Mixu Paatelainen apologised for swearing in a post-match tirade that left nobody in any doubt about his thoughts on Dundee’s United’s 5-0 defeat to Celtic and his players’ performances.
In an interview with the club’s own ArabZONE team pitchside at Parkhead on Sunday, the recently installed Tangerines manager asked “What is the point in f****** training?” if players then don’t carry out instructions on the pitch.
A snippet of the interview went viral before it was pulled from Twitter, but it appears most United fans welcomed the Finn’s passion and determination to get more from his players.
Paatelainen isn’t the first in his profession to wear his heart on his sleeve when a microphone is stuck under his nose and he won’t be the last.
Here are five famous examples of passionate outpourings from football bosses:1 Kevin Keegan, 1996https://www.youtube.com/embed/_Yenzdq5g6o?rel=0
Paatelainen was in control of his emotions but Keegan certainly wasn’t. As Manchester United edged away from them in the title race, Sir Alex Ferguson questioned the motivation of teams coming up against the Magpies. Keegan’s response on live television was: “I’ve kept really quiet but I’ll tell you something, he went down in my estimations when he said that. We have not resorted to that. You can tell him now, we’re still fighting for this title and he’s got to go to Middlesbrough and get something. And I’ll tell you, honestly, I will love it if we beat them. Love it.” It’s become the template for managers cracking under pressure. Rafa Benitez “did a Keegan” a few years later.2 Joe Kinnear, 2008https://www.youtube.com/embed/BKdETq7ZGgQ?rel=0
Mixu’s f-word slipped out, but you couldn’t say the same about Kinnear. He reached eight on the swear word count when local journalists were the target of his ire in a press conference just four days after he took over at Newcastle. Unsurprisingly, it was a relationship that never recovered.3 Roy Keane, 2000The Irishman could have a category of his own. One brutally honest interview to Manchester United’s in-house television channel cost him his job at Old Trafford when Ferguson deemed that the Irishman had over-stepped the mark. But it was a comment he made that most people haven’t actually heard that had the greatest long-term resonance. By categorising the corporate hospitality supporters as the “prawn sandwich brigade” in a radio interview, Keane came up with a phrase that is still used to this day. It was part of a scathing assessment of fans who don’t understand the game, and in 50 years’ time will be quoted by social historians as well as football ones.4 Ron Atkinson, 1996https://www.youtube.com/embed/2btb208hZAk?rel=0
In the years before Atkinson got himself into bother and lost his punditry career with a racist remark that he thought was off-air, ‘Big Ron’ was known as much for his larger than life persona as his managerial achievements. And he put two other later to be disgraced TV people in their place live on Sky Sports in a post-match interview. Then the Coventry City manager, Atkinson reacted furiously to suggestions by Andy Gray and Richard Keys that he could not save the club from relegation. He cut off the interview and threw his headphones at a Sky producer after saying: “You can sit there and play with all your silly machines. If the boys play badly I’ll whip ‘em, but I ain’t whipping them for that. Thanks lads, goodnight.” He was right, too. Coventry didn’t go down.5 Craig Levein, 2008https://www.youtube.com/embed/rlFpHriMd8A?rel=0
It was a referee, not his players, that provoked a stinging attack from one of Paatelainen’s United predecessors, Craig Levein. After his side’s 3-1 loss at Rangers, Levein said: “Mike McCurry could have phoned me at home this morning and said: ‘Look, Rangers are going to get the three points, just stay in the house’. It is impossible. Just try to imagine if these decisions had been the other way about – Mike McCurry would never referee another game again.” The £5,000 SFA fine for Levein that followed was a record.