It was not all that long ago that Steve McClaren was merely a figure of fun for British newspapers.
The Wally with the Brolly decamped to Holland after his debacle with England and re-emerged as the equally risible Schteve, after adopting an ill-judged Dutch accent in an attempt to blend in during his first television interview.
Schteve was the coach of Twente Enschede and began his Champions League campaign with a spanking from Arsenal. Business as usual, then. The Guardian introduced a weekly column 'Ask Schteve' written in his bizarrely fashioned patois. Midway through the season it was quietly dropped. Schteve was second in the Dutch league. He seemed to be doing rather well without us.
Now nobody is laughing. Win at NAC Breda and McClaren will collect Twente Enschede's first league title since 1926 (and even that was as Sportclub Enschede, who merged with Enschedese Boys in 1965 to form the modern Twente). This will make him the only working English manager to have won a major league prize in Europe (unless one counts Roy Hodgson's title wins in Sweden and Denmark, and the last of those was in 2001).
Although the Twente resurgence began under a previous coach – Fred Rutten, now with PSV Eindhoven, got the club into the Champions League via a play-off before departing for Schalke 04 – McClaren has performed exceptionally well. When Rutten left he took one of the best players, holding midfielder Orlando Engelaar, with him, and Twente remain a selling club. They are certainly not expected to consistently challenge the power of the big three in Holland, let alone beat them. Now there is talk of McClaren returning to England, with West Ham United among his suitors, but the question remains: why would he want this? West Ham, if they even survive this season, would appear to have several years of struggle on tight budgets ahead. Why would McClaren take a step down?
First, he must clear the final hurdle – Ajax are a point behind and anything less than victory in Breda is likely to end in crushing disappointment having led all the way – but, once over, he will have his pick of significant European clubs. Sporting Lisbon are interested, as are Hamburg. Not the cream of Europe, maybe, but a potential Europa League finalist and a club that began the season in the Champions League.
Why should McClaren return to a country where he is not respected, to work for a club that has absolutely no chance of success, where he will be just another mediocre Brit trying to keep his head above water while all the plum jobs go to foreign coaches? Unless he is a miracle worker, the next manager of West Ham can only appear ordinary. He will not have the funds, or the talent pool, to compete with the best. McClaren has earned the right to be better than that; he has earned the right to be taken seriously.
Back in the Premier League, the first false step will find the past exhumed. Failure, umbrellas and sentences trotted out like Paul Waterhouse's Amsterdam copper. McClaren deserves more. He should keep well clear of us, for two more years at least.