Today's Homecoming Scottish Cup fourth-round tie between the Jags of Partick and Inverness could conceivably end up a way-going one.
Today's Homecoming Scottish Cup fourth-round tie between the Jags of Partick and Inverness could conceivably end up a way-going one. Ian McCall and Craig Brewster once shared a common ambition to revolutionise Dundee United. They were both, within a three-year period, proclaimed as the brightest young talents in Scottish football's fertile coaching environment, only to be gobbled-up and spat out by a club that has lived in fear and in thrall of its illustrious past. This afternoon, victory for one is likely to have serious repercussions for the other.
Brewster has endured a sequence of wretched results, a whispering campaign and an intemperate supporters' trust so far this season, the cumulative effects of which have left the Highlanders propping up the Clydesdale Bank Premier League and the boardroom uncharacteristically twitchy.
McCall has enjoyed a more encouraging start to 2009. Partick remain in contention for promotion back to the top division on a shoestring budget and, despite fatalist suggestions he is yesterday's man at 44, Blackpool have turned their attention to a manager with unfinished business.
It makes a refreshing change to McCall's annus horribilis. In the past year, McCall has separated from his wife, Gay, with whom he has a five-year-old son, Edson, and has watched helplessly as the indiscriminate carnage of the credit crisis impacts on his personal investments.
Encouraging McCall to unburden himself in print is usually as futile an exercise as getting a word in edgeways as he holds court among friends in a bijou West End wine bar. This time it is different. There is a public misconception of McCall as a pseudo-intellectual, claret-quaffing, G12 dandy. He is a deeper and much more fascinating character than that; it's just that managers in any era conceal emotions and personal suffering lest it be regarded as a sign of weakness.
McCall has suffered, quietly and without complaint. He has endured the breakdown of his marriage and, since being sacked at Tannadice in 2006, the erosion of his reputation, at least in the eyes of trigger-happy chairmen. The time for lament is over. "2008 was not easy for me on a personal level but I am proud of myself in not allowing it to affect my work," he says, sipping a lager tops in a trendy city centre bar. "I am always angry when I hear players say personal issues are affecting their work. I have had real personal problems in the last year with my family life but have not let it affect my work."
He now lives for his son, named with typical eccentricity after the greatest player who ever lived, and for his football club. In that order. "I have tried my very best to make it work," he says solemnly. "Things have happened in my personal life and now I have to prioritise: my little boy is more important to me than my job, but without my job how can I best provide for my son? That is my mindset at the moment."
The sacrifices are willingly accepted, be it to his social life or his professional ambitions. "I am a Doonhamer because Dumfries is my home town but I am also a guy who loves life in the West End of Glasgow," he says. "It is especially important to me now because it means I can take my son to school in the morning and have our Sundays together. That is what is important to me right now.
"When I was playing, I enjoyed myself too much at times but now I have Sunday with my boy and Saturday night - which is traditionally a sociable night for managers - is a quiet time because I don't want to waste the time I have with Edson. I do not want to cheat my own son.
"The directors have helped me no end but this is not a sob story.
A lot of people experience problems in their lives, especially when you look at the way the economy of the country is just now, and it is something I am working at . . ."
This is a far cry from the brusque and cock-sure McCall of his mid-to-late-30s, who the late Eddie Thompson happily chirped was the highest-paid manager in the land outwith the Old Firm, and with the talent to back it up.
At 44, he has experienced more peaks and troughs than a Wall Street banker. It perhaps explains his recent melancholy statement about his time in the sun now having passed him by. He has watched John Hughes and Owen Coyle - two former players under his charge at Falkirk - flourish and is now looking over his shoulder at the latest batch; Derek McInnes, Jim McIntyre, Alan Moore and Brian Reid.
Hughes, in fact, has also been linked with the Blackpool job vacated by Simon Grayson, who left for Leeds United. "Yogi may be at the stage now where he has done a fabulous job but feels he needs a new challenge," says McCall.
"He has maybe taken the team as far as it can with the money available and everyone might feel they need a freshness. He and Brian Rice are devoted to their job but they have been there so long that they feel it is a good time to leave.
"I have been very lucky to manage both Yogi and Owen. A lot of people take credit for the success of young managers but these guys were always likely to succeed without any help. Owen has had great success early on but the Championship is such a hard league to get out of because you need to keep churning out results."
With his black-rimmed designer glasses, gel-flicked hair, and ubiquitous A4 folder, McCall is the trendiest old fogey in Scottish football.
"I don't think because you had a bad six months it makes you a bad manager," he says, as much to himself as his inquisitor.
"The job did not come too early. We finished fifth in my first season. My reputation suffered greatly after United because, to be honest, I don't think I was very popular with some sections of the media."
He is prone to telling the story of two Sun sports hacks he believed were out to get him at United but who, after regular encounters on the road during his media work with the BBC, proved themselves to be no more than like-minded fellows doing their job. "It may have come across recently that I have no ambition but that is not how I intended it. I only meant I am very happy where I am."
For how much longer, though, can Partick's ambitions match his own? This week, the board confirmed the need to make a saving of four first-team salaries to sustain the ongoing financial trauma. It makes such prospects as Blackpool appealing but his family situation must also be factored in. He has embroidered an exciting and vibrant young team at Firhill. Gary Harkins, Johnny Tuffey, Liam Buchanan and Mark Twaddle are all destined for SPL football. McCall's wish is that they can fulfil their potential with Partick back in the top flight. Financial realities may dictate otherwise.
"It is all relative but we are suffering too," he said in a week when Rangers have flaunted their wares out of necessity. "I have had a series of board meetings and the upshot is I think we will have to lose four players from the squad. It is a blow at the best of times but especially when you are challenging for the title and your nearest competitors are strengthening. You would ideally want to add four players at that time.
"I am not demoralised by it, that's too strong a word. Pissed-off a little might be more accurate but you have to be aware the board are doing the best for the club; a lot of these guys went through the Save the Jags campaign, so they only have the club's best interests at heart.
"When I arrived, the chairman, Tom Hughes, said there was a three-to-five-year plan. I think that is now a seven-to-10-year plan."
McCall daren't look that far ahead. Contentment, in football and in life, is his only plan.
