THE pros and cons of American owners have been debated at length in Scottish football circles ever since it emerged that a consortium comprising the San Francisco 49ers and billionaire insurance magnate Andrew Cavenagh was on the verge of taking over Rangers.
Are investors from the United States getting involved in the beautiful game for the right reasons? Do they have the best interests of the venerable institutions they are snapping up at heart? Or are their motivations purely financial? Opinions remain sharply divided.
Simo Valakari, the Motherwell cult hero and former Finland internationalist who has been manager of St Johnstone for the past five months, can only speak in glowing terms about working with a chairman who hails from the other side of the Atlantic.
Valakari returned to this country back in October following a challenging and bruising spell in charge of Riga in Latvia which was, despite victory in the Supercup this time last year, blighted by boardroom interference.
Life in Perth has by no means been a cakewalk since. His struggling side went on a dire run of form after he took over and they are three points adrift at the bottom of the William Hill Premiership table with just nine games remaining. Relegation to the Championship remains a very real possibility.
Yet, he is indebted to Adam Webb, the American lawyer who bought out long-time benefactor Geoff Brown back in August, for the unwavering support which he has, even when St Johnstone were in freefall, received and remains upbeat about what the future holds after some decent recent results.
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“I am so happy to be here,” said Valakari earlier this week as he took a break from preparations for the Scottish Gas Scottish Cup quarter-final against Livingston at Almondvale on Monday night. “It has been refreshing. This is how a football club should be run. Everyone is pushing the same way, but they let me work the way I think is best.
“That was the case even when the results we were getting were catastrophic. At that moment, the backing I received from the owner, from the directors, from the club, meant the world to me. I had started to doubt myself. But the backing I had when things were going really bad, and they were going really bad, gave me the confidence to keep going, lifted my soul.
“Of course, I was frustrated and felt a heaviness on my shoulders. But having the faith of the owner and directors took a little bit of the weight off and helped me to perform better with my players. It was very, very important.”
“When the day comes that we are not around anymore, he wants the club to be in a better position than it was. He has a professional side, but at the same time he is a very caring person who has always time for you and is very open.”
It has certainly been a far cry from his time at Riga. “To begin with, I was able to do everything, to pick the team, decide on the game plan, just how I wanted,” said Valakari. “We played very good, won the Supercup on penalties in the opening game of the season and won the first few matches in the league after that as well.
“But then we lost a game and the sporting director came to me and said, ‘No, I’m going to tell you who to play in the team from now on’. From that point on, it was like that. It is a very Russian way of doing things.
“Looking back now, I'm pleased I experienced that. I needed to learn how to be diplomatic to survive in that environment, to make the best of the situation. I had to think, ‘Okay, maybe I can use this guy I have to play here’.
“But you always need the final say as the manager because you have to feel comfortable with your team. Ultimately, you are the one who is responsible for results. Nobody is looking at the sporting director if you lose. He’s not going to say, ‘I picked the team, not the coach’.”
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Valakari is far more comfortable with his St Johnstone team now than he was when he was appointed. He brought in Barry Douglas and Bozo Mikulic in October and strengthened with Victor Griffith, Jonathan Svedberg and Daniels Balodis during the January transfer window. Wins over Motherwell, St Mirren and Ross County suggest the new signings have made a difference.
But he believes the predicament the McDiarmid Park club are in now has been years in the making. “It's not just down to what has happened this season,” he said. “Since the cup wins in 2021, something hasn’t been right. We’ve only just survived each season. You can’t flirt with relegation every year, you need to change something. If you don’t, it will happen at some point.
“I found a very unbalanced squad when I came in. Yes, we had quality players, but we had a lot of players with the same characteristics, a lot of very similar centre-backs, midfielders, strikers. We realised we needed a different kind of full-back, midfielder, winger.
“We managed to get them in during the window and help the players we had already because they needed help. They had been through such a bad time, they needed someone to come and give them an extra energy boost.”
“I was a very, very late bloomer,” he said. “In my first season in the Veikkauslliga with FinnPa, I didn’t get any money. I was an amateur and studied at college during the day. But I was voted Rookie of the Year in the league and I got paid in my second season.
“But it still wasn’t enough got me to live on. I went to the club and asked if I could get a normal football salary and become full-time. The manager said, ‘I'm not going to pay you that kind of money’. I was asking for £400 a week, he was offering me £300 a week. We couldn’t reach an agreement.
“I knew a Scottish guy who lived in Helsinki with his Finnish wife and he told me Motherwell were looking for a midfielder. They wanted to see some videos of me in action, but I didn’t have any because none of our matches were televised.
“But somebody had filmed one of our games. I got a hold of the old VHS video tape of it, stuck it in an envelope and posted it to them. They watched it and invited me over. I was here for two weeks and then, boom, they offered me a contract. If I had got the £100 I was looking for I would never have left.
“I will forever be grateful to Alex McLeish for taking me over here. I really liked him, liked his man management. He improved me as a footballer.”
