Some football careers begin so brightly that the remainder of them appears to be played in the shade. That was true of Michael Owen, whose wonderful individual goal against Argentina at the 1998 World Cup aged 18 eclipsed most of what followed.
Tony Watt faces a similar fate. It’s nearly nine years since he scored the winner for Celtic in a Champions League group game against Barcelona and he turns 28 at the end of this year. He’ll never top that moment when he sped clear of Barcelona’s big names to bury his finish past Victor Valdes, but is in a good place on the eve of a new season with Motherwell, where he’s happy and settled after what at times has been a turbulent trajectory with several wrong turns to this point.
He played for three clubs in Belgium — Lierse, Standard Liege and Leuven — CSKA Sofia in Bulgaria plus loans in Britain with Hearts, Blackburn Rovers and Cardiff City. Yet the closest he came to contentment and stability before now was probably in a season at St Johnstone.
The family feel at Fir Park, where the club and fans have admirably raised funds to provide free season tickets for unemployed and low income families this season as well as rewarding those who signed up for season tickets last term with free ones for the new campaign, suits him and he survived a summer squad cull by manager Graham Alexander.
Ask Watt if he’s still ambitious and the question is answered so swiftly it has barely finished being asked. “Absolutely,” he replies, sitting beside a pitch that looks perfect ahead of Hibs’ visit today.
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“I want to win trophies. I want to play as many games as possible. I want to play until I am 35-36 at least. I don’t want to put a limit on it. In the last four or five years, I’ve probably missed a season or season-and-a-half of football, so why should I stop? I still feel I can have eight or nine years and if that’s 40 games (per season), then I could get another 350-400 appearances in my career.”
Previously, he expected to retire in his early thirties, but “I have probably enjoyed my career more in the last couple of years. I have probably found a new lease of life. I came to a club who understood me. It probably could have happened a couple of years earlier at St Johnstone, but I went away abroad (to Bulgaria) and realised I am better staying here (Scotland). Motherwell’s perfect for me. It’s not about the money at this stage. It’s just about as getting as many games as possible and seeing where I can go and where I can take myself or Motherwell. I’d happily stay here for years to come. They look after me.”
Overcoming perceptions that he’s lazy on the pitch or high maintenance off it provides fuel for Watt’s fire. “I don’t think I got the credit for the way I pressed or worked. I like to leave it all out there and anywhere I’ve been they have noticed that. You just get a perception of how you play and people just guess that’s how you are. That’s the way it’s always been, but I think I am a hard worker and if I press from the front we’ve got a chance. There’s a responsibility on me this year to turn up and do what I can, but that comes with experience and if you want to be a big player you have to deal with pressure.”
Adding to a solitary Scotland cap awarded by Gordon Strachan as a late substitute in a friendly win away to the Czech Republic in March 2016 is also “achievable” he agrees, but only if he’s doing the business on a regular basis for Motherwell. “I can see there are places in the squad up for grabs, but I am not thinking about that one bit,” he adds. “I just want to play well here, my first marker has to be play every single game here, but that’s down to performance and work rate. If I don’t perform and work hard, then I’m not going to play every game here because the manager has good standards and regardless of the turnover his standards are more than enough for us to kick on.”
The obvious target is a top six place but with Aberdeen and Hibs ambitious, St Johnstone looking to kick on from winning both domestic cups last season and Hearts promoted, slots in it beside Rangers and Celtic will be scarce and many reckon beyond Motherwell, who climbed to an eighth-place finish last season after the appointment of Alexander in January saw them pull comfortably clear of relegation.
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Watt is prepared to listen to some opinions on where they are likely to be placed this season but not others. “If we see somebody with a decent managerial record that has gone into punditry and says that, you know the likes of your Gordon Strachans, then maybe I would worry, but it’s always people who don’t seem to have a good managerial career or choose not to because they know what’s going to come with it.”
Personally, his target is double figures for both goals and assists. “I think it’s the hardest I have been working and the most rounded I have been. I can maybe get in the box and in special areas a bit more, but I feel like I am doing a great job in helping the team. I can maybe do a bit more in terms of the numbers, last season I got seven goals and nine assists and this one I am hoping to get double figures in both and see where it takes me.”
Away fans will be present as well as home ones for today’s televised match, which may bring as good an atmosphere at a stadium as Scotland has seen since the start of the pandemic. “Aye, I can’t wait to get booed,” Watt says with a smile. “That will be good. I think I get booed everywhere, I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve that. Every stadium I go to I get a bit. But no, it will be good. Hopefully the place will be rocking.”