by While the Rangers support may be bursting with Jock Wallace’s pre-derby ‘battle fever’, Philippe Clement will be going through a well-worn routine of fitness and family as he tries to prepare himself for the chaos to come on Sunday evening.
A quiet dinner with the family has pre-game potential and working out in the gym certainly has.
It’s a ritual he bypassed once in his new management career, and soon regretted. The Belgian heeds is a lesson. When Clement feels the pain, the burn, he feels refreshed and ready to go. The gym is his sanctuary, his “running away space”.
But don’t think the Rangers manager is trying to put his side back at the summit of Scottish football by beating Celtic at Ibrox.
“My head is full of football too. It’s my life, it’s my passion. I don’t feel like the gym bothers me, but it does help me. They say a good mind needs a good body.
“And I’ve felt it before. There was a time when I forgot to do it. When I look back it was a mistake. It didn’t make a big difference but it still did, so I took that lesson. It’s that’s all For the rest, football is always on my mind.
“For me the gym is where I can really clear my mind and focus on that. And I feel better afterwards when it hurts, when it burns.”
A natural leader with authority when he steps into a room, Clement has made the Rangers management look simple, without any achievements. His professional approach has impressed players, staff and the media enough that he feels he is destined to take on such a demanding and high-profile job.
Talk to the man himself and his story is not so simple. Before becoming manager seven years ago with Waasland-Beveren in his native country, he intended to spend his career cultivating the next generation of Belgian stars.
“I started my career as a U21 coach in Bruges,” he recalls. “I had just ended my career as a player to do that and I thought: I’m going to do that for the next 30 years. My passion is to develop young guys.
“To give them the right tools to improve and also in that moment there was no history of young players developing from the second team to the first team at Bruges.
“Although they always had good talents and good players in the national team in the youth teams, the gap was too big. My challenge was to make it smaller. So it started that way. Then becoming an assistant, getting more and more responsibility.
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“Last year with Preud’homme they called me the main assistant they call T2 in Belgium. They said I was T1 and a half because I was doing so much with Michel. When he stopped, I thought that I didn’t want to do this role with someone else because we had been working together for four years and that responsibility would be with someone stepping into that football story, which I don’t like or don’t like’ suits me, I didn’t want to do that.
“I started as a manager, writing my own story. I felt like I wanted to write my own story there. So it was a natural development, like a snowball that gets bigger and bigger and bigger the longer it rolls.”
Clement carries the air of a man in control of his surroundings, win or lose. An engineer by education, he conveys the unique understanding that he creates a strong framework in which others can succeed.
Cold, quiet professionalism from the athletes working under him seems to be a prerequisite for the job – but like everything – there had to be a balance. While Old Firm is often discussed as a flaming cattle where the size of the crowd can lure players into periods of rage, a spirit of timidity can do the opposite and is just as ineffective.
“I don’t want players on the field running around because they’re really calm or they’re on Valium or something before the game,” he jokes. “That’s not the idea. They must be ready and run but with a calm mind. It’s about being tough, good and sharp but always with an overview and focus and not losing their concentration.
“They are doing well now. You saw the difference in the Hibs cup game where we stayed calm and those experiences we take towards every game despite the tackles and things that were going on. We talk a lot about that, that it helps our football if we focus on ourselves.
“I talk to players individually every three days. And every game is different in our game plan because it depends on our opponents and how they are playing, so the players are used to that as well. It’s not that we’re doing the same thing; we change every game, special things to find space and create chances and avoid chances against us. That way each game has its own identity. Like this game too.”
A major career challenge for the two men who will face the Celtic coach who has a very successful experience in Brendan Rodgers. Fail and all of their job prospects are guaranteed a negative outcome.
The two barely know each other, but Clement has already immersed himself enough in the club’s culture to realize it’s a situation unlikely to change. His relationship with Gordon Strachan goes back to their time at Coventry City but, keen to show respect for attitudes in Glasgow, he will not have dinner with his old mentor who was once the caretaker of his youngest child. So he and Brendan will stay forever as long as their path continues down the same road.
“Brendan and I don’t know each other very well personally. I met him at the Celtic game, of course, I know his way of life. I have a lot of respect for that and all the things he has achieved.
“We also met at Hampden for the Scottish national team game against Northern Ireland. We saw each other speak briefly about that. But I know in the city it is complicated.
“I even saw an interview with Gordon Strachan who was my boyfriend and with whom I had a very good relationship. And it is not allowed here in Glasgow to have dinner together because his son is working in the coaching staff at Celtic.
“That’s a shame. I think you have to have this competition but outside of it it’s still possible for me but it seems in this city, no. And so, I adapt that way. So I respect the city and I respect our fans. So we will keep it as it was.”
