DANIEL Stendel has already scaled Scotland’s tallest mountain. Now he hopes to hit the heights with Hearts. Even if a cursory glance at the Ladbrokes Premiership suggests he has a mountain to climb.
The most protracted transfer of the season came to an end yesterday – Barnsley’s thinly veiled legal threats for missing compensation notwithstanding – when this engaging 45-year-old from Frankfurt an der Oder on the German-Polish border was paraded at Tynecastle, the first German manager in our game since the SFA said auf wiedersehn to Berti Vogts some 15 years ago.
While one of his first public utterances was the rather breezy off-message admission that “The Hearts, I had never heard of – sorry!” he swiftly changed his tune to speak of recalling Celtic, Rangers, Hearts and Aberdeen whilst “a young boy living in East Germany”.
What is undeniably true, however, is that the man who led Barnsley out of League One and into the Championship while Jack Ross’ Sunderland lost out in the play-offs has a head for heights and doesn’t mind a challenge.
He set out from his Barnsley base camp to bag Ben Nevis this September after he had hiked up Mount Snowdon and Scafell Pike in the company of the Yorkshire club’s chaplain.
While he would love to return Hearts to the sunlit uplands sooner rather than later, first he must free them from what you might call the foothills of the Premiership table.They currently sit joint-bottom with 12 points from their matches to date, their position having worsened in the five weeks or so since Craig Levein’s services were dispensed with as manager.
“When I started at Barnsley, a friend of mine was the chaplain of the club,” said Stendel. “He likes to climb mountains. So we started with Snowdon, then Scafell Pike and, in September, we climbed Ben Nevis.
“For me the important thing was it was the highest mountain in Great Britain to climb. And I did it. What can make you happier than climbing the highest mountain?”
Stendel’s only previous visit to Scotland had come a couple of weeks ago when his tour guide that day was Craig Levein, his immediate predecessor in the job. Didn’t he find that a little weird?
“It was a good talk, a good exchange of views,” said Stendel. “After a short time I realised who he was, of course.”
Stendel hasn’t been here long, but it seems reasonable for the Hearts fans to expect a lively time. While his early season record up in the Championship this season was enough to get him his P45 – Barnsley also claimed he had been talking to a nameless Championship rival, perhaps Huddersfield, about taking over there – the bond between him and the Barnsley fans was illustrated by the image of him doing shots of tequila with them. A local pub has an area of the bar to this day called “Stendel’s corner”.
“This told me everything about the power of social media!” recalled Stendel.
“I think it was the one and only time when I went for a drink with the fans, but suddenly everyone says, ‘Oh, he drinks so much’.
“The atmosphere was nice. The situation was not nice when you are sacked and terminated from your contract. But I liked to work in Barnsley. I loved the passion from the people and the town.”
One of Stendel’s immediate goals will be rebuilding that disconnect with the fans at Tynecastle. While he laughs off comparisons with Jurgen Klopp, he has been told that his aggressive, attacking style will fit in perfectly. “Some people know the Scottish league better than I think said I’m in the right place,” he said.
Stendel has seen Hearts’ last three matches. It hasn’t been an easy watch, although one of the priorities here in January will be thinning the squad out, not supplementing it. His main task in the short term will be assessing precisely what he has. “The last three games was not the real Hearts,” he says. “I hope not!”
He curses the lack of direct flights from Edinburgh to Hannover, making it difficult to return regularly to see his two grown-up children.
He is a former teammate in Germany of both Ibrox legend Jorg Albertz and former Hearts manager Valdas Ivanauskas. “Both are good guys,” said Stendel. “I was surprised when I saw the past Hearts managers and I said, ‘Ivanauskas? Manager? Here?’ The football world is very small.”
The fact his old adversary Ross is now in situ at the other side of the city, and the pair are on a collision course for December 29, is another example of that.
“We were promoted last year but I did not win against him,” says Stendel. “Maybe I can start here.”
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