Blazing bust-ups with Dick Advocaat, Andy Goram admiration and Rangers coaching dream - Lionel Charbonnier interview

The Frenchman has alleged he was pushed into playing whilst injured, contributing to him having to take painkillers for 12 years, whilst also charging the Dutch coach with a major role in overspending which led to the financial meltdown of 2012.

Their increasingly toxic relationship would come to a dramatic head in the Ibrox dressing room following a number of heated battles.

Charbonnier pitched up in Govan from Auxerre in the summer of 1998 after being part of France's outstanding World Cup-winning squad.

And despite the 20 years plus time gap, events during his years in Scotland have clearly left a scar yet to fully heal.

He said: “Honestly, I don’t like him. I learned a lot about tactics because he’s a very good tactician but I didn’t like him as a manager. A lot of players were against him in the dressing room.

“He lost a lot of players like Rino Gattuso, Marco Negri, a lot of Latin players were against him because the way he wanted to manage is not our culture.

“I was very sure he would put Rangers into big trouble after a few years, financially. I called David Murray before I left Rangers and I said, ‘Mr Murray, be careful with this coach, you will be in big trouble with him.’

“After, he did what he wanted. He was the owner of Rangers but I told him it would be difficult with that kind of coach. That proved to be the case because they later had the big financial problem. I’m sure Dick Advocaat is one of the people who are responsible for that.”

And yet, things started so well under Advocaat after his move from France. He settled into life in Glasgow quickly and became an almost instant hit with the fans.

Disaster would strike in November when Charbonnier suffered a knee injury in the 1-1 draw with Bayer Leverkusen at Ibrox in the UEFA Cup. It was an injury that would rule him out for the season but he says it was avoidable.

He recalled: “It was very difficult for me because I said to Advocaat, ‘I’m very tired.’

“He said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘Because the World Cup was very difficult for me.’

“He said, ‘But you never played!’ I said, ‘No, even if you don’t play, nervously it’s very difficult to manage your brain and I’m very tired.’

Charbonnier is distraught as he is stretchered off against Bayer Leverkusen

“He said, ‘I don’t care, you are playing. The Rangers fans want to see you. You will go to the job.’

“I said, ‘Ok, ok!’ But I was tired, he never listened to me.

“So when I broke my knee, I was very disappointed because we were making something great with the Rangers fans.

“He and Mr Murray called me together and said, ‘Don’t worry, Antti Niemi will take over in goal and we will wait until you come back.’

“Maybe two weeks after that game, they signed Stefan Klos.

“I thought, ‘Oh, they are not being honest with me.’

“But that’s the way of it in football. You must have a very good goalkeeper so Stefan came and we did a good job together but the problem after this was when Stefan had some injuries at the start of the following season and when I came back I had to play.

“Stefan played the first game against Parma in the Champions League qualifier and after this game, he was injured so I had to play the second leg in Italy.

“However, I hadn’t played for a full year. It was my first week training with the team and Advocaat said on the Thursday before the game the following week, ‘How do you feel Lionel?’

“I said, ‘I feel shit. I’m not ready for the game.’

“He said, ‘How do you think you will be on Tuesday?’

“I said, ‘I will be shit! It will be very difficult because I don’t have speed in my hands.’

“But he said, ‘Oh yeah, but you will play.’

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“Alan Hodgkinson, the goalkeeping coach, told Advocaat, ‘Lionel won’t be good enough for the game.’ Advocaat said it was no problem.

“The game was good. I had a lot of saves to make. I only had a problem with my knee because I hadn’t enough power in my right knee. There was a free-kick that was deflected by van Bronckhorst and I went to my right then I had to go to my left so it takes a lot of power to push off on my right leg but I hadn’t enough muscles to go to the other side.

“At half-time, I said to the coach, ‘I’m very tired and I think the game is up already. Parma will push hard for 10/15 minutes and then they will be tired as well so Antti [Niemi] must play the second half.’

“I told him my knee was making it very difficult for me. My knee was two times the normal size, it was so big. But Advocaat said, ‘I don’t care, you play!’

“He insisted with the doctor that I should play and said I should take an injection but I refused. However, I had to take anti-inflammatories and I had to take them every day for 12 years afterwards because the pain was so sharp.

“We lost a shit goal because of my knee but after that, I made about five or six saves. I was tired at the end but I was very happy about the result because we had qualified for the Champions League.

“However, I ended up in hospital with a hole in my stomach due to having to take the anti-inflammatories.”

With Rangers having qualified for the Champions League group stage, Charbonnier would feature in the first round of matches against Valencia, Bayern Munich and PSV Eindhoven before being dropped for the returning Klos.

That decision would spell the beginning of the end of the Frenchman’s tenure at Ibrox.

He said: “After the first round of fixtures we were first in the group and for the return games he just put Stefan Klos in to play and said nothing to me.

“I said, ‘No, I cannot continue with that guy!’

“At that time, I spoke with a French journalist and the Scottish papers put a story about me. They changed all the things that I said. I didn’t want to speak to a couple of the papers so they took an interview from France and they changed the words and the way I spoke.

“When Advocaat asked me to justify myself about things I would have said in the French press, and badly translated into English by the tabloids, it pissed me off because I gave my health for the Rangers.”

“He said, ‘You spoke badly about your teammates.’

“I said, ‘No way!’

“He said, ‘You have to prove to me you never said this.’

“I said, ‘Coach! I risked my health for you. I played when you were in trouble. I did everything for you and now you are asking me to prove something shit coming out of a journalist’s mouth. No way coach!’

