Interview: Marius Zaliukas - From rank outsider to captain

Published on Friday 14 January 2011 19:31

THERE IS a distinct sense of surprise and it's not just the fact that he feels others have more claim to the award. Marius Zaliukas is stunned to have won the Clydesdale Bank Premier League Player of the Month vote for December. With disbelief etched all over his face he looks at the trophy - "my first and probably my last" - as though looking for explanation.

• High flier: Lithuanian defender Marius Zaliukas in derby action for Hearts. His performances in December earned him the player of the month award. Photograph: Ian Georgeson

"Of course I am surprised. I don't think December was a good month for me, maybe for the team but not for me, and I never understood that foreign players could win this trophy. I thought it was just Scottish players who got it. I never expect it, but I am pleased."

That comment is a thinly-veiled dig. Whether based on truth or on personal perceptions, it reveals the ingrained sense of mistrust and xenophobia he feels has, at times, blighted his stay in Scotland.

It is five years since he arrived at Tynecastle as another loan signing from Kaunas, but it is only now that he finally feels accepted. It has been a long settling-in period but the language barrier is now cleared and a greater on-field maturity has led to a better understanding with officials.

As the proud bearer of the Hearts captain's armband and now with an award to polish, he is revelling in the most settled and inclusive atmosphere he has ever experienced at the club.

"Now is definitely different to what it was previously. Maybe previously there were more and more groups, now everyone is just like one big happy family."

In the past the stories were rife of rifts in the camp as cliques served to divide and conquer the club from within. With a Lithuanian-based owner, the club's offices and dressing room were soon filled with many of his compatriots. It fostered resentment but Zaliukas says the "incomers" were not to blame for the factions developing.

"No, we Lithuanians didn't do that. I don't want to offend anyone who was here before but not foreign players, local players, they were looking at us like this. But we weren't like that."

Already having a tough time settling into a new environment, learning a new language and trying to appease then manager Valdas Ivanauskas by filling the holding midfield slot which he hated, there were times he felt like an outsider.

"Sometimes it felt like this, but we needed to work as a team if we were going to get results."

After many painful periods, that lesson seems to have been learned and it is to Hearts' advantage. In December they recorded three wins and a draw to extend an unbeaten run. There were also two clean sheets.

Zaliukas says he would have made goalkeeper Marian Kello his player of the month for his consistently solid performances but concedes that the form Hearts have been enjoying is down to more than just one or two people performing.Current manager Jim Jefferies, his assistant Billy Brown and first-team coach Gary Locke have been a unifying force according to the man who says "it feels really good" to captain a club he now feels a real part of. "We have a very good team spirit. Everybody understands each other. There is a very good relationship with the coaching staff and we are hoping we can keep doing it for the rest of the season and have a good result at the end of the season.

"We are having fun in training and maybe that is the key. Now, honestly, our team is settled, we have had a full year with the manager with us, so it is very good for the team."

In that year they have overcome long-term injuries to key players and an overhaul of the squad to not only give a number of their young players a chance to impress, but also create a more positive stir in the Scottish game than has been the case in recent years. The prospect of breaking up the Old Firm duopoly at the top of the league remains a possibility but even third place would represent a massive improvement on the previous season. Ahead of Tuesday night's match away to Kilmarnock, with 19 of their 38 league games played, Hearts were sitting just nine points shy of their tally for the whole of last term and with just one league win fewer than the number secured in that campaign.

It is suggested that Vladimir Romanov deserves the credit for allowing Jefferies to invest in the team in the summer, including, finally, agreeing a contract extension for the captain which allowed him to return him to the heart of the defence but, while Zaliukas extols the virtues of the club's owner, he says it is about more than just finance.

"I have always had a good relationship with him. Sometimes we talk just about life, and you would probably be surprised, he is a good laugh. Even when you are not speaking about football, just life. But, it is not just about his money, it is about the players we have and the fact everyone is working together as one unit, we totally deserve the credit for that. There are only two Lithuanians now over here, just me and (Arvydas] Novikovas. Jim (Jefferies] talks to the players and treats them differently to the way they were before. There is more responsibility for the young lads like David Templeton. He has shown he is good enough to play here and that he can play at a bigger team.

"Before, maybe Mr Romanov wanted to rule the team more, with more talking to everybody, the managers. Now he leaves more of the responsibility to Jim and he has done a good job."

For a while at the start of the season it looked as though the career of the 27-year-old Lithuanian defender was stuck.At loggerheads with Romanov over the terms of his new contract, he was dropped from the side while, at international level, he was sidelined by manager Raimondas Zutautas after he failed to show for a Baltic Cup tie in June.

"Of course it was hard for me. You wake up every morning not knowing where you are going to be. But it is already in the past and I am happy here and happy to play regularly."

There is no guarantee a return to the national side will be quite so straightforward.

Zaliukas points out: "It was my holidays, I only have six weeks of holidays."

But the consequences of his no-show have been severe and he was not included in the team for the European Championship qualifier against Spain and must now wait to see if he features against the world champions and then Scotland later this year.

"I don't know how it is going to be. We have a friendly game before we play against Spain so we will see. I was desperate to play over there. I think it would have been a good challenge for me."

He may have to work at winning over his fellow Lithuanians but at least he is finally feeling accepted in Scotland - and he has an award to prove it.