Mac’ll never be a treasure

Dec 16 2007 by Neil Farrington, Sunday Sun

DID Steve McClaren watch the spine-tingling tribute to Sir Bobby Robson on the BBC Sports Personality of the Year show and wonder?

Wonder, that is, why he will never retrace Sir Bobby’s path from ex-England manager to national treasure.

The answer is too manyfold to make much sense to a man who believes Wes Brown is a better defender than Jamie Carragher.

But it starts with respect. That’s respect for other people, not theirs for you.

And by other people, I don’t mean the snarling lynch mob which now passes for England’s support.

No, the true gauge of McClaren the manager is the measure of McClaren the man.

A measure provided not by the Wembley boo boys, but by a thoroughly reasonable individual very much in the know a few hours before Sir Bobby had us blubbing.

Middlesbrough chairman Steve Gibson speaks only when he has something to say. And you can be sure he didn’t speak ill of McClaren – the club’s only trophy-winning manager – lightly.

But that made his critique of the newly-departed national coach more cutting than any tabloid headline or terrace chant.

When he said “if Steve McClaren said to me the grass is green, I would go out and check” Gibson cut to both the bone and the chase.

Yet even more devastating was his observation that “you can’t go through life always trying to achieve at the expense of others”.

For it exposed what McClaren may regard as his greatest strength but is his biggest weakness: naked ambition.

With just an ounce of the humility which has served Robson so well, I could foresee the return of the Mac.

But you can’t put in what God left out.