An afternoon with Pat Nevin unfolds like a travelogue. The former Scotland international waits for me inside Berwick-upon-Tweed station and, in a moment of peak Nevin purity, he is reading a memoir written by Simon Raymonde, the bass player of his favourite band, the Cocteau Twins. The book is great, apparently, and sparks a stream of amusing anecdotes about a time when Nevin was considered a “weirdo” as a Chelsea and Everton footballer interested in music, books, film and politics.
We drive out of England, and into Scotland, while the 60-year-old Nevin talks about his love of travel and his relish for another European Championship, where he will work as an analyst for BBC Radio 5 Live in Germany. The tournament begins on Friday and Nevin will be there as Germany face Scotland in the opening match in Munich.
From being a gifted player, and the chair of the Professional Footballers’ Association, Nevin worked in almost impossible circumstances as a player-cum-chief-executive and director of football at Motherwell before he became a writer and commentator. He reflects on his strange odyssey in his latest book, Football and How to Survive It, with wry insight made fresh by the fact that, as Nevin says at home: “I didn’t want to be a player in the first place. I love playing football but do you want all the other stuff in it? Not really. But in the end it was really good and I loved it most of the time.”
That love is apparent when Nevin remembers some of the nine major tournaments he has covered. He is as intrigued as much by moments which occurred off the field as the great games he saw. “People don’t always worry about the moral arguments attached to these tournaments and sometimes they’re tricky. Think of the last two World Cups. I went to Russia and Qatar.”
His eyes widen in mock outrage. “How dare you?” he asks, mimicking the questions he was asked, sometimes by himself. “Because I want to see it with my eyes. I don’t want to be told by people who have never been what it’s like there. A classic example is Russia.”
Nevin laughs in his dry Glaswegian way as he remembers his work for the BBC at the tournament in 2018. “We had a fixer, a local person who shows you the ropes and speaks English. Our fixer was a young woman who allowed me to wind her up. We got on great and by the end of it I absolutely adored the place. The people? Phenomenal. So I said to her: ‘Russia is amazing, and the culture is huge. But I cannot stand your leadership. I think it’s vile. I know you can’t speak about it but, if it wasn’t for them, what a fabulous country.’
“She says: ‘Oh, interesting. How do you feel about your own leaders?’ We had [Donald] Trump in the White House and Boris [Johnson] was on his way [to becoming prime minster]. I smiled because it’s a great parry. And that’s the joy I get at these tournaments; you stand outside yourself and look and listen and think: ‘So that’s what it’s like from here.’”
Nevin once described himself as “an accidental footballer” but a deep knowledge of the game pours out of him while he prepares to travel through Germany over the next month. He will come home briefly for his daughter Lucy’s wedding after Scotland’s second match and then return to Stuttgart. “I said: ‘Please don’t get married during the Euros.’ But the only other possible date was this [past] weekend. But there was a good reason for not choosing that option. The country doesn’t work if Taylor Swift is in town.”
After another chuckle and diversion into the hope that Swift may back Joe Biden and dent Trump’s orange juggernaut, Nevin turns his attention to football when I ask whether he is hopeful Scotland may get out of a group including Switzerland and Hungary. “That’s the correct word. This morning I was asked twice on radio: ‘Are you confident?’ No, I am hopeful. The last time we played against Germany in the Euros they were world champions and we gave them a hard time [during a 2-0 defeat for Scotland in 1992]. We should have gone for them earlier so I hope we have more of a dig this time.”
Nevin describes Germany as “a good team” elevated by Kai Havertz – a player he has championed for years. “He’s absolutely brilliant and will be unstoppable when he’s played in his best position. Havertz could be an absolute colossus – like Michael Ballack. He’s got everything. Look at the height. He’s fast, so intelligent.”
Antonio Rüdiger is a different kind of colossus. “There isn’t a stopper in world football that matches Rüdiger,” Nevin says. “I don’t care if it’s [Lionel] Messi or [Cristiano] Ronaldo against Rüdiger. They’re not coming out the other side with the ball. It never happens. As a pure marker and destroyer, he’s unbelievable. So that’s the difficulty against Germany. We’ll have a go but it really comes down to the other two games. I don’t think there’s a great deal between the Swiss, Hungarians and Scots. We’ve got a chance.”
That opportunity is enhanced by the presence of his old Chelsea teammate Steve Clarke as Scotland’s coach. Nevin considered trying to lure Clarke to Motherwell as their head coach. “Definitely, but I couldn’t draw him away from Chelsea. Clarkie has worked with so many great people – José Mourinho, Ruud Gullit, Kenny Dalglish, Bobby Robson. They were the managers and he was the main coach. You don’t get jobs with those people unless you’re pretty damn good.
