MALKY Mackay is a football manager at heart, so it any wonder he is more excited about donning a Scotland tracksuit and prowling around an international technical area than strutting about upstairs in a smart suit, drinking endless cups of tea and giving PowerPoint presentations? But he is only the latest man to feel rather conflicted about the occasionally overlapping job descriptions of Scotland manager and SFA performance director.

Back in the days of Andy Roxburgh and Craig Brown, of course, these two posts were merged, something which at least limited the room for any personal disagreements. Results weren’t too bad, apart from the dearth of young talent coming down the road which has exiled us from all major finals since 1998.

Berti Vogts, George Burley and Walter Smith were all happy to focus on the head coaches’ part of the role, with assistance from long-serving director of football Jim Fleeting, and then it was the turn of Craig Levein, a man whose recent history suggests he still isn’t entirely clear whether he is best suited to head coach or director of football.

Henry McLeish’s review into Scottish football envisaged a separation of the powers, so in came Mark Wotte as the SFA’s first performance director, a Dutchman whose attempts to standardise a style of play across all national teams met some resistance from individual head coaches who, not without reason, felt that selecting the players and defining the tactics was what they were paid to do. Blink and you might have missed Brian McClair’s contribution, while you need only follow the recent row about genetics to see how Gordon Strachan was another man who occasionally got side-tracked into attempting to address the structural flaws of the Scottish game.

Mackay is merely the latest to wrestle with this dichotomy. As immersed as he clearly is in the mammoth administrative task of negotiating the implementation of ground-breaking youth development scheme Project Brave (perhaps that controversial element of the job could be hived off) keeping a keener eye on young talent from P7 onwards, and ensuring other teams don’t steal our best players at Under-18 level, there is still a devil on his shoulder telling him that he is a manager at heart and would be daft not to accept the head coaches’ job in person.

“I’ve been asked to take this for the month,” says Mackay. “I was then asked in the media ‘surely any manager worth his salt who was actually asked point blank to take the team, who would turn that down?’ And he was right. Why would I lie and say otherwise.”

Could he do both? Like Roxburgh and Brown back in the day? Well, this will be rather awkward – not least considering the performance director should have a lead role in recruiting the new head coach - but whatever happens he will continue to oversee at least the national teams element of the SFA’s performance strategy for the foreseeable future. “I believe a committee will be put together [to select the next manager] and if I’m asked to the be involved in that, fine,” said Mackay. “And no matter what, going forward, the performance side of the national squad, I’ll be looking after that in terms of our analysis, sports science, medicine and talent ID. I want best practice at that level now and I want to go and find the best, and it should reflect what happens at Champions League level.

“It was a very different environment back then [the Brown and Roxburgh era],” he added. “Look at what’s under me in terms of the size of the job and the number of areas, it’s a different job nowadays. But to be fair to Craig and Andy Roxburgh, they were ahead of their time in terms of education and what they put in place academically for Scottish coaches. Andy went on to become technical director of UEFA, what an accolade that is for a guy who wasn’t given that level of recognition in his own country.

“I have spoken to him, I have spoken to Craig (Brown) and Walter and Sir Alex and Craig Levein, Alex McLeish as well. I have spoken to them all, although not specifically about this over the last 10 months. I have managed to get to all of them, just have time with them and listen to what they have got to say concerning Scotland: kids, pathway, their thoughts on things. How can I not love that?”

From GPRS tracking of his players at their training sessions this week at the Oriam centre, persuading Scott Brown to continue his involvement with the national team, deciding that certain players are best served staying with the Under-21s, to trying to negotiate an international friendly against Morocco in March, Mackay is involved in everything.

But first there is a team to put out, one where Mackay once again will clearly lean on a Celtic core of players who he watched excelling themselves against Bayern Munich in the company of England Under-21 boss Aidy Boothroyd in midweek. Kieran Tierney and Andy Robertson will both feature, but Tierney won’t be at right back.

“That is not something I am looking to do on Thursday night, is play him [Tierney] at right back,” he said. “But the two of them are certainly going to be in the team. I have just not quite decided how the make-up of that is going to look.”

He has assembled a backroom team consisting of goalkeeper coach Jim Stewart, Montreal Impact head of medicine Richard Collinge, Rangers physio Steve Walker and sports scientist John Currie from Celtic, video analyst Neil McIlhargey from Rangers and Graham Jones of the SFA. Eric Black, assistant at Southampton, with whom Mackay shares a past life at Wigan Athletic, has been primed with instructions of how to prep Virgil van Dijk and Wesley Hoedt on the South Coast.

“I have just told Eric to make sure you run the legs off him [Van Dijk] next week alongside the boy next to him [Hoedt] who is also involved in the squad. He’s going to try and make sure there’s a wee niggle there by the end of the week!”