George Scanlan: The 'football pioneer' who helped Eric Cantona and Andrei Kanchelskis at Man Utd

Soccer Saturday's Johnny Phillips pays tribute to a "football pioneer" who helped Andrei Kanchelskis and Eric Cantona settle at Manchester United...

The life of one of English football's great pioneers will be celebrated this weekend.

He worked with the USSR during the 1966 World Cup, then with England at Italia '90. He sat on the bench during Aston Villa's glorious European Cup campaign of 1982, he became a close confidant of Manchester United greats Eric Cantona and Andrei Kanchelskis and he was the inspiration for the likes of Jose Mourinho in the modern era.

George Scanlan died last week at the age of 82. He was a hugely gifted linguist who used his talents to become a skilled interpreter and advisor for some of Europe's great football teams.

Scanlan was first and foremost a scholar who became Head of Russian Studies at Liverpool Polytechnic in the 1960s. It was during this time that European club football was expanding rapidly with the advent of the European Cup in 1955 and as a result there were opportunities opening up in the game for interpreters.

Scanlan became an interpreter and advisor for British sides who were travelling abroad during this period. His work was so impressive that he was quickly in demand from the Soviet Union's top clubs as well, working for Dynamo Moscow, Spartak Moscow, Torpedo Moscow, Shakhtar Donetsk, Dynamo Kiev and Dynamo Tbilisi. In 1966 he worked for the Football Federation of USSR as the national team's official interpreter and advisor at the World Cup.

Owing to his close connections with Liverpool stalwart Ronnie Moran, whom he played alongside in junior football for Bootle, he became a regular member of the club's travelling parties in European competition in the 1970s and '80s.

When working for Aston Villa, manager Tony Barton even had Scanlan sit on the bench with him for the club's European Cup quarter-final first leg tie away at Dynamo Kiev in 1982.

Of all Scanlan's European Cup adventures, he had his work cut out on this particular trip as one of the continent's most inhospitable and formidable venues lived up to its reputation.

On arrival in Kiev the squad was relocated from a previously arranged out-of-town luxury hotel to a run-down 1940s place in the city centre. Then, at short notice, the kick-off time was brought forward two hours from 7pm to 5pm, leaving Barton's men less time to prepare for the tie. Villa's goalless draw was hailed as the best performance of their campaign. They won the return 2-0 at Villa Park and went on to lift the European Cup in May.

In the Premier League's 21st century age, where first-team squads are made up of a large proportion of foreign players, every club has an interpreter working for them.

Today boundaries are easier to break down, but virtually all of Scanlan's work took place during the Cold War era and yet he became a hugely respected figure on both sides of the Iron Curtain. He was fluent in many languages, having also studied French, Arabic and Persian at Cambridge University. In the 1990s he worked with Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, acting as interpreter for Cantona and Kanchelskis among others. He later helped both players with their autobiographies.

Scanlan wasn't just an academic working in football, he was a keen student of the game. During his time at Liverpool Polytechnic he briefly became manager of Marine, a local non-league club in Crosby.

It is interesting to wonder how his career might have panned out in the modern era. There are clear parallels with Mourinho, whose big break in football came as an interpreter for Bobby Robson at Sporting Lisbon in 1992. Scanlan worked with Robson at the World Cup just two years earlier but unlike Mourinho, whose coaching career was in its infancy, Scanlan's work in management with Marine was a distant memory.

Scanlan worked with many of the game's greats. In more recent years he would give talks to students around the country about his life as a travelling interpreter in football, sharing his experiences of working with some of the game's greatest players, managers and football teams.

At Marine's Northern Premier League game against Spennymoor United on Saturday there will be a tribute to Scanlan, with family members present to mark the passing of a man who will be fondly remembered at home and abroad; one of football's true pioneers.

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