“Look at the brilliant spirit of the Scotland squad under Clarkie. It’s a boring cliche that everybody uses and it’s usually bullshit. Not with Clarkie. There’s a great spirit built on true honesty. Then he did a couple of technical things which everyone now takes for granted, but were brilliant at the time.
“We have Kieran Tierney and Andy Robertson – our best two players and you can’t play both at left-back. Tierney is a fabulous player and probably a better footballer but Robertson is more creative. We ended up with Tierney at right-back for a couple of years and it didn’t work. And then Clarkie figures out if he switches to 3-4-2-1 you can play both. Nobody else was calling for that tactical switch. I couldn’t work it out because I thought he was wedded to the back four.”
Nevin also praises Clarke for the way in which he transformed Scott McTominay by changing his position and how the coach is willing to hold his nerve. He talks in intricate detail about the night Clarke waited and waited and then unleashed his substitutes to overturn a 1-0 deficit away to Norway and win with two very late goals which were crucial in securing Scotland’s qualification.
The usual hype around England has dipped but Nevin looks fascinated when he considers Gareth Southgate’s squad. “I just hope they do something different [tactically]. Pep [Guardiola] sometimes goes 4-1-4-1. Gareth doesn’t do that. But think about this for a minute. If you do that, with [Declan] Rice as the sitter, imagine the unbelievable four – Saka, Foden, Bellingham and I’m putting Cole Palmer in there. Amazing quality. As an outsider I’m thinking: ‘That’s where you’re brilliant, get them on.’ Some people would see it as naive. Well, it’s not naive for Pep. He did it the week before the FA Cup final but then went back to 4-2-3-1, which was surprising.
“If you’re going to win tournaments, you need to be brave. So, England, if you’re brave technically then (a) you get a chance of winning and (b) I’d be delighted to see you win.”
We take a detour back to Chelsea as Nevin believes there may be some method to the seeming madness of the Todd Boehly era. But there are echoes of the carnage Nevin endured at Motherwell when he worked under a wealthy new owner, John Boyle, who knew little about football but made grand statements to the press, turned up at training sessions and entered the dressing room.
“These multimillionaires and billionaires come into clubs and think they know everything,” Nevin says. “They’re dismissive of lots of people. But football people are not stupid. They’ve got street smarts. These very wealthy owners come into football and lose a lot of money. The footballers themselves don’t lose any money. They make a lot.
“I’m not saying Chelsea will fall apart as a lot of clubs are looking down this same route. What I find interesting is that Chelsea have gone much further. They’re telling their coach that: ‘We know better than you, because we have the data, and we’ll give you the right players.’ The problem is everyone’s got the same data.”
Nevin is convinced that the cult of the manager is fading, and being replaced by increasingly expendable coaches in data-driven operations, but he nods when I suggest footballers usually flourish under expert and empathetic man-management. “Exactly, which is why it’s a hugely interesting experiment. I studied stats during my degree but I see all the dilemmas. I’m intrigued to see where it goes.”
Is there any logic in the Chelsea experiment? “Yes. I could see it within a couple of months. I knew exactly what they were doing and I said then that this is going to be hard, ugly and difficult for two years because they’ve brought too many young players from disparate places. They’ve not been picked to merge with each other, which is what a manager would do. It’s just pluck, pluck, pluck, pluck. Not many things flourish that way. But if you have a good coach, willing to work within this system, you can eventually make it work.”
Nevin laughs. “For a billion quid it should work in the end. So it’s not that clever and nobody knows what will happen next season. This concept feels wrong for football people and, as someone inside the game, I admire what Sir Alex Ferguson did. I admire what Stevie Clarke’s doing. I admire the thinking which no algorithm is ever going to give you. But it doesn’t mean this new method won’t work. We don’t know yet and I’m open-minded.”
Near the end of our afternoon together I ask Nevin how his love of football has changed. “It’s crystallised. I always enjoyed playing, and loved the beauty of football. I could go on my phone now and show you a trick from Diego Maradona because I want to look at it again and again. It’s that beautiful.
“Eberechi Eze did something with the ball [for England against Bosnia and Herzegovina last week] which I just wanted to slow down and see again. I played that position and I was supposed to be skilful but he did something that made me say: ‘Oh, that’s impossible. What the hell did you do there?’ It doesn’t need to be a great player, just somebody who does something that creates these beautiful, beautiful moments.”
Such moments, after all, remind an accidental footballer why he has spent almost all of his life travelling and living through the game.
Pat Nevin’s Football and How To Survive It (Monoray) is now available in paperback
