Only a few weeks ago, Ian Cathro was back in Glasgow when Rangers took on his Saint-Etienne side in a pre-season friendly at Ibrox.The match itself was an unremarkable affair, with Rangers winning 2-1 thanks to a brace of penalties from Lawrence Shankland and Thelo Aasgaard.Generally speaking, there would be no appetite from journalists to speak to the manager of a visiting team for a pre-season kickabout. But this was different. This was a Scottish manager back on home soil. A coach who has become a pariah in the country of his birth thanks to an ill-fated spell in charge of Hearts 10 years ago.Yet also a man who continues to make a success of himself on foreign shores, now in charge of one of the biggest clubs in French football. Surely there would be a story to tell.After the game, a few reporters had gathered outside the press conference room at Ibrox and eventually we were able to grab one of the Saint-Etienne media staff as they made their way out of the stadium. Ian Cathro was back on the touchline in Scotland last month to take on Rangers in a friendlyThe request was simple and straightforward enough. What would be the chances of getting ten minutes or so with Cathro for an interview?‘No,’ came a blunt and unequivocal response. End of discussion. Perhaps it should have come as no surprise that Cathro had no interest in speaking.Earlier in the summer, when he had made the decision to leave Portuguese side Estoril to take charge of Saint-Etienne, he had given an interview which was most illuminating in terms of his views on Scotland.‘As we all know, life is made up of decisions,’ Cathro told Coaches’ Voice, a platform which specialises in long-form interviews and podcasts with managers.‘In December 2016, after leaving Newcastle, I chose Hearts in Scotland as my next professional destination. In theory, it was my first opportunity as a head coach. However, I don’t see it that way, as it turned out to be the wrong decision.‘Scottish football is very peculiar. For the very same reasons that led me to tell my parents years earlier that I wanted to leave, I shouldn’t have returned to Scotland.‘I am referring to the mindset of the people who run football in my country, and the working conditions they offer to professionals in the game.‘In any case, the seven months I spent at Hearts helped prepare me for whatever might happen in my professional career. You have to be grateful when an experience shows you what you don’t want for yourself.’Without putting too fine a point on it, Cathro clearly has no great affection for Scottish football. There will be plenty of Hearts fans for whom the feeling is mutual.Certainly, the prospect of Cathro ever working in Scotland again is extremely remote. Witnessing another solar eclipse feels more likely at this point. The Dundonian was just 30 years old when he was given the top job at TynecastleBut how did it come to this? How did a young Scottish coach of notable pedigree come to be a figure of ridicule in his home country?Is Cathro right to feel aggrieved at how he was treated during his time in charge of Hearts? Or were the fans and the media right to hammer a young man who, at that point, was very clearly out of his depth?It was back in December 2016 that Cathro sat next to Ann Budge after being unveiled as the new head coach of Hearts.Still only 30 years old at that point, it was a bold move. Hearts had taken a gamble on a rookie, one who was younger than several of the players who were then under his command.It didn’t take long for things to start to unravel. Cathro lacked presence and authority. His interviews were routinely dreadful.On the back of a 1-1 draw away at Raith Rovers in the Scottish Cup, he mumbled and stuttered his way through an interview which still regularly circulates on social media to this day.Raith, who were playing in the Championship at the time, had equalised late in the game and Cathro was asked about how difficult it had been to take.‘No, it’s okay,’ he said. ‘I mean, it’s the situation… aye… how is it difficult? What’s difficult? We’ve just got to beat them again.’If that was awkward to say the least, Cathro’s comments on the back of a 5-0 hammering against Celtic a few weeks later was when he entered the realms of total delusion.‘Take away the goalposts and we are able to compete,’ came his infamous claim, in reference to his belief that the only thing Hearts lacked was a goalscorer at the top end of the pitch. Plenty of eyebrows were raised when Ann Budge appointed Cathro as Hearts head coach That was the line that stuck more than any other. But with suggestions that Craig Levein, Hearts’ director of football at the time, was passing notes from the stand and undermining the manager, Cathro’s days were numbered.In the end, he lasted seven months before Hearts finally decided to cut their losses. Yet, rather than that being the end of him, he has gone away and rebuilt his career.He worked as an assistant coach to Nuno Espírito Santo at Wolves and was a key figure in their rise from the Championship all the way to reaching the Europa League after winning promotion to the top flight.Cathro would follow Nuno to Tottenham and to Al-Ittihad in Saudi Arabia, before branching out to become his own man once again with Estoril in Portugal in 2024.His body of work with Estoril was impressive enough to catch the attention of Saint-Etienne earlier this summer, who hired the Dundonian and handed him the remit of reviving their fortunes.One of the great names of French and indeed European football, Saint-Etienne have fallen on hard times of late and currently operate in Ligue 2 in France following relegation a couple of seasons back.Plainly, Cathro could not have wished for a better start. A thumping 4-0 win over Grenoble last Saturday made it three wins from his first three matches.Saint-Etienne sit top of the table and have scored 10 goals in those three matches. Their decision to hire Cathro already looks to be a shrewd appointment.Despite the impression that lingers from his time with Hearts, Cathro is an intelligent and very capable coach. He speaks multiple languages and has a reputation for developing young talent.At 40 years of age, he is also still relatively young. He has his full career ahead of him and there is no telling what kind of doors might open up if he can make a success of things at Stade Geoffroy-Guichard. His impressive work at Estorill in Portugal attracted the attention of St Etienne over the summerThere is no sense in trying to rewrite history. He was a failure at Hearts. The wrong man at the wrong time, he was too young and naive. But that spell at Tynecastle 10 years ago should not damn him forever. Cathro has revived his career and reinvented himself in impressive fashion.His comments on Scottish football made it abundantly clear that he has no intention of ever coming back to work here.With the SFA keen to address their coaching pathways, the curious case of Ian Cathro would make for an interesting study.A talented young operator, misunderstood and much-maligned, shunned by his native kin, but continuing to make his mark on foreign shores.