How exactly does a 44-year-old German from a small town in Southern Bavaria – via stints in youth coaching, a dalliance with a career in electrotechnics and a short foray as a head coach in Austria – come to be manager of Motherwell?
“Yeah, it wasn’t part of some big plan to be the manager of a Scottish club,” says Michael Wimmer, the latest occupant of the Fir Park manager’s office.
“But this feels like a good fit for me. I think the working guy, the people who like to work, honest work, I like it. This fits to me.
“The people here are passionate, working people. The fans give everything for the club, the whole 90 minutes. And this is also what I expect from me. To give everything, 24 hours, seven days for the club.
“I love football, and I love people, I love to work with people, so this is the important thing.”
The twists and turns of his own life’s journey that have now landed Wimmer in Lanarkshire have been many, but can be traced back to a fork in the road that he stood before a couple of decades ago.
After an unremarkable playing career had somewhat petered out – “This was my fault, because I was not living like a professional player, I had a lack of discipline,” he said – he was interested in pursuing a career as a coach, and found opportunities to gain experience in the youth ranks of his local fifth-tier club.
As it happens though, Dingolfing, the Bavarian town from which Wimmer hails, is most notable for being the home of a BMW assembly plant. Was it safe to say that having rather blown his opportunity at making the best of his playing career, his family were of the opinion that a career in the factory was a safer bet than football for the previously wayward Wimmer, still just in his early 20s?
“Did you speak to my dad?” he laughed.
“In 2002, he said to me, ‘Hey, come on, no more bull****, because you don’t have the discipline, and perhaps you do not have the talent either to earn a lot of money from football'.
“Go back, be grounded, work in the company, and study electrotechnics. I agreed. I was not really happy, but I agreed.
“And then I was back there, and I worked in the company, and then it was time to take the next step in the company, but that was not what I wanted to do. My passion is football. This was clear to me.
“I know I made a lot of mistakes during my time as a player, so I was determined not to waste another chance on bull**** again, and now I can say to the young guys, believe me, don't be full of bull****, work harder.
“You have a chance to, let’s be honest, earn a lot of money in this job.”
Helping to assemble state-of-the-art, meticulously calibrated German cars is one thing. Assembling a successful team on Motherwell’s modest budget might be quite another. But it is striking to hear Wimmer referencing the contrast in his outlook and character from his younger years with how people would describe him now.
He described Wimmer as being intense, having clarity, and notably given his own earlier admission about his attitude during his time as a player, as being entirely free of bull****.
“Yes, I think this describes me,” Wimmer said.
“But this is not only a football philosophy, it's not only what is on the pitch, this is also me as a person.
“If I do something, I do it with intensity or I do not do it at all. And also, I try to have no bull****. In football this is not always possible, but you have to try to avoid bull****. And the most important thing also, in terms of leadership, is for me clarity.
“But it's not only football, it's also for me as a father, I want my son to have clarity. What my rules are, what I expect from him, what he has to do. And this is important. And this also goes for what I want to see from my players.
“I want to see the players work. They all know their jobs and their position. And this is clarity.
“I think if you have clarity, it's easier to lead people. Because if you have no clarity, you always can't do it.”
After gaining his coaching licence as he juggled simultaneous youth coaching gigs with his day job at BMW, opportunity knocked for Wimmer as an offer arrived from FC Nurnberg to coach their under 15s.
“BMW said to me, you can do it for three years,” he said.
“And during the three years, you can say, football is not working out for me, and I can go back to the company to the same job.
“This made it easier for me, because I could try it, and I had nothing to lose. But if it does not work for me, or I'm not happy with it, then I go back to the company. After three years, I said, okay, I will stay in this job, I want to do this. It was clear for me to be in professional football.
“But I was in the youth side of things, and I didn't think that now I have to go to a first team, now I have to go to be a professional. No, I was happy to work as a football coach in the youths in a professional team.”
A stint as assistant manager at Augsburg led to him landing the same job at Stuttgart, before fate would see him thrust into the deep end as interim manager following the sacking of number one, Pelegrino Matarazzo.
With the team struggling at the wrong end of the Bundesliga, the rookie coach was charged with leading a dressing room containing stars such as Wataru Endo, Konstantinos Mavropanos and Serhou Guirassy.
As it transpired though, the brazenness of youth meant he was less daunted by that prospect and fear of failure than he is now leading a group containing – with the greatest of respect – the likes of Stephen O’Donnell, Kofi Balmer and Andy Halliday.
