MICHAEL Stewart, ambassador. This greeting would raise a wry grin on the faces of some very prominent managers, whose battles with the head-strong player could only make a promotion to diplomat seem more unlikely. Fiery, impulsive, self-destructive. Stewart was perceived as an agitator rather than a force for good. But that was then.
Last week the 27-year-old midfielder was appointed to the grandly-termed position of first ambassador of the Heart of Midlothian Education and Community Trust. This is an organisation set-up for the advantage of the local area and provides the club
with a compelling retort to those who claim the gaze at Tynecastle is fixed only so far as the city boundaries – that city being Kaunas.
Stewart grew up in Corstorphine, and drew benefit himself from the club's coaching work with Edinburgh's youth. Hearts still missed out on the young Stewart, although they have since made up for it by signing him twice.
His development was made at such a pace that he became a wanted teenager, signing for Sir Alex Ferguson's Manchester United at the age of just 16. Like the vast majority of United trainees, he didn't graduate to fully-fledged first-team regular. But he did better than most and managed 14 matches. It's also easy to forget that as recently as 2003 he was representing the Old Trafford club in the Champions League.
Yet he must persistently fight the perception that somehow he flopped by failing to establish himself at the most famous club in the world. Unhappy loan spells at Nottingham Forest and Royal Antwerp helped harden this notion, as did the curious matter of an unsuccessful trial period at Rangers in the summer of 2004. Although he still had two years left of a lucrative contract at Old Trafford, Stewart had decided enough was enough.
"I made a decision to come back up the road from England and settle back in Edinburgh," he recalled. "Maybe if it was purely a footballing decision I would have stayed down in England. But my friends, my family, my life is here. One or two things did not go the way I wanted them to go initially, when I came back. So again I was facing an uphill battle.
"You look at a lot of young kids who come through the ranks in Scotland," he continued. "They come through and do not have a previous reputation. They are starting from scratch. What I had done in my career came back to the thing at Manchester United, where I didn't make it. Subconsciously people look at that as failure. And then came Nottingham Forest (where Stewart went out on loan from United, played 15 matches and then was sent back after a training ground fracas with a team-mate). When I came back up the road I wasn't starting from scratch. A whole lot of people knew me and had an opinion about me. I was not coming in fresh. People already had expectations, or had formed an opinion on me.
"I feel pretty happy with what I have done, but because I started-out again (in Scotland] after being a 'failure', I am playing catch-up with some boy who started off at 20 years-old and has not done anything. For example, if they make a 20 yard pass it's a great pass. If I do it, it's just a shrug of the shoulders."
While conferred with one title last week, he has also managed to rid himself of another – that of former Scottish international.
The articulate Stewart has further reason to stand out from the crowd after making a return to the Scotland fold after six years in the wilderness. His previous three Scotland games were relatively unsatisfying affairs at the beginning of Berti Vogts' reign. The German's initial teams were cluttered with debutants, some who should have been there, others who shouldn't. They were carted off to Asia and handed jerseys for games against the likes of a Hong Kong XI and South Korea. Before Stewart was called-up as a late replacement by George Burley for Scotland's midweek friendly against Northern Ireland his last international appearance was made in front of 3,000 people, against South Africa. More people watched him play for Manchester United reserves.
"This felt a lot more like the real thing," he said on Wednesday evening, after playing the last half an hour of the goalless draw. Stewart did himself no harm with a performance as accomplished as those he has posted in a Hearts shirt this season.
He and his team-mates were saved from defeat by a missed penalty from old pal David Healy, someone else who managed to overcome rejection from Old Trafford. When the pair clasped each other at the final whistle, it was easy to conclude they had done all right for themselves. If this is failure – Healy has since completed a £1.5million move to Sunderland, while Stewart is midfield linchpin for the club he supported as a boy – then most players would happily be branded flops.
Stewart is in a good place now, and earlier this week was described as being "more mature" by Steven Pressley, his former Hearts team-mate and now current Scotland coach. Pressley also referred to Stewart's previous tendency to be his own worst enemy. Did he really build a gallows for himself through sheer belligerence?
