It was from a comforting place, of deep certainties and contentment, that Craig Brown suddenly re-emerged in the competitive heart of Scottish football. Five years had passed since his previous management job when Motherwell appointed him in charge of a team last December that was reduced to a state of anxiety. He was 69, his knees were a little more troublesome and his hair was a little greyer around the temples, but then Brown has always been most adept at confounding assumptions made about him.

Motherwell might yet qualify for the Europa League and a run of 12 League games undefeated after Brown’s first match in charge saw him win consecutive manager-of-the-month awards. It has been a form of rejuvenation, for the club and Brown. We had come to accept that his connection with the game was limited to working in the media and reaching into anecdotes and wisdom accumulated during his 47-year career.

The return to Motherwell was temporary at first, but he has been so successful (he was anticipating a struggle against relegation, as the team had not won in eight games when he arrived) that his contract has been extended until the end of next season. There is a sense of Brown redefining, with the measured air of a man who has long forgotten the need to be in a hurry, something of his standing.

“When we went to Motherwell, the manager at the top of the Scottish Premier league was the oldest, Walter Smith,” Brown says. “The manager I thought was going to win the Champions’ League, until Wednesday, is the oldest manager, Alex Ferguson. Harry Redknapp, Arsène Wenger and Roy Hodgson are all over 60. You should not discard experience too readily.”

There was a brief sense of incredulity when Brown was appointed, given the distance from his last direct involvement with management. Motherwell’s squad is young, and even the club’s goalkeeping coach, Stewart Kerr, played for Brown’s Scotland Under-21s. He is a highly-respected figure, held in great affection, but the geniality can obscure a sharp football mind.

In Motherwell’s run of 12 undefeated games, they conceded only three goals. Defeats in the last two games apart, the impact of Brown and his irascible 62-year-old assistant, Archie Knox, has been assertive.

“I can remember the first meeting with the players,” Brown recalls. “I said, ‘look guys, it’s a great job, you get paid for keeping fit, but you look miserable. Get a smile on your faces’. Then Archie said, ‘and I’ll just fucking knock it off’. I have a couple of sons who are just a bit older than them, and Archie and I are young at heart. And when you’ve had to play Brazil in the opening game of the World Cup, preparing your team for an SPL game is not quite as demanding.”

Brown is the last manager to lead Scotland to a major championship and time has brought a re-evaluation of his work. By the end of his eight-year reign in charge of the national team, he was considered too amiable, too familiar, but the country’s failure to qualify for the World Cup or European Championships since 1998 is an enduring regret. He believes, though, that Craig Levein can lead Scotland to Euro 2012. “I genuinely feel that we’ve got an outstanding chance of getting into the play-offs,” he says. “[Levein] was the popular choice of the fans, the other managers and the media. When I got the job, they were saying, What are they doing? I was viewed with suspicion.”

Brown remains an avid follower of international football, and in Fabio Capello he is convinced England have a manager capable of asserting the priorities and imperatives required to win the World Cup in South Africa. Having lived south of the border since joining Preston in 2002, Brown also doesn’t share that inherent prejudice so often apparent in Scots against English success in the game.

“You can’t fail to be impressed by Capello,” he says. “Not because he banned mobile phones and smartened the players up, just because of his overall handling of the situation. England have a real possibility of winning. I’m not one of the guys who thinks that because we’re Scottish, we want England to fail. Let England do well, but we’ll still beat them when we play them.”

Source: Independent (http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/internationals/let-england-do-well-ndash-well-still-beat-them-says-brown-1941324.html)

UEFA president Michel Platini on Thursday told Ukraine it had a two-month deadline to make up lost time in preparations for co-hosting the 2012 European Championships with Poland.

“I said that in the coming two months, they have to show some strong signs that Ukraine will progress,” former France star Platini said after meeting with Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

“It’s not an ultimatum,” he said, adding that Yanukovych “knows that there is work to do but he gives all guarantees that the Euro 2012 will take place in the best conditions in Ukraine”.

Platini expressed his hope that all four bidding Ukrainian cities would be able to host matches in the tournament, but warned that if outstanding issues were not resolved, only two venues would be used as opposed to four in Poland.

The UEFA chief has visited the four host cities — Kiev, Donetsk, Kharkiv and Lviv — during this, his most recent two-day visit, inspecting stadiums and airports.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald (http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/ukraine-given-deadline-to-make-up-euro-2012-delays-20100409-rvgc.html)

The Warsaw Metro is celebrating 15 years since the first train pulled out of Centrum station. Commuters are still waiting for the promised second line, however.

On 7 April 1995, the first section of the Warsaw underground, between Kabaty and Politechnika stations, was opened. It took twelve years to build the first eleven metro stations. Now the first, and so far the only, metro line, which connects southern and northern districts of the capital, is 23.1 km long and includes 21 stations. The cost exceeded 3.5 billion zloty (0.9 billion euro).

The Warsaw Metro carriages, which travel at a speed of up to 60 km per hour, transport over 520,000 citizens of Warsaw daily.

Even though the Warsaw Metro is already fifteen years old, it consists of only one line. The construction of sections of the second west-east line was scheduled to completed EURO 2012 football championships but due to the lack of financial sources it is expected to be finished only in 2016.

The second line, which will connect the city centre and Bemowo district with Praga on the east bank of the Vistula River, will consist of 22 stations. The central section, however, including Rondo ONZ, Nowy Swiat and Stadion stations, might be ready in 2013. The cost of the entire west-east line is estimated at 4.1 billion zloty (970 million euro).

