Being top of a group table is an unusual position for a Scottish national side to find itself, but the last-minute win against Liechtenstein in Tuesday’s Euro 2012 qualifiers - a side some 100 places below Scotland in the FIFA World Rankings - that put us there should be the final straw that breaks the camel’s back, the one result which stirs the normally stoic Scottish Football Association into action.
I didn’t see the game. I was one of those supporters who reckoned that, well, it’s only Liechtenstein, there’s no need to worry, three-nil should be a given, and anything after that is a bonus.
And even when I checked the score to find Liechtenstein had taken the lead just after half-time I wasn’t too worried. After all, England went down to an early goal against San Marino in a qualifying game back in 1993 after just 8 seconds, and they still went on to win 7-1.
But with the game deep in injury time and the score at 1-1 (Kenny Miller had put us level), a certain win suddenly seemed a lot less certain. Liechtenstein, realising that a major upset was on the cards, parked the bus and tried to waste as much time as possible to try and pull off only their ninth draw in 81 attempts at a qualifying game. So when Stephen McManus rose high above the defence to head in the winner, the collective sigh of relief could be heard far beyond the 37,000 supporters inside Hampden Park.
Afterwards, Craig Levein was happy with the points. And so he should be: football is a results orientated business after all, and Scotland are now top of the group thanks to Lithuania beating the Czech Republic.
But in truth, the performance at Hampden on Tuesday night was laughable - at best mediocre, at worst embarrassing. To have to come from behind against a team that has only won five games in over eighty attempts at qualifying for a tournament is plumbing new depths of ineptitude.
But these sorts of results are becoming commonplace these days, and the performance at Hampden is a near-perfect reflection of the state of play in Scotland. For all of our famed passion for the game both on and off the pitch, it’s in the skills and tactics department where we fall short on every single occasion. On Tuesday, against a poor side, we didn’t play well. As BBC pundit Billy Dodds said, we gave them too much room, the midfield didn’t push up far enough, there was not enough width and Darren Fletcher over-kicked every single ball. Scotland shouldn’t be harrying teams like Liechtenstein, nor should we be chasing them, or be put under pressure or even concede a goal. Our national game has not sunk to the depths that Liechtenstein are no longer worried about the return fixture in a few months time.
It’s a well-known fact that the game north of Hadrian’s Wall, at both club and national level, has been in steady decline for some years. In recent weeks, all our Scottish club sides (with the exception of Rangers) are already out of European competitions, having fallen foul of teams from Portugal, Holland, Greece, Slovenia and Denmark. Last year, Falkirk were knocked out by FC Vaduz of Liechtenstein. We should have seen the warning signs.
It’s a trend that seems to know no signs of stopping, along with our slide down the UEFA coefficient table. At our current rate of progress, Scotland will possibly lose its only automatic Champions League place next season to the likes of Switzerland or Israel, the two leagues directly below us in the table.
As a direct result of our falling coefficient, an already poor league in terms of quality and financial clout looks set to become even poorer as it becomes harder for our teams to qualify for the money-generating rounds of Europe’s major competition, the Champions League.
The reason why this is relevant is that Scotland needs its top teams in the later stages of European competition for the revenue it brings and the profile it raises for the game in Scotland. And a raised profile means bigger sponsorship, larger television revenue and better players coming to our leagues - possibly.
For now, gone are the days when Scottish football was held in much higher regard than it is now. Consider that back in 1978, during Scotland’s (in)famous World Cup tournament in Argentina, most of the players that made up the squad played for the top clubs of the day.
Nottingham Forest had Burns, Gemmill, Robertson, O’Hare, McGovern. Liverpool had Hansen, Souness and Dalglish, at that point in time arguably the greatest striker in Europe. John Wark and George Burley both played for Ipswich, another team that was about to go on to much great things, while Gordon McQueen and Joe Jordan had both transferred to Manchester United for what where then record-setting fees.
It’s perhaps a sign of the state of the game in Scotland that, unlike the teams of ’78 and even ’82, the players who play for it are no longer playing at the top teams. With the exception of Alan Hutton (a Spurs player currently on loan at Sunderland) and Manchester United’s Darren Fletcher, the remainder of the side that took the field on Tuesday play for middle-to-bottom tier Premier League and Championship sides - Blackpool, WBA, Birmingham, Wolves and Middlesbrough.
But despite the success the likes of Gemmill, Dalglish, Auld, Johnstone and Baxter had with their clubs, none of them managed to get Scotland past a group stage. Clearly, something has to be done to turn this around.
The ruling body in Scottish Football, the SFA, seems impotent in this regard, their only action thus far having been the commissioning of a report into the present and future of the game by former First Minister Henry McLeish. Only part one of this report has seen the light of day (as far as this correspondent is aware), the highlights of which include:
- the creating of working committees between government and the game to source funding and sponsorship
- the SFA and the SPL to bury the hatchet and become friends again
- the foundation of an Academy of Football Excellence
- the investment of £500m on facilities and the game’s infrastructure because they are basically rubbish
… which is all very well, but £500m is a lot of money in these austere times, and attracting sponsorship is great, but what kind of message does it send out to an already famously unhealthy nation when in recent times its top two teams are sponsored by the likes of Tennents, Carling, McEwan’s, Harp and betting outfit Coral.
At least McLeish hasn’t made mention of Scottish football’s Great White Elephant: league restructuring. I’ve never been convinced that a restructuring will change things particularly. We’ve had 10, 12, 16, 18 even 22 team leagues, all with pretty much the same result we have now: the same two teams at the top, the rest following on, looking up.
All of which, dear reader, mounts up to a lot of problems to overcome if fitba is going to recover in Scotland to the point where we can put the results of Tuesday down to a minor blip. My hope is that Tuesday’s near-disaster will finally wake the SFA to the fact that things are not getting any better and that actions, and not words, are needed. No more reports, no more committees, and no more working groups: action is what is needed, and needed now.
About the only positive things to come out of Tuesday’s game (apart from the win) was the fact that the supporters stayed until the bitter end. While Scottish football may not be skillful, it is at least passionate. But passion alone does not win you games, and passion can only carry you so far when every fixture is like the one on Tuesday.
A few more of those and the passion will disappear - along with our game.
Tags: Scotland