For a player whose purpose is to create, defensiveness comes naturally to Neil McCann. In the two years he has spent at Southampton, McCann has started only 22 games and in that sparseness, that absence of purpose, he found questions and doubt. He wasn’t in the first team, so he asked why, and others did the same. After Harry Redknapp accused some of his players of “poncing about” rather than moving on, one newspaper pointed to McCann as a culprit. He grimaces even now as he recollects the tale, looking back through a squint of anger. “I had f***ing splinters in my knuckles from banging on the manager’s door that much to ask for a chance,” he says, shaking his head indignantly.
A series of injuries have hampered his time at St Mary’s, but even fitness couldn’t guarantee a change in circumstance. McCann, in effect, became an outsider, estranged from what he knew, and so he also became isolated, a target for disdain. “That was hurtful to me,” he says of the article. “But it also made me helluva angry, because I haven’t had a manager who could ever say to me that I haven’t worked. I’m so appreciative and thankful for what I’ve done in the game that for somebody to accuse you of going through the motions, even although you’re picking up money, and be happy to sit in the stand is a lot of bull****.”
There is a quiet forcefulness to his words, almost a dry contempt, but that does not lessen the emphasis. Although Redknapp’s comment may not have been addressed at McCann, the player felt betrayed by insinuations from outwith the club that he was shirking his responsibilities. Jimmy Case, the former Southampton striker, suggested that the winger might be too nice, too hesitant to argue his case with the manager. With the perspective that time allows, McCann is able to look at it now as a lack of understanding, that by not knowing his true self, his detractors came up with false assumptions.
“It isn’t my style to go in the huff and kick dirt about in training,” he says with tired exasperation. “There can’t be anyone who can say I haven’t tried my best, even at every training session, and I’m quite proud of that. It was just down to the manager thinking that there were other people ahead of me in the queue. I had a conversation with the manager (last month), just a general chat that I wanted to have, and I got things off my chest. I was quite surprised to then be given a chance, but that’s all a player wants, to be in the starting XI.”
McCann was recalled for a Championship game against Leeds last month and although Southampton lost 2-1, his performance impressed enough for him to stay in the side. He has now started four consecutive matches and through his contributions, he has begun to answer back. Yet you suspect he still views this run with a sense of impermanence. Having been out of the team for so long, he will not allow himself to rely on this change of fortune lasting.
Throughout his career, though, McCann has always stepped up to the challenge of proving himself. He broke into the Dundee team at 20 and it took a transfer to Hearts to dislodge him. At Tynecastle, he was an integral member of the side that won the Scottish Cup in 1998, and when he moved to Rangers in the December of that year he played every remaining match for the Ibrox club and scored two goals in the 3-0 victory over Celtic that secured the league title. His four- and-a-half years at Ibrox also brought a further two championships, four Scottish Cup victories and three League Cup wins. At Southampton, though, there was a gap between what he knew he could offer and what he was allowed to provide.
“I don’t want to get myself into a lot of s*** . . . but he (Redknapp) didn’t seem to have a lot of faith in me,” McCann says carefully. “He’s always said that he likes me as a person and that he doesn’t have any bother with me professionally, that he’s seen me training as hard as anybody. The Southampton fans have never seen the best of me, I know that for a fact. I don’t know if maybe down the road they haven’t got the same respect for the Scottish game as we have about the English one. Maybe some people looked upon what I did with my 10 medals and said, ‘Ach, that’s in Scotland’. I don’t know. That’s people’s opinions, but I didn’t suddenly become a bad player. I haven’t won what I’ve won without having something, so I want to show people down here that I can still play, that I can still do it.”
There was a time when all that McCann could see ahead was the need to move, to break away, but even that hope was withdrawn. A possible transfer to Benfica last August foundered on Southampton valuing him at £750,000, a fee beyond the reach of the Portuguese club. Ronald Koeman, the Benfica manager, had remembered McCann’s performances for Rangers and felt that he could bring some irrepressibility and intent to his side.
McCann’s talent has never been in doubt and it has always had the ability to draw gasps of admiration. In one game for Dundee against Clydebank, he even had the temerity to nutmeg Davie Cooper, the former Rangers winger who was one of McCann’s boyhood idols, and the old master came up to him afterwards to congratulate his impudence. “Noone’s ever done that to me before,” Cooper said.
Yet it is the product of his skills that has proved variable. Remember the way he veered past Sol Campbell and crossed the ball for Don Hutchison to score with a header in the Euro 2000 playoff at Wembley, but also the miss from close range in Dortmund as Rangers tried to progress in the Uefa Cup in 1999. Every career has its contradictory moments, but McCann values the consistency of his application.
“Sometimes I’ve had a stinker, but it’s not for the lack of trying, it’s maybe just been trying something that hasn’t come off,” he adds. “I’m confident in what I can do. My job has always been chipping in with a few goals, aye, but first and foremost supplying crosses for people to put away. I’ve been doing that for the last few games. Sometimes you wonder if you do have a bad game, or just an indifferent one, will you find yourself out the team? But I’ve had to cope with that for the last two years and it’s something I’ll just need to get on with.”
Walter Smith, the Scotland manager, has always retained his faith in McCann and he continued to call up the winger even when he was out of the Southampton first team. International games became his refuge. Now, though, they simply provide a change of focus and an opportunity to reflect. McCann spent time during the preparations for yesterday’s friendly against the USA talking about this season’s Championship with Graham Alexander, the Preston defender. He is not reluctant to embrace Southampton’s promotion campaign, as long as he remains an active part of it.
Yet he relishes his links to Scottish football and actively ensures that they remain in place. McCann watches the Premierleague on satellite television and keeps in touch with former teammates, including Paul Telfer at Celtic. And as he talks about the game he left behind, his passion for it bubbles back to the surface. “I love watching it,” he says with awe. “I love the style of football and the atmosphere. Sometimes, although you get more people (at games in England), it isn’t as noisy. But that’s just what I’ve been brought up with and it ’s hard to get it out of your blood.”
Come the end of this season, McCann will have a further 12 months left on his contract and at 31, there are years of his career still left in front of him. Yet where? His experiences at Southampton so far, and his emotional attachment to the Premierleague, suggest that he could yet return to the environment that moulded him. He certainly looks upon the past two years as a form of cold storage, a pause that he can move on from. “The way I’m looking at it is that it’s like buying a new motor and sticking it in the garage with a cover on it,” he says. “I’ve not put much mileage on in the last two years, so I still tell folk I’m 29.”
He says this with a smile. McCann knows his worth as a footballer and, wherever it may be, he will prove it.
