Craig Levein

Craig Levein

Personal information
Full name	Craig William Levein
Date of birth	(1964-10-22) 22 October 1964
Place of birth	Dunfermline, Scotland
Height	1.85 m (6 ft 1 in)
Position(s)	Defender
Team information
Current team	Scotland (Manager)
Youth career
	Lochore Welfare
Senior career*
Years	Team	Apps	(Gls)
1981–1983	Cowdenbeath	60	(0)
1983–1997	Heart of Midlothian	326	(15)
International career
1990–1994	Scotland	16	(0)
Managerial career
1997–2000	Cowdenbeath
2000–2004	Heart of Midlothian
2004–2006	Leicester City
2006	Raith Rovers
2006–2009	Dundee United
2009–	Scotland
*Club domestic league appearances and goals

Craig William Levein (born 22 October 1964 in Dunfermline) is a Scottish former professional footballer and manager of the Scotland national team. During his playing career he played for Cowdenbeath and Heart of Midlothian. He won 16 caps for Scotland and was part of his country's 1990 World Cup squad in Italy.

Playing career

Early career

As a youth, Levein attended Inverkeithing High School, where he was in the football team alongside another future Scottish international footballer, Gordon Durie. His early football career saw him turn out for Dalgety Bay, Leven Royals and Inverkeithing under-16s. At the age of 15, however, he gave up football for a year, only resuming when his brother, who played for junior club Lochore Welfare invited him to training there. Levein subsequently signed for Lochore and after trials with several senior clubs he finally joined Cowdenbeath in 1981.

Levein quickly established himself in the first team at Central Park and soon became a target for larger clubs than Cowdenbeath.

Hearts

In 1983 he moved to Heart of Midlothian for a fee of £40,000 and soon found himself a regular place in the Hearts first team. Levein won the SPFA Young Player of the Year award in 1985 and in 1986 became the first player to retain the title. 1986 was the season when Hearts chased a league and cup double. In the league they were minutes away from lifting the title before goals in the last 10 minutes of the season by Albert Kidd gave Hearts their first league defeat in 31 games. It was enough to knock Hearts off the top of the table and hand the title to Celtic. Levein and his team mates lost 3-0 the week after in the Scottish Cup final against Alex Ferguson managed Aberdeen.

1986 brought further woe for the young Levein when he picked up a serious knee injury in a reserve game against Hibernian. The injury was to change his life. He had a recurrence of the injury in 1988 when he collapsed unchallenged in a game against Rangers and spent a second year out of the game. In 1997 he was forced to retire from the game through knee injury after making 401 appearances for Hearts.

It was not just injuries that kept Levein from playing during his time at Hearts; he was once given a 12-game ban after punching, and breaking the nose of, Hearts teammate Graeme Hogg during a pre-season friendly against Raith Rovers.

Scotland

He made his Scotland debut in March 1990, a 1–0 win against reigning world champions, Argentina, at Hampden Park and played well enough to earn a place in Scotland's 1990 World Cup squad. Levein won 16 caps for the Scotland national team.

Coaching and managerial career

After being forced into retirement as a player, Levein had coaching positions at Hearts and at Livingston. In November 1997 he was appointed as manager of Cowdenbeath and turned a struggling team into one that could challenge for promotion. Cowdenbeath were promoted in 2001, but Levein had left in December 2000 to take over as manager at Hearts.

Hearts

His time in charge of Hearts was highly successful, where he guided them to third place in the SPL in two successive seasons and thus guided them into European competition. He was the first manager to take Hearts into Europe in successive seasons since the 1960s.

Leicester City

His impressive record in Scotland caught the attention of Leicester City, who appointed Levein as manager on 29 October 2004. However after a poor start to the 2005–06 season, which left the club languishing third from bottom in the Championship relegation zone, he was sacked as manager on 25 January 2006.

Raith Rovers

Levein was appointed as manager of his boyhood heroes, Scottish Second Division club Raith Rovers, on 5 September 2006, on a non-contract basis. However, after Dundee United parted company with Craig Brewster, Levein left his non-contract role at Raith Rovers to take up the job at Tannadice.

Dundee United

He was unveiled to the press on 30 October 2006. Levein guided United to four successive home victories, earning him 'Manager of the Month' for November 2006, later repeating the award in March 2007 and again in October 2007. On 21 January 2008 he was appointed Director of Football at the club, giving him a seat on the Board of Directors in addition to his existing managerial responsibilities. In August 2008, he was fined £5000 by the SFA for accusing a referee of bias after a game against Rangers.

Scotland

Levein (centre) providing instructions to Scotland players James Morrison (left) and Charlie Adam (#7, right) during the Brazil v Scotland match on 27 March 2011, played at the Emirates Stadium in London.

On 23 December 2009, Levein left Dundee United to become the new Scotland manager. He agreed a five and a half year deal. In his first match in charge against the Czech Republic, the team they would later face in the UEFA Euro 2012 qualifying Group I, his team posted a 1–0 win over the Czechs, with the goal coming from Celtic captain Scott Brown. However his second game in charge would not be as successful with Scotland going down 3–0 to Sweden on 12 August 2010. This was also followed by a disappointing 0–0 draw with Lithuania and an unconvincing 2–1 victory over Liechtenstein in Scotland’s first two Euro 2012 qualifying matches. Levein dropped in-form striker Kenny Miller and played an ultra-defensive 4–6–0 against Czech Republic in their third game.

