Is Now Perhaps The Time To Seek Another Way

ABERDEEN have now joined Rangers and St Johnstone in the pre-season “Scexit” from European football, and are now free to concentrate their efforts on qualifying for the 2018-19 European qualifying groups, which begin in 11-months' time.

And, unless Celtic over-achieve, by maintaining their Champions' League run well into the knock-out phase, our lesser European representatives just might get an even-earlier start date than this season for next.

We are bad, and getting worse, but, have we yet reached the point when someone in a sixth-floor Hampden office wakes-up and says: “This cannot go on, we have to do something”?

I think not. I have an old fitba-writing pal, retired for at least a decade, and still thankful he no longer has to watch Scottish fitba, who, when “on the tools” had the dubious honour of being the Scottish Football Writers Association's liaison officer with the SFA. In this high-pressure role, he had to trot along to Hampden when the governing body was finalising the details for Scotland qualifying internationals for the World Cup and European Championships.

There are FIFA and UEFA protocols to be adhered to for such games, and these include media arrangements, so the SFWA had to be involved, but, my mate always maintained the most-trenchant and informed debates usually centred on such key points as to which red or white wines would be served at the post-match banquet for the SFA high heid yins and their European counterparts.

But, the best story I ever heard about how out-of-touch the sixth floor “blazers” are came from a future Scotland team manager, then still a club boss.

His club chairman had newly been elected to the SFA's International Committee – the ultimate committee, to which every would-be “blazer” aspires. The members of this committee get to question, why they even get to pick, the national team manager; and, they get to go to all the away internationals, travelling on the team bus and enjoying five-star hotel stays at the SFA's expense.

First time out, with our gallant club chairman sitting in the posh seats, Scotland absolutely hammered a European side ranked higher than us. The following Saturday, the club chairman's wife proudly told our future Scotland boss: “See the difference my Sandy (name changed) has made to the Scotland team already”.

These people really do inhabit an alternative universe. But, to be fair to that particular “blazer”, he is now considered one of the good guys for his impressive role as a Hampden High Heid Yin.

Any way, the moral of this story is. When a nation slides down the international ranking at club and national level, as Scotland has and continues to do, at some point, the governing body has to do more than sack the international team manager, or re-arrange the deck chairs on a ship of state which has already collided with the iceberg.

There has to be someone prepared to stand-up and say: “This is unacceptable, it cannot go on, so, what are we going to do about it”.

Once, not so long ago, Scottish clubs going out of Europe to opponents from Lithuania, Luxembourg and Cyprus would have been cause for open revolt. Today, we seem to be saying: “Ach! Shite happens, whit can ye dae aboot it”? Without the obvious follow-up: “Well, we hae tae dae somethin”. But, what?

The most-important games in Scottish football in this second decade of the 21^st century are no longer the League Cup and Scottish Cup finals, or the league meetings with the Old Firm. The “must-win games”, if Scottish football is to have any sort of future as a viable player on the European or world stage are the European competition qualifiers.

We have to re-structure our domestic game, so that our clubs can go into these matches with a realistic chance of winning and progressing. Perhaps the best way of doing this may be to re-schedule our season, falling into lines with the Scandinavian nations. I don't know, it may work, it may not, but, perhaps we should try this.

If not, then, our clubs must seek expert opinion as to how best to manage their players, implement squad rotation so, for these crucial games, our top talent is match-sharp and ready to go.

Back in the slower days of the 1950s, the likes of Rangers, Hearts, Hibs and Dundee – the leading Scottish sides at a time when a talented but mismanaged Celtic squad struggled to win a corner – would take themselves off to warmer climes at the end of the season, and return ready to kick straight into top gear. Might it be worth-while, in these days of easier air travel, give this a try.

The players “holidays” back then was a leisurely trans-Atlantic voyage on the Queen Mary, or the trip to South Africa and back on a Union Castle liner.

It is surely not beyond the wit of today's Scottish clubs to structure their season so they play a few warm-up games in warmer climes, then return to Scotland ready to go straight into European action. This would surely be better than going in “cold” and being frozen-out of the real money-making competitions.