Hibs Exclusive: Former favourite pinpoints key to sustained success

Blazing a trail - Rory Whittaker became youngest debutant in Hibs history at just 16. | SNS Group

Hibs great Guillaume Beuzelin believes the next Easter Road gaffer MUST build on the most important legacy of Nick Montgomery’s brief reign – by continuing to give promising youngsters training and game time with senior pros. And former fan favourite Beuzelin insists promoting from within is part of the “Hibs way”.

Development squad head coach Beuzelin is just back from leading a mix-and-match group of youth players at an international tournament in his boyhood home of Le Havre. At a time of the year when everyone in academy football is dealing with movement between age groups, the Frenchman – a classy midfielder who lifted the League Cup with Hibs in 2007 – is already thinking about some of his players taking that final step into the professional game.

One of Montgomery’s first acts as gaffer, when he replaced Lee Johnson back in September, was to call the best under-18s into first-team training. As well as making Rory Whittaker the youngest debutant in club history at just 16, Monty – sacked with two games of the season remaining – promoted a handful of youngsters during a difficult season.

“We have guys like Jacob MacIntyre and Rudi Molotnikov training with the first team regularly now,” said Beuzelin. “That is very good for us. Josh Landers, Dean Cleland too.

“Hopefully the new manager will keep this in place. Because that is the best way for our boys to shine, to train day in, day out with the first team.

“I think the Hibs manager has to have that mentality. Otherwise it doesn’t work.

“A club like us, we have a reputation for producing our own players. And we need to carry on like this. The next manager, I’m sure, will follow the same path. Because if you play only senior players, don’t create a pathway, that’s not the Hibs way.

“When you think about it, of course, it’s also better value for the club, producing players and selling them later on in the process.

“When they train with the first team, the big difference is the speed. It’s totally different, a big jump from the under-18s. The only way to adapt to that speed is to get in there and train with the senior team all the time.

“From the manager’s point of view, the good thing about having youngsters coming in is obvious. Anything you ask him to do, he’ll do it!

“Obviously you cannot win football matches with only youngsters in the first team. You need the right senior players to take them under their wings.”

Beuzelin had to deal with a few curveballs when pulling together a team for the tournament back in France, with different continental age groups, first-team necessities AND the Scottish exam timetable wreaking havoc, the former Coventry and Hamilton player explaining: “We took the under-17s, which is not an age group we actually have. We have under-16s and under-18s. So I had to take a bit of each squad to go over.

“It was also tricky because the under-17s all have exams at the moment. So some of the boys couldn’t make it.  And a couple of the other 2007 boys, like Rory Whittaker and Josh Landers, just stayed here in case the first team needed them. So I took four under-15s to the tournament, actually. A real mix of the squad.

“It was an international tournament that I’d actually played in when I was about 16, in my home town. And my brother organises it now in Le Havre, where I was born and raised, in a suburb called Gonfreville. It’s a boys’ club, a big boys’ club but not professional, so they are doing something remarkable in organising a tournament like this.

“We finished third out of eight teams. We didn’t lose a game over 90 minutes, only lost on penalties in the semi-final against Cadiz, the Spanish team.

“We didn’t concede a single goal over the whole tournament, which was quite pleasing. Dean Cleland won the top scorer, also. And we also won the Fair Play award which made me quite proud, because it summed up the attitude of the group not only on the pitch but off the pitch.

“When I was young, because France is in the middle of Europe, those kinds of tournaments are happening all year. We have teams from Portugal, Spain, Italy, Germany, even England, coming for tournaments.

“It’s not such a big thing in Scotland. So we need to take our boys to face that different challenge, playing against foreign opponents, in a different environment.

“As a coach, you are also looking for what happens off the field. You want to find characters, see leadership, see players being respectful. It was very positive for me to see a different side to the players.”