'He was never honest with me': Ex-Middlesbrough goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer on his fallout with Steve McClaren which led to a transfer request

Schwarzer spent 11 years at Boro between 1997 and 2008 but almost left Teesside before the team reached the 2006 UEFA Cup final.

The Aussie was talking about McClaren alongside former England winger Joe Cole on the All To Play For podcast, hosted by Tom Davis.

Cole played under McClaren for England and said the manager was unlucky after goalkeepers Paul Robinson and Scott Carson made costly errors during the Euro 2008 qualifying campaign.

Schwarzer responded to that by saying: “I think sometimes you can look at that and say: ‘there is certainly an element of luck.’ But you also make your own luck.

“The environment you make, the decisions you make on who you select, that’s not luck necessarily. That’s good judgement, that’s knowing people, knowing who can handle it.

“Whenever someone is under real pressure you get to see someone’s true colours.

“What I can’t handle and found very difficult, I don’t understand why so many managers do it, is they’re not honest with you.

“You lose respect from a player straight away and that happened with me with him. He was never honest with me.”

Schwarzer says he put in a transfer request at Boro during the January 2006 window, yet a move never materialised ahead of the Teessiders’ run to the UEFA Cup final.

“I called him out a few times and it led to me putting in a transfer request and wanting to leave the club,” Schwarzer added.

“Even after I came back off it, because they wouldn’t let me go, he lied to me again.

“I should have gone back in there and hammered him for it, but it was 2006 going upto the World Cup, European Cup final going up and I was like ‘I’ve just got to get back to playing.’

“We were on our way to hopefully getting to the European Cup final at that time, the transfer window was closing and I was just like well I’ve got to get back to playing games.”

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