“I got that experience in a difficult time for the club,” he said.
“But during this period it was really easy for me, because I never thought, ‘Oh, if you're not a winner you have to go back to being an assistant coach, or you have to leave the club and get the sack’. This was not in my mind.
“I was so happy to be head coach, I was so happy to work with the guys, I was so happy to be in the stadium in front of 50,000 people. And the second game was in Dortmund, and there were 80,000 there.
“I was so happy. I enjoyed every minute, every second, and I have to say, to be honest, I had such a perfect relationship with the players. They helped me a lot, so if I was nervous or not, they said, ‘Hey, come on, we’ll do it for you’.
“In the club, we had a great togetherness, and it's also like that here, so I enjoyed it. And if I'm thinking now about this period, the first game was 18th against 17th, it was a tough match, it was a big match, and we won 4-1. Before the game I wasn’t nervous at all.
“I think this is something that changes a little bit if your time is longer as a head coach, in my period in Vienna, and now also here. Now we begin a little bit to think, ‘Oh s***, it's a game now’, you're more, not scared, scared is the wrong word, you're more nervous.
“But this is the wrong way, you should enjoy it. What will happen will happen, and you can only do what you can do.
“I can work 24 hours, seven days for Motherwell, I like it to do it, I promise to do it, but if we lose five or six games because we hit the post five times, and you have no luck, then okay, then you have to go. But you can look in the mirror and say, ‘Hey, I did everything’. And then I go home, and life goes on.
“If you are satisfied with yourself, if you do everything, I think that’s all you can do.”
Wimmer’s best ultimately wasn’t enough to land him such a high-profile job on a permanent basis at that time, but it did eventually lead to a shot as a leading man when he teamed up with McCormick at Austria Vienna.
Perhaps the Motherwell hierarchy noted elements of the skillset he exhibited there, for while results on the field were ultimately something of a mixed bag, Wimmer managed – with the help of a pint or two of the local Ottakringer - to unite a club that had somewhat fractured from its fanbase.
A similar situation to the one he inherited at Motherwell, following the rather acrimonious departure of his predecessor, Stuart Kettlewell.
“The situation in Vienna as I arrived was extremely difficult, and there was a big split between the club, the board and the fans,” he said.
"I was surprised, and then I thought, ‘It's not against me’, so my ego is not important, what can I do? I can get in touch with the fans.
"So, I met some ultras in a bar, I drank a beer with them and I spoke about the situation. Someone from Vienna said to me, 'Don't do it, perhaps it's dangerous', but no, if I'm honest and if I'm authentic, why should it be dangerous? I have done nothing.
“So, we spoke and I said, ‘Come on, I'm here, I'll try to help the club, I know there was a good relationship with the former coach, because he was a hero, a legend in this club. I don't want to replace your idol, your legend, but I want to help the club now’.
“And then it worked, and alright, the results were not brilliant, just ok, but in Vienna there's only one big game, when you play against Rapid. It's like Celtic against Rangers.
“This was the last match before the splitting of the table, we won 2-0 and then we were in the top six, and after this game was the whole ultras, 5,000 or 6,000, I don't know, they called my name, and they told me that now you are welcome in the Austria Vienna family. This was a fantastic moment.”
Might we see Wimmer rocking up at Club 100 across from Fir Park for a pint of Tennents in the near future, then?
“This is not a problem for me,” he said.
“In Vienna there were fans when we lost a game, and I wanted to go to them and drink a beer, because as I said before, if I am of the opinion that I did everything for this game, then I can go with a clear mind and can drink something.
“Ok, a fan may say, ‘Why did this player not play or why did this player play?’ And that’s fair.
“Here I think it's perhaps a little bit more difficult for me, because of the language also, to find the connections, but here I'm also open to someone saying, ‘Come on, let us fill this bar up here, then we go for a beer and try to have a chat with my English, and if you speak slowly perhaps I will understand you!”
He may not understand everything that is being said around him just yet, but Wimmer understands enough about what his fans expect.
“I had the feeling here with the fans that they want perhaps that we are more passionate for the club,” he said.
“That the team, we give more for the club, that we identify more with the club, like how the fans do. And to give them perhaps more.
“I never read anything normally on social media, normally I block it, and I don't read it, but there was a comment I saw that said, ‘Hey, we don't expect that we win each game, we know we are Motherwell, and that for us it's perfect to be in the race to top six. But we expect that you give everything. That the team is giving everything.’
“So, this gave me an idea of what the fans want to see, and I think this is nothing special. They want that we are honest and that we are working for the club.