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The combative, physically robust and technically proficient midfielder adapted to the rough and tumble of Scottish football quickly and endeared himself to Motherwell supporters instantly.
“In my first game against Aberdeen I made a slide tackle and the whole stadium erupted,” he said. “I was like, ‘Wow! You make a slide tackle over here and they cheer you? This is football! This is my football!’
“It was right level for me. I was able to play a lot of games, I gained more experience, I improved physically, everything got better. In Finland, I was more of an attacking midfielder. But when I came here I became more defensive. I was strong and fast enough to win duels. I could keep the ball and use my passing brain to give it to the better, attacking players around me.
“I was humble enough to realise I wanted to have a career I'm wasn’t going to make it as a creative midfielder. I knew I needed to become this destroyer and help my team to be better. It’s so long ago, I don't know if the fans remember me, but I hope they have good memories.”
They definitely do. One thing which they recall about Valakari, though, was his bewildering inability to score. They were bemused when he netted in a Premier League match against Charlton Athletic at Pride Park in 2000 just weeks after he had moved to Derby County on a free transfer.
It was, however, to be a rare highlight of his time in England. Off-field turmoil, a procession of different managers and persistent injury problems restricted his appearances thereafter. But he played with Georgian maverick Georgi Kinkladze and Italian striker Fabrizio Ravanelli and against some icons during his four seasons down south and has fond memories in amongst the lingering frustration.
“Georgi was incredible,” he said. “I have never seen a guy who loved playing football so much, but who hated to train so much. Fabrizio, in stark contrast, was a complete professional. He only ate white fish, he brought in his own olive oil, he came back and trained in the afternoons, he only had four per cent body fat.
“I played against Paul Scholes, who was possibly the best player I ever came up against, and Patrick Viera, who was unbelievable and never gave you a second on the ball. I made the most of my time at Derby. But when I left none of the players who had been there when I joined were there any more. That tells you how much upheaval there was.”
By that stage, Valakari was an established member of the Finland team and was accustomed to rubbing shoulders with legends of the game. A friendly against host nation France, Laurent Blanc, Didier Deschamps, Marcel Desailly, Zinedine Zidane et al, before the France ’98 finals remains a highlight of his 32 cap international career.
“I can remember putting in a tough challenge on Zidane during that match,” he said. “After it, he got up, looked at me and said, ‘Boy, I’m playing in a World Cup in two weeks’ time’. I understood where he was coming from and laid off after that, it was his warm-up game.”
Dallas Burn, where he moved with his young family in 2004, proved to be far more enjoyable than Derby for Valakari. The franchise was one of several run by the legendary Lamar Hunt, who founded the MLS and coined the phrase Super Bowl when the AFL and NFL agreed to merge, and he received an early introduction to how brilliant American owners can be.
“He was a very humble guy, a very quiet guy, but he was definitely a very remarkable guy too,” he said.
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The United States’ obsession with sporting achievement made a lasting impression on him. “Football had started to change in the United Kingdom after Arsene Wenger came in to Arsenal,” he said. “But America was still at a different level. Not in terms of tactical education in football, that was still higher in Scotland and England. But they were so far ahead when it came to how to produce athletes.
“I used to go to gyms and sports centres to keep fit during the off season and they were full of the most amazing athletes. They were the fastest and strongest I had ever seen. They were incredible. They were all dreaming of getting picked up by a college team or an NFL franchise. Maybe one day? But 99 per cent of them were not even close to getting there.
“I was struck by the knowledge they had, by how they used sports science, by how they prepared, by their professionalism. It kind of got in my head. How do you take care of your body? What supplements do you need to take? What kind of food do you need to eat? What is the best way to recover?
“That was when the first seeds were planted in my head. It is not enough to come in and play football for two hours. It is the 22 hours after that which make the difference. I try to incorporate these things into my coaching at St Johnstone. I tell my players it’s a 24 hours a day, seven days a week job. I can accept mistakes, but I need 100 per cent commitment.”
Valakari, who still looks as if he could put in a decent shift for his team at the age of 51 and who is pleasant and engaging company, and his backroom team, which includes his performance director son Paavo, will be working around the clock to keep St Johnstone in the Premiership in the weeks ahead.
“I really like the cups,” he said. “In a 36 game league season, the biggest team with the largest budget will come out on top most of the time. In cup competitions, it is different. It is always more even because it's a one-off game.
“You need luck as well. Small margins can be important. We won one Finnish Cup on penalties and the Supercup on penalties too. They could have gone either way. But there is an element of surprise in cups. You can make it work your way if everyone, the owner, the sporting director, the coaching staff, the players, is pulling towards the same goal.”
Valakari continued: “St Johnstone are never going to be the biggest club, but I truly believe that we can punch above our weight. That is why I am so enthusiastic about this project. It is possible.
“We need to be proactive and attack. If we start to fear losing, especially in the position we are in, then we will lose. Yes, we need to be pragmatic and to defend better than we have. We need to find a balance. But I think the players enjoy to attack and to try to score goals too. It is much more fun.”
