New Hearts manager blasts "lazy" players and claims Romanov is too soft

IT WAS deep into a conversation about his troubled upbringing under the repressive regime of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu when Csaba Laszlo began to become animated on the subject of football's mercenaries.

Making intense eye contact and gesticulating furiously with his arms, the new Hearts manager revealed how he won't accept any high-earning slackers at his club, hinting that the "lazy" ones should buck up or be shown the door by Vladimir Romanov.

In short, he urged Romanov – the man who has overseen the reign of seven coaches in a turbulent three-year tenure as Hearts owner – to get tough.

No more Mr Nice Guy please, Vladimir.

The very fact that Hearts players are holed up in a luxurious five star retreat on the banks of the River Rhine as they prepare for the new season with a 10-day tour of Germany merely underlines Laszlo's assertion that football can give you the "good life".

However, when you consider this is a man who lived the first 20 years of his life in a regime where electricity was cut in the hours of darkness, food was rationed and TV gave no idea of the world on the other side of the Iron Curtain, you begin to understand why he has no time for wasters.

"I have one big problem here," Laszlo says: "I have come to a club where I have met a lot of nice people. Now I would like to change this. I want to see a lot of hungry people. I want people who are hungry for success.

"I am a very bad guy and a lot of people don't accept me but I want to work for success and I want success. All my body language is about trying to gain success. If someone sees me on the training pitch, they will see a guy in the front who wants to be followed.

"A lot of people say bad things about Mr Romanov but I will tell you something about him. He has made a big mistake and the mistake is he has given these people a very nice life. And a lot of these people – not all – are lazy. They are lazy. I have said to Mr Romanov we must change this. We must be more professional. This isn't negative but in professional football if you have players who are successful they deserve to earn very good money. Players at clubs like Bayern Munich, Celtic and Rangers deserve money.

"But if you don't have success you can't cry out all of the time for money. A lot of people say bad things about Mr Romanov but maybe the biggest mistake he has made is putting a lot of money in the club and he hasn't got anything back.

"He must change his attitude and we must look right now at which characters deserve the money. We can give players a good salary but for the bonuses and success they must work very hard. This is a professional way of working and we must take this direction for everyone at the club. I know it's the same for me, if we don't have success I know what happens – I must look for a new job.

"The players need to be the same. If they don't do a good job and they don't like working we have to find a way to change it. Then if we have success we can all celebrate together."

Success for Laszlo as a young footballer was doing well enough to supplement the Romanian food rations with some luxury items such as cheese or quality meats by playing well. Then, when he finally escaped his old life to flee to Germany, he began to realise just how different the existence was of those on the western side of the Berlin Wall.

"I come from Romania and over there we didn't see anything about Western Europe on TV and had no way of finding out things about it. Everyone had a dream about what it was like but no one really knew what was over the border. I had only dreams and imagination.

"But it never really hit me until I made it to West Berlin. I got there and saw lights everywhere I look and it was like nothing I had seen before. I was used to life in Romania where everything was dark. From eight o'clock to 10 and then from three until five we had power but then it was cut. Then we only had candles. When I first saw West Berlin and all the lights I said to myself: 'Wow, this is fantastic.'

"In 1979 and 1980 in Romania we had a terrible time with food. The only way you could buy food from the shops there was with the coupons. Everyone had a coupon for a half kilo of sugar, half a litre of oil and once a month you had one kilo of meat. During this time we played football for food. As a professional player we had the chance once a fortnight to go to a big industrial factory that had fridges with all kinds of food in them.

"We were allowed two bags full of cheese, meat and all the things that were normally reserved only for those in western Europe.

"Thinking of that kind of thing helps me stay balanced and helps me understand the difference between a good life and a bad one. I learned that I now have to enjoy my life. I learned that now I don't have to make a choice between a cheap wine and a very expensive one, that I can take the one I enjoy. I can have two glasses of it, finish off and say: 'thank you very much.'

"I now have a nice place to live in and enjoy while always remembering what is a bad place. When I go to a hotel I don't have to go to a five star hotel to be happy, I can enjoy myself in a two star hotel.

"I don't need a Porsche to show off to people that I am rich. I feel rich in my knowledge, in my soul and in my heart. These are things that no one can ever take from me.

"This is a very important lesson for me to tell young people. In football they can have a very nice life, with a lot of money for a two-hour job in the day, perhaps four hours and then 90 minutes of a game. They must realise this."

If there is one man who plays the game the way Laszlo wants it to be played it is AC Milan's new signing Ronaldinho.

The Brazilian may be seen by many as on the way down after a troubled season at Barcelona but his love of the beautiful game is infectious as far as Laszlo is concerned. His squad may not all be in favour of triple training sessions that comprise early runs through the forest, but with hard work, Laszlo hopes they too can enjoy the luxury trappings of the lifestyle Ronaldinho has.

"I appreciate a footballer like Ronaldinho who doesn't play football for money," said Laszlo, who is fluent in four languages, including English.

"I read somewhere that the most important thing for him right now is that after a good dribble that he turns round to see the fans standing up and applauding him. In his garden he has a football pitch and a personal coach and after training he goes home and tries to perfect free-kicks.

"Players at Hearts or many other teams don't make enough money to buy a house with a football pitch in the back garden but you have a football field outside and you can make the effort to stay there longer. Sometimes you can devote one or two hours more to train more. Maybe then you will be good enough to afford a house with a private football pitch."