Frank McParland: Liverpool’s Champions League win was my greatest night

“That was definitely the best night of my life,” Burnley’s new sporting director says, the memories rushing back to the forefront of his mind. “It was better than my wedding night!”

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It was the night when all of Liverpool’s dreams came true, European champions from 3-0 down against AC Milan, the glory days revived in the most spectacular of fashions.

Without a distinguished playing career behind him, McParland had worked his way up from a relative unknown to the chief scout of the club that he, his father and his grandfather had always supported.

He had played a role in the recruitment of one of the goalscorers that night, Xabi Alonso, brought in from Real Sociedad nine months earlier.

McParland had also done much of the analysis on AC Milan ahead of that game. His conclusion: the Italian side don’t squander leads.

“I did all the team reports and the opposition analysis, and I remember saying to my wife before the game, ‘If we go down 1-0 there won’t be a chance that we’ll win this game’,” McParland chuckles now.

“At 3-0 at half time she wanted to go home. But we kept the faith and we came through in the end. It was brilliant.

“My dad was a Liverpool fan, my grandad was, they both worked on the docks.

“They were normal fellows, worked hard every day, went to home and away games, and I was involved in that when I was younger.”

Knowing he was not going to make it as a professional player, McParland made the decision to get into coaching at an early age.

“I was a decent amateur player,” he says. “I enjoyed it and started coaching when I was quite young.

“I started my first badge when I was 17. I went to Liverpool as an assistant coach to the under 14s over 20 years ago.

“I think I had 10 different jobs at Liverpool going from assistant coach and finished up as chief scout. I really had a good time there.

“With the scouting I was involved with Daniel Agger, Dirk Kuyt, Xabi Alonso, Pepe Reina, Fernando Torres, a lot of really good players, though there were some that we didn’t do as well with.

“I was in the decision process of signing all of them - the good, the average and sometimes the bad.

“There have been some good ones but the one that has given me a lot of pride, because he came right through the academy, is Raheem Sterling.

“We spent £400,000 on him when he was 15. We housed him, eventually brought his mum up, we worked very hard with him.

“If I had to pick one player, it would be that one.”

Sterling’s arrival at Anfield came during McParland’s second spell with Liverpool.

He had originally departed in 2007 to take the role of general manager at Bolton Wanderers after his former Anfield colleague Sammy Lee had succeeded Sam Allardyce as manager at the club.

Lee lasted only six months as boss and McParland departed with him, spending time as chief scout at Watford between 2008 and 2009.

There he first came into contact with Sean Dyche, who was then working as the Hornets’ under 18s coach.

“He was a very progressive coach,” McParland remembers. “I thought his attention to detail was very, very good and that’s what you need at the top level.

“Also I like his rapport with the players and staff. You could work with him on the shop floor.

“He’s my sort of lad. A proper football person.”

McParland could not resist the opportunity to return to Liverpool when Rafa Benitez asked him to became the club’s new academy manager.

It was a role he carried out for four years before he was informed in November 2013 that he was surplus to requirements.

It was a decision that hurt, but there were no hard feelings.

“Liverpool are still very close to my heart,” he says. “They let me go last time a couple of years ago but I have only warmth in my heart for that club and the city.”

Within a month he had moved to Brentford as sporting director – the role Mark Warburton had just relinquished to become manager following Uwe Rosler’s departure to Wigan Athletic.

Warburton had been another man McParland had worked with at Watford, and together they helped Brentford climb from League One to the Championship play-offs in just 18 months.

Few outside Griffin Park could believe it when the Bees announced in February that they would replace Warburton as manager at the end of the season.

McParland did not expect it either and within a week he had been put on gardening leave until the end of the campaign, his long-term recruitment strategy no longer required.

“It was a surprise,” he admits. “But football is football and there are certain things that are out of your control.

“I’ve got nothing bad to say about Brentford. We took them to a level and now it’s up to them to kick on with it.”

Brentford’s decision to make a change – they have since appointed little-known Dutchman Marinus Dijkhuizen as their new boss - came because of owner Matthew Benham’s desire to take the club in a different direction, relying heavily on statistics for player recruitment.

Benham runs a company that produces football statistics and his strategy has been compared to the so-called ‘Moneyball’ approach made famous in baseball.

While McParland acknowledges that statistics have their place in recruitment, they could not reach complete agreement with Benham on the way forward.

“I’m probably in the middle because I’m an old fashioned scout, I’ve scouted for 20 years,” he says.

“I think that’s even more important than the stats, but I get those as well.

“We will be tinkering with the scouting set-up here. There will be a lot more analysis and we’ll be watching a lot of football matches before we sign one player.

“Brentford is another chapter in the book for me. When we got there we were fifth or sixth in League One and got promoted with four games to go, so we were made up with that.

“Then we managed to finish fifth. For a club of that size and the budget that we had, we did really well.

“I enjoyed every minute working with Mark Warburton and David Weir.

“I was disappointed to have left at the time but the owner makes the decision on what he wants for the club and I have to respect that. I’ve got a lot of respect for the guy because he was great for me in my time there.

“I finished there on the Sunday and ended up here on the Monday.

“It wasn’t a bad solution really.”