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 Roy Keane would no doubt snigger at Mick McCarthy being included in a section entitled 'Brits Abroad', but the former Ireland Coach's short stint with Lyon is just too delicious to be ignored.
Not so much a brick as a dented breezeblock in President Jean-Michel Aulas' long-term plan to build the Rhône club into European champions, McCarthy had precious little in common with imports like Glenn Hoddle and Chris Waddle, desperately seeking a refuge for their underrated talents.
Indeed, the tough-tackling centre-half had always been one of football's more rustic hard men, but that did not stop him passing one of the most bizarre scouting tests of all time.
The Sunderland manager was playing for Celtic at the time, and then-Lyon boss Raymond Domenech jetted over to Parkhead to watch him in action against Hearts in a Scottish Cup quarter-final. "We were 2-0 up after 15 minutes, then after 20 minutes I was sent off for aiming a wild one at Tosh McKinlay," recalls McCarthy. "He had jumped in on Billy Stark and I took exception. I missed him as he ducked but the intent was still there and I was sent packing. We laugh about it now – and despite everything, Domenech still signed me."
The deal went through in July 1989 and although it's tempting to think one-time bad boy Domenech saw a kindred spirit in his new acquisition, the current France Coach denies any such motivation. "I bought Mick not because he was a fighter but because he was captain of the Ireland team," he explained recently. "If I wanted fighters, I would have signed wrestlers or judo men. He was a solid player, strong in the air - and he could kick the ball a long way."
At the best of times maybe, but McCarthy freely admits that language problems interfered with his ability to kick the ball anywhere at all. "My goalkeeper used to shout at me in French and it didn't make a blind bit of sense to me," he says, dredging up one particularly embarrassing moment. "I think it was 'dégagez le vous' (sic) which means 'clear it'. I told him if he had shouted 'clear it' I would have done, but it ended up in the net."
He also found continental referees a little less forgiving of his aggressive approach to the defensive arts, and was sent off against Montpellier early into his first and only season – with Laurent Blanc on the receiving end of one of his two bookable challenges.
Nor were fellow émigrés spared his wrath, as Waddle discovered right from the start. "When I made my debut for Marseille back in 1989, Mick was lining up against me for Lyon," he remembers. "In the second half, I was tossed the captain's armband and I asked one of my teammates if he could help tie it around my arm. Mick overheard and shouted out: 'Give it to me and I'll wrap it around your bloody neck!'"
McCarthy also proved resistant to, ahem, fly-by-night European coaching theories, such as employing psychologists to help players focus their energies: "I had a session and I ended up with MY arm around HIM consoling him!"
But as much as the big man sounds like a typical English… sorry, Irishman abroad, McCarthy really plunged himself into the new culture. "I sold up and moved to France lock, stock and barrel with my wife Fiona and my three kids, and we decided to try and embrace the whole way of life as much as we possibly could," he says. "We all thoroughly enjoyed it. In fact, if you were to speak to my wife about it she would tell you she still misses it to this day, she absolutely loved it over there. I would like to have been out there and enjoyed the experience longer really.
"I'd like to think if you spoke to people at Lyon they enjoyed me being there too and in some ways I wish it had worked out differently, because in the end I only played about 10 or 12 games for them." A knee injury eventually spoiled the adventure, however, and after failing to win back his place in the first team, McCarthy was forced to cast his gaze back across the Channel. "The World Cup finals in Italy were coming up and I had to start playing or else Jack Charlton couldn't justify taking me," he says.
First Division strugglers Millwall were more than happy to take the combative stopper on board and, after an initial loan deal was cobbled together in March 1990, McCarthy eventually joined the Londoners on a permanent deal at the end of the season – against the wishes of Lyon sporting director Bernard Lacombe, it should be said. He made the Ireland squad, though, and despite his French sojourn having come to a premature end, those months in Lyon have left a lasting impact on his career as a manager.
For a start, his approximate grasp of the language helped him lure Christian Bassila to Sunderland this summer when Auxerre seemed poised to seal the former Strasbourg midfielder's signature: "My French is merde and my Lyon teammates told me I spoke French like a Spanish cow, but I kept ringing [Bassila and his agent], they seemed to understand my Yorkshire accent and he's here now."
He also gained an invaluable insight into the trials that await foreign players opting to pursue their careers in England. "Now I know how difficult it can be for footballers who move to another country, so I can help them more," he boasts. "When you're away from the training ground with the family in a different country where you don't speak the language, things can be very hard.
"There's daft little things as well, like going to buy a new telly and trying to work out all the controls when all the instructions are in French. I didn't watch the poxy telly for about two weeks . . . and when I got it working I couldn't understand a word people were saying on it!" Chances are they weren't talking about Mick McCarthy's stunning Lyon career, but the lad from Barnsley deserves endless respect for jumping into his adopted homeland with both feet.
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