Former Dundee United manager Craig Levein has revealed he once locked a wayward young footballer in a broom cupboard to teach him what life would be like in a prison cell.
Levein, now an advisor at Brechin City, said he took action after a police contact regularly tipped him off about the player’s off the field behaviour.
He said he only intended to lock the player away for a short time, but forgot about him for eight hours and the plan to teach him a valuable lesson backfired as he found the player sound asleep and completely unflustered.
Ex-Hearts, Leicester and Scotland boss Levein, who co-hosts the new BBC Radio Scotland podcast Sacked in the Morning, did not disclose the player’s identity or the club he played for.
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Recalling the incident, he said: “I had one particular player, I can’t even say which club, that I got phone calls about every Monday morning.
“I had a friend in the police and he would give me a heads up if any of the players had misbehaved over the weekend. He was on the phone most Monday mornings about this particular player.
“He was just a young lad too and he was up to all sorts.
“It was constant and I was racking my brains. He was staying in digs for part of the period and I would say to him: Your landlady’s been on the phone this morning saying you got in at six o’clock,’ (and he’d reply):’No, I was in my bed’.
“He could look you right in the eye and just absolutely just tell you a lie without even batting an eyelid and it was week after week after week.
“I said to my assistant: ‘Look, he’s doing my head in’. He’s a young guy and I said to him: ‘You’re going to end up in the nick at some point because your behaviour is way past what is normal’.
“There was a broom cupboard up the stairs, and I said to Housty (his assistant manager at Hearts, Leicester and United, Peter Houston) here’s the key, go and stick him in that broom cupboard.
“What I was trying to do was get the kid to think about what he had been doing and what it would be like to be stuck in a cell.
“We stuck him in the cupboard and then forgot all about him. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. I said: ‘Oh s***!’ I took the key and I went up and I was thinking to myself: ‘He’s been in there eight hours or something’. So I opened the door and he’s sleeping… not bothered his backside. Nothing.
“I had to wake him up. That plan backfired a little bit. I was trying to help. It’s just trying to find ways of getting the players to understand.
“The thing about a football team, it requires discipline. It’s not quite like the army but you’re trying to get everybody on the same page and everybody working really hard. Hard work and teamwork are really important things and for a football manager for his team to be successful you need those things.
“This was my way of trying to get this particular player on track.”
Levein also revealed he was left speechless when a young woman came to see him after one of his players failed to phone her after a night out.
He said: “I was sitting in the office and I got a call saying there was somebody at reception to see me. I went outside and there was this really lovely looking woman.
“She came into the office and she was obviously quite upset. She sat down and proceeded to tell me a tale about the previous evening when she’d met one of my players in a nightclub and he was supposed to phone her in the morning and he hadn’t phoned her, and could I help?
“I was lost for words. I had no idea what to do or say. I didn’t want to get up and give her a cuddle and comfort her but I didn’t want to give out the player’s number because he certainly had a girlfriend, I don’t know if he was married or not — he maybe had both, I’m not sure — but at the same time I was completely stuck for words.
“I just said: ‘Look, I think you need to go home and maybe you’re still a little bit hungover from last night, but honestly I can’t really help in this particular situation.”
