It was after midnight in Moscow when Alex Miller decided to accept FC Sibir's offer of a return to full-time football.
Based in Siberia's largest city and playing in the second tier of the Russian league, Sibir's directors had to sell their vision of the club to Miller, but it is the scope of the job that will eventually have appealed to a man who has devoted most of his life to the game.
Miller can be an adamant figure, and he turned Gerard Houllier down when the Frenchman first offered him a job at Liverpool because the role didn't involve coaching. When Houllier contacted him again months later with the same proposal, he had to persuade Miller to take on the director of scouting role by extending it to something more involved than watching the opposition and writing reports.
He wanted to work with the players, to have responsibility on the training ground, to be an influence. At Sibir, Miller will have an all-encompassing role, managing the first team, but also restructuring the football set-up, including the youth and scouting departments. His remit is to redraw the club in his own image.
To some in Scotland, this would be a dour, pragmatic organisation, cold even. Miller is misunderstood in his homeland, carelessly portrayed as a man who lacks vision and charisma. Some Hibernian players once told of team talks when the manager spent most of his time outlining the threat posed by the opposition, while Miller has the joint second-worst record of any Aberdeen manager – 11 wins from 43 games.
Yet to reduce his career to these two perceptions is short-sighted. Miller is only one of several managers to be unable to evade the sense of gloom that has become entrenched at Pittodrie. During his 10 years at Easter Road, he won the 1991 League Cup and was so engrossed in his work that he also helped to take the youth teams. Miller once admitted that his commitment to the game, his allegiance to it, meant that he had neglected his family at times.
It was this thoroughness and application, as well as the keenness of his tactical insight, that led to the job at Anfield in 1999, and his appointment as first-team coach under Rafa Benitez in 2004. The depiction of Miller as an aloof figure doesn't survive the pleas of Liverpool's senior England internationals – Steven Gerrard, Jamie Carragher and Michael Owen – that Benitez retain Miller.
His reputation for being a conservative, limited strategist, is also belittled by his first encounter with the Spaniard. Benitez drew up a 4-4-2 formation on a white board and asked Miller what tactics he would adopt against it, leading to a lengthy and deeply-involved debate. It was the Scot's time at Anfield – he played a prominent role as Houllier's side won the 2001 UEFA Cup and Benitez's the 2005 Champions League – that enabled Miller to allow his ambitions free reign.
He ended his playing career in Hong Kong with South China and had always wanted to experience working abroad as a manager. The assignment with Sibir follows 14 months in Japan with JEF United Chiba and a five-month spell at AIK Stockholm. He saved both teams from relegation, but also left both because of interference from the boardroom.
It was Miller's experience at Anfield that moved him to the head of Sibir's five-man shortlist. The club's directors will also have been impressed by his willingness to take on an extensive task. Having been relegated from the Premier League last season, the team is enduring a spell of melancholy; fifth in the league, they are seven points off the promotion play-off places, and 12 away from an automatic return to the top flight.
Last October, before the three-month winter break, Sibir drew four of their five fixtures, and in many games this season the team has surrendered a winning position. Miller will need to adapt quickly, since 14 games in two months await on the other side of the break, but then he prefers to be meticulous in his work.
In Japan, he had to adjust to the custom of employees remaining at work until their boss has left. With Miller's wife having not initially joined him in the country, he often stayed behind to watch DVDs and try to learn about Japanese football, and would be startled on leaving his office to find all of the staff still in their seats. He had to persuade them not to stay behind.
Although temperatures can dip to -30˚C during the winter, Novosibirsk is not a bleak location. The third largest city in Russia, it is a place of refinement and intellectual endeavour. Under the Soviet regime, the best minds were sent to Novosibirsk and it grew into a cultural and scholarly hub. It is only a three-hour flight from Moscow, and, having assimilated into Japanese life, the 62-year-old Miller will not be fazed by his surroundings.
"Miller attracted us with his experience of working with one of the top clubs in the best league in the world," said Stanislav Zhuravski, an FC Sibir director. "He also has vast expertise in scouting. He is interesting for us not only as professional football coach, but as an organiser of the club's structure."
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