In the following game, against World and European champions Spain, Levein adopted a more conventional 4–5–1 formation with Miller in attack. Scotland lost 2–3 despite coming back from 0–2 down to draw level at 2–2. Scotland then beat Faroe Islands 3–0 in a friendly where Levein gave seven debuts due to 9 withdrawals from the initial squad. Scotland won the first two matches of the 2011 Nations Cup with ease, beating Northern Ireland 3–0 and Wales 3–1. The Scots lost 1–0 to the Republic of Ireland in their third game, meaning that the Republic won the first Nations Cup tournament.

Scotland then won an August 2011 friendly against Denmark by 2–1. Scotland realistically needed to beat the Czech Republic in their next qualifier, but could only draw 2–2 after two late controversial penalty kick decisions by Dutch referee Kevin Blom. Scotland won their next two qualifiers against Lithuania and Liechtenstein (both by 1–0) to give themselves a chance of finishing second in the group. However they were unable to do so as they lost 3-1 to Spain with Lithuania also losing 4-1 to Czech Republic.

Scotland's focus now turned to the World Cup 2014 which will be held in Brazil. The Scots were drawn into UEFA qualifying Group A and will play Belgium, Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia and Wales.

Preparations for this began with a series of friendlies starting with a 1-1 draw in Slovenia in March 2012 but later fell to a humilating 5-1 defeat against the USA the following May which grew concerns from fans and media alike regarding Scotland's qualification chances. Scotland bounced back with a 3-1 friendly win over Australia at Easter Road in a game which was overshadowed by the controversial call-up of Ian Black who plays for Rangers FC in the Scottish Third Division. This was despite dropping Lee Wallace from the original squad for the same reason. Black received a mixed reception when he appeared as a late substitute, with some sections of the crowd booing him. It is unclear whether this reception was due to his call up, or due to the fact that he was an ex-Heart of Midlothian FC player playing at the home stadium of bitter rivals Hibernian FC. Several Scotland supporter groups condemned the fans treatment of Black, while he drew strong support from Rangers fans during the club's next home game.

The opening game of WC 2014 qualification started poorly with a 0-0 draw against Serbia at Hampden Park. Hopes of World Cup qualification were dealt another blow when they were held 1-1 draw by Macedonia in Glasgow. After the draw with Macedonia, manager Craig Levein said: "I look at the league table and we're two points off the top. I'm disappointed but not disheartened."

Career statistics

Template:Football player statistics 1 Template:Football player statistics 2 |- |1981/82||rowspan=3|Cowdenbeath||rowspan=3|Scottish Second Division||rowspan=3|60||rowspan=3|0||rowspan=3 colspan=2|N/A||rowspan=3 colspan=2|N/A||rowspan=3 colspan=2|—||rowspan=3|60||rowspan=3|0 |- |1982/83 |- |rowspan=2|1983/84 |- |rowspan=13|Heart of Midlothian||rowspan=13|Scottish Premier Division||19||0||2||0||0||0||colspan=2|—||21||0 |- |1984/85||36||1||4||0||5||1||2||0||47||2 |- |1985/86||33||2||5||0||3||0||colspan=2|—||41||2 |- |1986/87||12||0||0||0||1||0||2||0||15||0 |- |1987/88||21||0||0||0||0||0||colspan=2|—||21||0 |- |1988/89||9||0||2||0||0||0||2||0||13||0 |- |1989/90||35||0||3||0||3||0||colspan=2|—||41||0 |- |1990/91||33||4||0||0||3||0||4||0||40||4 |- |1991/92||36||2||4||0||3||0||colspan=2|—||43||2 |- |1992/93||37||3||3||0||3||0||3||1||46||4 |- |1993/94||30||3||3||0||2||0||2||0||37||3 |- |1994/95||24||0||4||0||2||0||colspan=2|—||30||0 |- |1995/96||1||0||0||0||2||0||colspan=2|—||3||0 Template:Football player statistics 5386||15||30||0||27||1||15||1||458||17 Template:Football player statistics end

International

Template:Football player national team statistics |- |1990||6||0 |- |1991||2||0 |- |1992||1||0 |- |1993||3||0 |- |1994||4||0 |- !Total!!16||0 |}

Managerial record

As of September 2012(club league matches only and all international matches):

Team	Nat	From	To	Record
G	W	D	L	Win %
Cowdenbeath		1997	2000	127	46	26	55	036.22
Hearts		2000	2004	170	74	41	55	043.53
Leicester City		2004	2006	72	20	26	26	027.78
Raith Rovers		2006	2006	7	1	3	3	014.29
Dundee United		2006	2009	117	43	37	37	036.75
Scotland		2009	Present	21	10	4	7	047.62

Honours

Player

Hearts

• Scottish Cup Runner-up: 1

1985–86

• Scottish PFA Young Player of the Year: 2

1985, 1986

Manager

Hearts

• SPL Manager of the Month: 2

Dec 2001, Apr 2003

Dundee United

• SPL Manager of the Month: 4

Nov 2006, Mar 2007, Oct 2007, Nov 2009

• Scottish League Cup Runner-up: 1

2007–08

External links

• Craig Levein factfile at itv.com
• Dundee United F.C. profile
• Craig Levein management career statistics at Soccerbase
• Craig Levein at Soccerbase
• Profile at londonhearts.com