Source: The News.pl (http://www.thenews.pl/business/artykul128945_warsaw-metro—fifteen-years-old-today.html)

UEFA president Michel Platini and a UEFA delegation visit UEFA EURO 2012 co-hosts Ukraine on Wednesday and Thursday for an update on preparations for the EURO final round in two years’ time.

Mr Platini will be accompanied by UEFA vice-president Marios N Lefkaritis and senior UEFA administration members on the trip to the four host cities in Ukraine – Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kyiv and Lviv.

The welcoming Ukrainian delegation will include representatives of the Ukrainian government, among them the Ukrainian vice-prime minister Borys Kolesnikov, Football Federation of Ukraine (FFU) president Grigoriy Surkis and Ukraine 2012 tournament director Markiyan Lubkivskyi.

An update will be given on the state of preparations in the host cities, and visits will take place to all four stadiums that will stage matches at UEFA EURO 2102. On Thursday, Mr Platini will meet the president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, in Kyiv.

Ukraine are co-hosting the final round with Poland from 8 June to 1 July 2012. It will be the third time that the final tournament is jointly hosted by two countries – after Belgium/Netherlands in 2000 and Austria/Switzerland in 2008. Gdansk, Poznan, Warsaw and Wroclaw are the four Polish host cities for the 2012 tournament.

Source: UEFA.com (http://www.uefa.com/uefa/aboutuefa/organisation/president/news/newsid=1472870.html?autoplay=true)

CRAIG LEVEIN believes there was a time when players were afraid to represent Scotland in case they were ridiculed when they went back to their clubs.

And the need to restore the country’s credibility weighs so heavily on the new national manager’s mind he admits to being dogged by the fear of failure.

So far Levein has a flawless played one, won one record – but it will take more than the defeat of the Czech Republic in a friendly for him to claim Scotland has been transformed from a side that was once a laughing stock.

The George Burley era left its mark on the minds of the players who suffered a failed World Cup campaign and saw the manager removed after a mauling from Wales that was the bottom of the barrel for the SFA.

Levein knows the extent of the psychological damage that was caused by lurching from one embarrassment to another.

He said: “Players at international level have large egos. They get to international level through having a belief in themselves.

“Some of them had got to the stage where they didn’t like going back to their clubs after playing for Scotland.

“They felt it left them open to ridicule and that’s one of the many reasons they have for wanting to make things better.

“Some of the players had baggage from the last camp. With a new manager, that baggage can be shed right away. I’ve come in and already there’s a feeling of things being lighter and clearer.

“My job is to encourage the players, use them in their best positions and get them working. First and foremost, we have to get Scotland beating other teams.

“It sounds pretty obvious but sometimes you can lose that focus. It needs to become the most important thing for us.

“Any Scotland supporter would expect to see their team roll their sleeves up and run themselves into the ground in pursuit of a win.”

Being responsible for the hopes and dreams of a nation doesn’t sit lightly on Levein’s shoulders.

He understands the fickle nature of supporters where the national team is concerned and doesn’t assume anything when it comes to assessing what lies in front of him.

Levein is nobody’s fool and he doesn’t insult his own intelligence by practising self-delusion.

The 45-year-old former Dundee United boss said: “Managing other people’s expectations is one of the biggest problems for me.

“The last campaign was poor and there’s a lot of despair about that. It’s always the same with Scotland, either we’re great or we’re c**p. It’s never anything in between.

“Now there’s been a change, everyone’s buoyant and looking forward again. I hear people already starting to talk about what will happen when we qualify for the Euro Championships in 2012.

“Yet the evidence isn’t there to support that, although that doesn’t mean to say we’re not hoping to find that evidence.”

The man leading the search knows he will be judged on the quality of his detective work.

And he already feels the weight of public opinion on his shoulders six months before his first competitive match against Lithuania. “It’s a funny thing about getting here,” he says while starting to describe the pressures of high office as they apply to football management. “There’s a fear that I won’t do this properly.

“The euphoria of getting the job lasted about a day and then I thought, ‘I’ve got to make this work’.

“The overriding feeling now is that I don’t want to let anyone down.

“The chance to make this a successful venture is one of the reasons I left United and took the job. Scotland haven’t qualified for a major tournament since 1998 so what a great achievement it would be to make that happen.”

The manager has already been busy by leading the campaign for an international amnesty for the Boozegate offenders – keeper Allan McGregor and Barry Ferguson.

An olive branch was extended to Kris Boyd and the Rangers striker, who refused to play for Scotland under Burley, is back on board.

And LeeMcCulloch has also been persuaded to end his self-imposed retirement from international football to return to the squad.

So much for the team manager’s pre-appointment concerns that the Scotland job might not offer him enough to do on a daily basis after the rigours of club management. He said: “I wish I hadn’t said that now.

“Some players will wonder what will happen under me, others I know and have worked with.

“All of us share a common purpose and I try to simplify it for the players by telling them that everyone needs to work the same, even if they are more talented.

“There are no exceptions and I base my whole philosophy on that.

“There can only be one focus, the way to win is by sheer effort. Once you have achieved that, you have a base to work from.

“I want to qualify for Euro 2012. I’m proud to be a Scot and everything that means.

“I believe Scots have an inbuilt need to work hard for whatever we achieve. We don’t like to see people getting on through luck or talent alone and we admire people who work for success.

“It makes sense to me that the players who represent this country at least follow that basic Scottish trait. Scotland will work hard to qualify for the European finals.”

Source: Daily Record (http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/football/scotland/news/2010/04/06/i-m-dogged-by-fear-of-failure-admits-scotland-manager-craig-levein-86908-22165214/)