Gordon Strachan relishing new role as Dundee technical director

It was once said that football is unique in the way it routinely delivers people so willingly back to the place where they started their careers.

Gordon Strachan was unveiled as Dundee's technical director at Dens Park. Picture: Ross MacDonald/SNS

Gordon Strachan is another who has made this journey. But his status has changed since he made his way over the Forth Bridge from his Edinburgh home as a 15-year-old apprentice at the Dens Park club.

Now, in what has been the worst-kept secret in Scottish football, he has returned as technical director. It’s the 62-year-old’s first involvement back in the game since he left the post of Scotland manager in late 2017.

Strachan has since made his way around the globe studying youth football. He felt that as well as having emotional ties to the club, Dundee provided the perfect environment for putting the theories and strategies developed during what has proved a productive, if sometimes controversial, sabbatical into practice.

There’s the extra thrill of being able to implement some of his own ideas on his own grandson, Luke, who joined Dundee earlier this summer. The 18-year-old has already made an appearance in a pre-season friendly against Brechin City. He is the third generation Strachan to play for the club after his grandfather, who ended up making 91 appearances, and father Gavin, who played in the late 1990s.

Dundee were forced to sell the original Strachan to Aberdeen in 1977 to foot a £50,000 bill. Now it’s hoped he can help produce players to benefit Dundee before being sold on. “It doesn’t have to be 20 players,” said Strachan. “Two or three players over a five-year period can a make a huge difference to a club.”

He will, in the first instance, work with Dundee’s academy coaches. He will liaise with Dundee‘s new head of academy Stephen Wright more than James McPake, the club’s manager.

“The remit is working with the players from an early age up to 18, 19 until we deliver them into James’s hands,” explained Strachan. “But I’m here for anybody who needs my help – maybe not the mascot, mind you! My priority is helping coaches and players be better.”

“I have been obsessed with youth football for over 20 years, ever since Scotland were beaten five-something v Portugal, Ally McCoist broke his leg,” he added, of a World Cup qualifier in 1993 when Scotland were drubbed 5-0.

“I was doing the telly with Mark Hateley – I will always remember that jacket. I thought, ‘we have to do something now’. We have produced good players, no doubt. But it’s about producing great players. And if you can’t produce great players, produce ones that are physically fit, technically aware, so that’s what we are trying to achieve.”

He will be concentrating on the individual rather than the team or a particular system. Dundee are in the third tier of the SFA’s Project Brave programme, but Strachan said this was irrelevant.

“It’s up to us,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what you’re called or what level you’re at, it’s up to the coaches to get the best out of their players and their coaches. [Former SFA national performance director] Brian McClair started it off and we helped him along the way. He came up with some good ideas like cutting the size of the squads. There were too many kids playing. Instead of wasting their time getting dragged around the whole of Scotland, they should have played with their local club – 90 minutes twice a week or school football, instead of travelling six hours to get 60 touches of a ball.”

Family is part of the reason why Strachan is so happy to choose Dundee. His met his Dundonian wife, Lesley, in the city and she will be able to join him on extended trips to a place that feels very different to when Strachan was making his way in the game, while, as he wrote in his autobiography, trying to avoid drinking binges with Jimmy Johnstone, who was briefly a team-mate.

“The pitch has got a lot better!” he said when asked what has changed since he was at Dens as a player. “And Dundee itself, it’s regenerating here, with the V&A and computer programmers and things like that.

“I also believe that a football club has a lot to do with the success of the economy and the community. I have seen it at Aberdeen for example – the community grew, the economy grew, it is hand-in-hand I think. I did not realise seagulls were that huge though – seriously, huge things that get on your nerves. I am going to have to get used to the seagulls again.”