It is revealing to learn that one of Stewart's main allies at Old Trafford was Roy Keane, another player with a reputation for knowing his own mind. The pair met up again when Keane signed for Celtic in 2005, and chose to base himself in Edinburgh.
When Stewart's two-season spell with Hibs came to a rather sour end in 2007, he went to train at Sunderland, by then managed by Keane. There was a definite intent on the part of both to make this a permanent arrangement, but Stewart, hampered by a lack of fitness brought on by being exiled from the Easter Road first-team by John Collins, had what he himself described as a "nightmare" in a bounce match. It was another bruising experience, but one he has learnt how to handle.
"When I was young, everything was fine as I progressed through the ranks," he reflected. "But then things began to get a little bit difficult, and I wasn't getting as many games as I felt I should be getting.
"That disappointment of not progressing as quickly as I felt I should be was maybe when I was more difficult to manage. When things are going fine, and a player is playing every week, there is very little man-management you need.
"I was a young player at a big club and didn't play as many games as I wanted to. That was when I was difficult. And then going to different clubs, and falling on hard times. Well, you learn things from that."
He stands now at the cusp of the second-half of his career, and there is much still to aim for. "The driving force inside me says I am happy here," he revealed. "Yes, a move back to England maybe burns inside of you slightly in terms of going down to compete at a high level, but for the next few years I would like nothing more than to be a member of a successful Hearts team."
Stewart is buoyed by the presence of someone he rates as only the third top-class manager he has known in his peripatetic club career. Ferguson clearly is one, despite the way it ended at United. Tony Mowbray, who brought him to Hibs, is another. And Csaba Laszlo, Hearts' current manager, makes up the triumvirate.
"With the new manager I am learning so much," he said. "He wants people to be vociferous and stamp their authority. But maybe in the past I could be accused of being too vociferous, and other players might have been frightened, or wilted.
"He wants people to be vociferous, but in a positive way. Maybe on occasion I have over-stepped the mark. He opens your eyes about how to get a positive reaction from a player, rather than make them go into their shell. He fills you with confidence and makes you want to do better.
"Even today he was saying: 'listen, I don't want to rule over anybody. I don't want to be a policeman'. It's just a case of being conscious of the right things to do.
"With some managers, a player might annoy them and then they'll just try and piss that player off. 'I'm the manager, I'll show you.' Unfortunately in football I have come across people whose man-management skills are a nonsense."
It is no secret that his departure from Hibs was prompted by a complete breakdown in his relationship with Collins, who left him on the bench when the Easter Road side lifted the CIS Insurance Cup against Kilmarnock in 2007.
"I have experienced a lot of things like that, where I have fallen on the wrong side of decisions," Stewart said.
"It takes a lot to get yourself back up and believe in yourself, especially when there are a lot of people trying to knock you down.
"A situation was fabricated where I was made to look the trouble-maker. But I am a firm believer in what does not kill you makes you stronger."
It is festival-time, and the streets of Edinburgh are teeming with faces. What would Stewart do if he and Collins found themselves sitting in the same cafe?
"I am pretty sure I would not have a coffee and a discussion with him," he answered. "But I am not one for sitting there glaring, and sending daggers over to him. I just have nothing really to discuss with the guy. I don't respect the way he handled things.
"But it's a chapter that has been and gone. I don't give a lot of thought about what happened. I won't change my opinion on the characters involved. But I won't hold grudges. That wastes energy.
"People who know me know what I am about," he continued. "I can look in the mirror and know I have been true to myself.
"I spoke to quite a lot of people high up in the sport at the time and they were of the same opinion. They told me: 'Michael, as long as you can get up in the morning and look in the mirror and know you have been honest and truthful, then don't worry about anything else'.
"It was difficult to believe that at the time, when you see things crumbling around you. But I am who I am. That is something that won't change."
The full article contains 1813 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