“He put me in the middle of the dressing room and took around 20 newspapers and threw them in the middle with me and said, ‘Lionel has spoken badly about you and I’ve asked him to prove to you all it’s not true.’

“But Albertz and Colin Hendry said, ‘Coach, we know Lionel perfectly and we know he never speaks like this, we are sure he never spoke like this. Maybe you want Lionel to prove something to you but he has nothing to prove to us. Lionel is a part of our heart.’

“They were defending me and Advocaat said, ‘Ok, ok if all the team is okay then it's no problem. You will train.’

“I said, ‘No way! I never want to play for you. It’s finished. You are the coach, I’m just an employee. You will explain this to the people, to the fans. He said, ‘Yeah, I will do what I want.’

“I said, ‘Ok, I will do what I want also but I want to leave now. I want to leave your dressing room because I never want to play for you.’ That was in front of all the players, it was very bad management. So I left but my heart was broken to leave the Rangers fans.

There may have been no love lost between Charbonnier and Advocaat but he won a place in the hearts of the supporters with his flamboyant persona and acrobatic reflexes.

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With Andy Goram departing for Motherwell in the summer of 1998, the task was on to find a suitable replacement. Chairman Murray was integral in persuading Charbonnier to take over the mantle although the Frenchman admits he has no idea how he managed to get in contact with him.

He joked: “Mr Murray called me during the World Cup. I don’t know how he got my phone number because my number was a very special phone number.

“The French national team gave every player one number and we just had to give that number to our families and not to anyone else but Mr Murray called me and we spoke together and after the World Cup, I was very happy to sign for Rangers.

“I told my agent that I wanted to go to Rangers because I had a good feeling with Mr Murray but he never asked me if I had a better offer. I had some offers but I don’t think I had a better offer than Rangers. So it was my first choice and I stayed with this choice.”

Replacing the man affectionately referred to as ‘The Goalie’ was no mean feat for Charbonnier despite pitching up with a World Cup winners medal in his back pocket.

He said: “It was difficult because the goalkeeper before me was unbelievable. So when I arrived and took over from Andy Goram, it was a big, big challenge for me. I never wanted to be the new Goram. I wanted to be Lionel Charbonnier. 

“I never wanted to be a substitute for Andy, it was my own page. He was one of the best goalkeepers, maybe the best goalkeeper for Rangers. I said, ‘Well, maybe now I can be the second Andy Goram.’ He was ‘The Goalie’ and after they said I was ‘Le Goalie.’"

The Rangers support can be hard to please at times but the adulation on offer should you win them over is spine-tingling. It didn’t take long for Charbonnier to do just that, so much so, that a full Ibrox belting out the Le Marseillaise when he made a save rendered him speechless.

He recalled: “It was unbelievable for me. I played for Auxerre for about 20 years and the fans were good but what the Rangers fans gave me in a few months, it was much better than the Auxerre fans.

“It was unbelievable for me because I knew the Rangers fans loved me. I did my best for the fans and for the club. When I heard the French national anthem, I was really surprised at the beginning because I thought, ‘Oh, they know the French national anthem?’ Then they added some French words and sang, ‘Li-oh-nel Char-bon-nier.’ The whole stadium was singing this song, I knew at this moment that we can make something very great together. The Rangers fans are really, really fantastic. The best in the world.”

The Ibrox club would go on to claim a historic treble that season and Charbonnier says that was largely down to a solid defensive line. He said: “Playing behind Colin Hendry and Craig Moore was unbelievable, Sergio Porrini also.

“They were great players. I didn’t have a lot of saves to make with them because it was like I was playing a video game. I said, ‘Left, right, on your back.’

“They listened to me and I didn’t have a lot of saves to make, maybe one or two but you have to make them because it’s what the Rangers fans expect. If I only had one save to make it’s because we were close together and they listened to me.

“I think a very good goalkeeper is a goalkeeper who stops the ball with his voice. For me, playing in a league game was very difficult because I had only one or two saves to make.

"In a European game, I always had a lot of work to do but it’s easier for a goalkeeper when you have a lot of work to do.”

Like many players who venture through the doors at Ibrox, Jimmy Bell leaves a lasting impression and Charbonnier was no different.

On the legendary kit man, he said: “He was very close to me. He was very important in the dressing room for the atmosphere and for all the players and the foreign players too.

“He was a real Rangers fan, Rangers was in his heart, it was his life. He was the soul of the dressing room. You need someone like this at your club, sometimes it’s a player, sometimes it’s a coach but Jimmy was the soul of the dressing room.

“He was very important for the foreign players when they arrived in explaining how you conduct yourself and act in front of the Rangers fans.

“I’m very proud to have spoken with Jimmy. When he gave you a cuddle or something you thought, ‘Wow! If Jimmy is happy, all the fans are happy!’”

“They still follow me on Twitter. I maybe have about 12,000 followers but about 10,000 are probably Rangers fans!

“I really enjoyed my time with that club. It was unbelievable.”

Nowadays Charbonnier keeps himself busy with radio punditry and coaching his daughter in show jumping, although he admits he’d love to return to Ibrox as a coach one day.

He said: “I’m working on the radio, the biggest radio station in France – RMC. Emmanuel Petit and myself, that’s the dream team for them. I speak about the French league and also the Champions League and Europa League so I speak about Rangers a lot.

“Also, I’m the coach for my daughter because she’s riding now. She’s one of the best riders in France for show jumping so I have to look after her. She’s riding in international competitions so I’m really busy.”

“I haven’t had time to come back to Ibrox but I want to come back to see my fans and maybe one day I will be working for Rangers.

“For me, to come back to Ibrox one day would be a dream, I would be very, very happy to work for Rangers.”