Mowbray became a marketing tool for Hibs, something they proudly displayed on banners outside Easter Road. Last week’s 6-1 win at Motherwell suggested Collins can bring a more effective edge to it, however. Previously, it was on such mundane assignments that Mowbray’s team let him and themselves down. Collins announced at his appointment that he wanted to eradicate this problem and even nodded to Strachan’s Celtic as an example of how it was possible to marry a progressive style of play with consistency in results.
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Celtic arrive in Edinburgh today clutching the various bouquets that have come their way since Tuesday’s 1-0 win over Manchester United secured their passage to the last 16 of the Champions League. Strachan, by his own admission, got his tactics wrong in the first half, a period in which his players struggled to play their way out of their own half, but Celtic won the match with a moment of technical quality from Shunsuke Nakamura which United could not summon from any of their stars.
The midfielder is perhaps Strachan’s keynote signing. Acquired from Reggina after impressing for Japan at the Confederations Cup in the summer of 2005, for significantly less than the reported £2.7m according to his manager, he is probably Strachan’s ideal footballer in terms of his skill and dedication to his profession. The shivering retinue of Japanese journalists who make their living by charting his every move in Glasgow had to wait for an hour on Tuesday night for reaction to his goal as he was doing an extensive warm-down in the gym. After training each day, he can be spotted honing his set-pieces to perfection, sometimes using Makoto Kaneko, his interpreter, as a goalkeeper.
Edwin van der Sar, one of the world’s leading goalkeepers, has now twice been left clutching air and cannot say he was not warned. Impressive internet showreels display Nakamura scoring several goals of similar standard since starting his career with Yokohama F Marinos nine years ago. He scores directly from a corner in one clip and in another exhibits a level of balletic improvisation associated with the wire-walking special effects in martial arts films, to find the net with his left foot.
Tommy Burns, Celtic’s head coach, tells young players to watch Nakamura’s “soft feet” and learn, a reference to the midfielder’s adhesive, flawless first-touch. Then there is the nerve which allows him to execute his skills when the stakes are at their highest. United discovered this on Tuesday but they could have asked Hearts, who were leading 1-0 with four minutes left of a key league match earlier this month until Nakamura delivered two impeccable corner s into their box from which Celtic scored. In between them, he hit a post with another of those free-kicks. “People think it’s easy but it’s not,” said Strachan. “Most football is played off instinct but set-pieces are like playing golf, when these guys have six-foot putts to win major championships and they have a couple of minutes to think about it while all the pressure builds up. Can you handle that period when you are on your own, when you’ve got to deliver and the whole of the football world is watching you? When it comes to the nitty-gritty, there’s more to it than just ability. That’s why David Beckham has become so successful because he can do it at the right times.”
Burns speaks of Nakamura “having a smile like Kenny Dalglish’s, his joy when he does something well on a football pitch is infectious and we are all very fond of him”. He is coached in diagrams and simplistic English because he has found more trouble mastering the language than a football, yet his is such an intuitive talent that little direction is required. “He understands the game,” said