I offered to resign too: Burns
Scotland’s caretaker manager Tommy Burns has revealed he was talked out of quitting by Berti Vogts.
Burns was Vogts’ assistant manager and provided advice and support for the whole of the German’s ill-fated two-and-a-half-year spell in charge of the national team.
His position having been undermined by a 1-1 draw in Moldova last month, Vogts resigned on Monday having negotiated a pay-off deal and left complaining of undue media influence and being spat on by supporters.
Burns, who is also head of youth development at Celtic, was set to walk away with him but was persuaded to stay on by Vogts.
Now he will take charge of the Edinburgh friendly with Sweden later in the month and could even emerge as the man to take on the role full-time.
Burns said: “Berti decided he was going to go so I said: ‘Okay, we will go’. He said: ‘No, no, you stay here, you can take it forward. You have the big passion for it, you are a Scotsman’. He insisted that I got on with it.”
Scottish Football Association chief executive David Taylor has made it clear the governing body is looking for an experienced Scot to take over the helm.
As a former Celtic manager, Burns certainly fits that description but knows he has a serious rival in Walter Smith, his Rangers rival in the 1990s.
A number of other Scots are also in the frame but Burns knows he has an opportunity to impress when the Swedes come to the capital on November 17.
But he warned his potential employers that the art of football management was an imprecise science and there were no guarantees that a newcomer could do better than Vogts with the current squad of players.
He said: “Very few football managers are successful for 25 years. Those guys are blessed. What you find is some very good ones have a spell, a four or five-year period where they do well and it is never quite the same again.
“But they still manage to get jobs because they have had this golden spell. It is always a question of beginning again.”
Vogts capped player after player in a desperate search for a competitive team, trawling the English lower leagues and giving raw teenagers an unexpected chance.
The net result was a disappointing start to the World Cup qualifying campaign that cost Vogts his job but Burns argued that a decent team had indeed emerged.
He said: “If we get our 11 strongest players on to the pitch then I think we are more than capable of holding our own.
“On any given day, given a bit of luck and the right circumstances, then we can win games. But when you suddenly lose four or five starting players in one week, like before the Norway game, then that makes the job very difficult.”
