In My Sporting Hero, a new podcast series from Nutmeg, footballers talk about the athletes who inspire them. Sometimes those sportsmen and women are also footballers. Sometimes not. You can listen to the audio on this post, on the podcast app of your choice (just search for ‘My Sporting Hero’) or enjoy the written version below.
This time on My Sporting Hero, our guest is Steven Naismith.
Ayrshire-born Steven was a versatile forward and attacking midfielder for Kilmarnock, Rangers, Everton, Norwich City and Hearts. While at Ibrox, he won three league titles, a Scottish Cup and two League Cups, and helped the Jambos return to the top flight in 2021. After hanging up his boots, he went on to manage at Tynecastle from April 2023 until September 2024. Steven made over a hundred Premier League appearances while at Everton, and earned 51 caps for Scotland.
Steven is now a well-respected media pundit and an ambassador for Dyslexia Scotland.
Steven’s sporting hero is Brian Laudrup, Rangers’ great Dane who won three league titles during the first Walter Smith era and mesmerised Scottish football with his grace, elegance and sheer brilliance.
Growing up as a Rangers fan, I would watch the likes of Ally McCoist, Ian Durrant, Mark Hateley and Basile Boli, but when you are six or seven years of age, you prefer playing the game and stop watching at half-time and go outside to play football. But when Brian Laudrup signed, I remember taking a keener interest because he was an internationalist and something of a marquee signing.
I was fortunate enough to meet him when I was at Rangers, and he told me that his time at Ibrox was the best period of his career. Certainly, he was brilliant when he played in Scotland, and the two or three years after he signed was when he played his best football. He was different to anyone else in Scotland. He was very elegant, he made things look easy and he scored big goals. When I was out in the back garden playing football, he was the guy I wanted to be. He used to wear black Patrick boots, so I got black Patrick boots. I can remember him playing at Euro 96, and that’s when I really got into football, and he was in a good Danish team as well as a really successful Rangers side. I loved Gazza, but I wasn’t that type of personality. I was very competitive and winning meant everything to me whenever I was playing football, and Brian seemed like somebody who was also quite serious about his football, and that was definitely something that drew me to him.
I remember the big goals he scored: Old Firm goals, cup final goals and his goal against Dundee United which clinched nine in a row. That was a header and it’s memorable because he probably isn’t associated with heading the ball. I remember going to Ibrox when they won that league, to see the team with the trophy. They were big moments, and as you grow up, you wanted to achieve them yourself.
Whenever Laudrup got into an attacking situation or he was coming inside to have a shot, the expectation was: this is going to be a goal. It was just normality that he would always score or set up a goal and it’s only when you go on to play the game yourself that you realise how difficult that is. He had such focus, determination and calmness. He seldom showed any emotion, even after he had scored. It was just: get the job done.
As I said, when I became a Rangers player, I got to meet him. It was when he came back to play in a Legends game, and I was a bit in awe of him and I just wanted to listen to what he had to say. He was complimentary to me as a current Rangers player but I just wanted to hear his stories from back in the day, and not so much the funny ones but more how they achieved what they did.
I believe that the foreign players in Britain had a calmness to them, an elegance and a sense that there was a solution to every problem on the pitch. Perhaps they grasped that better than I did internally. It was definitely a different mentality. Also, as a homegrown player, you had lots of connections on the outside, and all the pressure that came with that. I always felt that the foreign players were smarter, that they were more efficient in the way they played, and none more so than Laudrup. That’s what made them heroes to guys like me growing up, because they were that bit different to the norm. Growing up, me and my mates had never heard of an assist, whereas Brian Laudrup could probably get as much satisfaction out of an assist as a goal. That’s just a different way of seeing things, and nowadays it’s the norm.
I often look back on how I felt when I was a player: the nervousness, the pressure, the sense of having to work so hard just to survive this game, to survive at this level. And then you would look across the pitch at one of your teammates and you’d think: how is it so easy for him? But when you have a conversation with that person, you realise that they are going through the exact same feelings that you are. From conversations with guys like Laudrup you realise that even he went through that, and I suppose perception’s everything, but Laudrup would look no more tired at the end of a match than he did at the start. That’s the sign of a good player: it just seemed to come easy to him
.It is only with looking back that I’ve realised how intelligent a footballer he was. A lot of the time he stayed wide to get the ball and drop the shoulder and run with it, and come inside or go outside. But he also picked up lots of clever wee positions that showed his football intelligence. I think he made Gazza better and I think Gazza made him better, but it was because they were on the same page; Brian wasn’t having to spell out to his teammates what he was going to do. Walter Smith played him more centrally at times. I’m maybe doing him a disservice, but he didn’t look fast, yet he would just be able to run away from players by picking up the wee pockets of space in the middle of the pitch and dropping a shoulder to get past somebody and that just opened the game up. I didn’t realise how big and strong he was until I met him, but I never think of him needing to hold players off, that wasn’t his game. It was about how he manipulated players, where he put the ball, where moved his body to, rather than holding somebody off. His close control was probably his biggest attribute. He was so efficient with his touches; he knew where to touch it, when to take an extra touch, when to reel somebody in. He had it all and he was such an asset to Rangers at the time.
There aren’t many players for Rangers and Celtic who are head and shoulders above everybody else. Laudrup was, and Rangers got him at his peak. I was devastated when he left, but it was an incredible bit of business by Walter, and I was just glad to have watched him. He had to do a lot of the heavy lifting in the years he was here, but the quality of the squad definitely helped him. You had forwards like McCoist and Hateley who built up good relationships with him. I remember speaking to Walter about that team and he told me how professional Laudrup was. He was what you saw: calm, lived his life properly and maximized what he could do. From when he came in the door until the end, I think he became a much bigger star. But that’s just down to his consistency, his level of talent and ultimately the trophies that he won.
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