"They pay for the club, they pay for the season tickets, they pay for the away games, they make a lot of effort, and maybe some of them don’t have so much money. We are the football players, and so we have to give them this back.
“Jürgen Klopp said on a podcast I heard once that if he knows what the fans are expecting, it's easier for him to work with them, and I think this is very important.
“Since I have been here, I never had the feeling of something negative. Of course, I'm not happy if we lose 4-1. But it only works in a small club, it only can work, if we are together. If we are split, then we have no chance to have success.”
Wimmer feels his experiences, both good and bad, also make him the ideal manager to nurture the young talent at Fir Park, most notably prized asset Lennon Miller.
Having had a hand in the development of players such as Manchester City’s Omar Marmoush and Juventus winger Nico Gonzalez, he knows a prospect when he sees one, but Miller’s chances of success are heightened in his view not by his natural talent, but by his work ethic.
If he does as Wimmer says, and not as he did as a player, then his manager sees no reason why he can’t join those former pupils of his amongst the elite.
“I think you can always talk about something if you feel it yourself, or you make mistakes, so I can say for sure that he has to keep working hard,” he said.
“I know a lot of talented players, but talent alone is not enough. If there is someone who has talent, and is a hard worker, then you have a chance.
“There are so many good guys in the academies. Here we have a great academy, the coaches work well with the guys, so each player develops, and there are many talents. But if you think that talent is enough, then I think you won't achieve it to make a big career.
“And then work hard. Lennon is working hard in each training session, and then you have a chance to make the next step. And in my opinion, you deserve the next step.
“Lennon is a perfect example. But also, there is Tom Sparrow who is a young guy, Campbell Forrest is a young guy, Mikey Booth is injured just now, but he is a great guy.
“There are many great young guys here, and now it's up to them to work, and say to me, ‘Come on, I'm here, I'm ready if you need me.’
“With Omar in Stuttgart, he was always wanting to stay on after training, and the weather was like in Scotland. He always said, ‘Can we work on finishing? I have to practice on my right foot, to finish to the near post, to finish to the far post’, and I would say, ‘Omar, come on!’
“But he likes to work, and if he was not on the pitch, he was in the gym. So, in Germany, there is a sentence - from nothing comes nothing - and this is the truth.
“Lennon has a great talent, is a great player, and he has a brilliant character. Lennon has the ability and the skills to make this step, and if he is going through the door, into the next step, then it's up to him. Then it's a fight, then it's a battle, a competition.
“I think he had a great experience in the national team, 10 days with the best players in Scotland, it's something special, but now you have to fight for your place, you have to fight to be in the spot.
“But yes, he's 18 years old, I wish this for him, I hope it for him, and I'm also convinced that he has the skills to achieve it.”
Sacrifice is a theme of the chat with Wimmer, who is making plenty of his own in order to make a go of it at Motherwell. His wife and young son haven’t followed him to Scotland, but he is determined that he will be here for the long haul, despite the personal cost that he freely admits to feeling in typically candid style.
No bull****, right enough.
“To be honest, right now is the first time where it has been very, very difficult,” he said.
“I have an agreement with my wife that the base is in Dingolfing because we built a house there. My parents are there, and my parents-in-law are there, and my son goes to school there, so for us it was clear that they should always be based there. It doesn't matter where I am.
“But I had the job in Nurnberg, that’s one hour 20 with the car, then the next job was in Augsburg, that was one hour 35 with the car, then came Stuttgart, that’s two hours 40 with the car, and the next step was Vienna, there's three hours 50 with the car. So, it's getting further and further!
“But if there was an issue with my son, you could also use the car, and in three hours you are at home. So, this is now the first time where you have such a far distance. My son is growing up and now he's 11.
"I felt that it is very difficult for him, and if your son is at home and is not happy, perhaps a little bit crying, then it obviously isn’t a good feeling. He wants a Motherwell top now though with the number nine and his own name on it.
“But yeah, it's very difficult. It's a sacrifice, I've agreed to it one hundred percent though. It's a willingness from me, I want to do this, I have to make that sacrifice.
“It could not work if my family doesn’t stand behind me, but my wife pushes me, and I know that she has my back and she's supporting me. And I know that she has everything under control at my back too, so this gives me a good feeling.
“They try to visit me when it's holidays in Germany, so they will come over at Easter for 10 days to see me. But yes, of course, it's difficult, it's not so easy.”
As Wimmer knows though, anything worth achieving in football rarely is.
