Miko: gifted harlequin
Monday, January 11th, 2010
“Alexei has a great economy of movement.”
Walter Smith
Rangers’ scrapbook is littered with press cuttings and photographs of flawed genius – Jim Baxter, Davie Cooper, Paul Gascoigne - players whose prodigious talent was sabotaged by a mutinous disposition. Another gifted enigma, who is often overlooked by the casual Gers’ fan, is Alexei Mikhailichenko (aka “Miko”): a pasty Ukrainian midfielder whose languid style and exquisite footwork, frustrated and thrilled in equal measure.
Winston Churchill once described the Soviet Union as “A puzzle inside a riddle wrapped in an enigma”. This is a suitable epigraph for Alexei Mikhailichenko – often marooned on the left flank; a pale hunch that shivered in Govan’s winter gaze. Miko’s endeavour off the ball was vaporous, his tackling supine, and body language nonchalant. At times he resembled a reluctant teenager, badgered into playing BB football by his pushy father. Alexei, it appeared, would rather be snug in his Bothwell muse, slurping Rassolnik and guzzling Dovgan. Yet, occasionally, he would emerge from this winter reverie; embarrassing defenders with a dainty pas de deux, conjuring up spells from the muddy touchline, unleashing a pass reserved for an idiot savant; before receding back into footballing hibernation – a wan droop of anonymity.
Aside from being rather indolent, Miko had a mischievous side, and perhaps even a supercilious regard for some of his Ibrox compadres. During a training session at Clydesdale cricket club, he took a notion to ridicule the mercurial John “Bomber” Brown. Big Mistake. Over the space of 30 minutes, the Ukrainian jester danced, feigned and skipped past Bomber, flicking the ball over his head, rolling it through his legs, poking it round his leaden frame - soon Brown resembled a ginger seal sliding around in the mud, lunging at a pale shadow, floundering under Alexei’s genius. Eventually the centre half snapped, bolted over, grabbed Miko by the throat and snarled, “Try that again and I’ll kick f*** out ye”. Despite Alexei’s elementary grasp of the Queen’s English, he understood Bomber’s tribal body language; cowering behind Kuznetsov until the bellicose defender regained his composure.
Miko’s off-field antics are just as amusing as his rumpus with the Bomber. Following a peevish phone call from his neighbours to Ibrox HQ, a bevy of groundsmen were dispatched to the midfielder’s Bothwell manor. On emerging from the conservatory into his back garden they were strangled by a thicket of nettles, Savannah grasses and misbehaving begonias. Abandoned in the corner was a lonely Flymo, slumped against a bin bag bustling with vodka bottles. Miko, it transpires, liked red labels, but not green fingers.
Football supporters are polarised on the merits of cult heroes like Mikhailichenko. Puritans preach that they are underachieving loafs, who squander their talent and indulge their vices - usually in the bookies and boozers of Western Scotland. While romantics wallow in the mystique of a troubled soul who is blessed with greatness. They tolerate their imperfections; compensated by squibs of brilliance that leave them starry eyed, drooling in the stands.
Miko’s foible wasn’t booze and burds, but lethargy and indifference. Walter Smith once quipped that he had a “great economy of movement”. His CV flirted with greatness – Dynamo Kiev, Sampdoria, - but body swerved glory at the eleventh hour. Perhaps by the time he signed for Rangers, aged 30, he realised his career was moribund and motivation slowly dwindled. Was his spell as a Teddy Bear just a frivolous cameo, a listless swan song? We’ll never know. But when the Slav reigned, it was majestic – no Gers’ fan can forget his two Ne’er day goals against Celtic.
Miko’s reputation as an exasperating savant was immortalised when he, ironically, saved his best Rangers’ performance for a meaningless Scott Nisbet testimonial - enthralling the sparse crowd with a virtuosos display; leaving them agape, scratching their heads; wandering down Copland Road dreaming about what should have been. He was indeed Rangers’ gifted harlequin - a puzzle inside a riddle wrapped in an enigma.