Ive Seen That Movie Before

ON THE BASIS – If I wasn't laughin', I'd be greetin' – I have had a quiet chortle at the reaction to last night's events in Munich. Anyone who knows anything more than diddly squat about fitba could tell you – you cannot play even a middling Mannschaft with ten men. So, perhaps we got off lightly, and those who are calling for the head of Stevie Clarke and several of the players need to have a long, hard look at themselves.

OK, they don't have a Beckenbauer at the back, or a Gerd Muller up front, but this was still a Germany team, playing at home, in a major tournament. Even a good Scotland team, with a sprinkling of World-Class players – which with the best will in the world doesn't describe the squad Clarke has at his disposal, would quite happily take a draw against any German international side.

Yes, Ryan Porteous picked the wrong night to revert to the sort of tackle which made him an occasional liability at times in his Hibernian days, but, he still had to go for that ball and unless he had been playing, at home, for one or other of the Bigot Brothers in a domestic Scottish game – it was a red card every day of the week.

There is an ongoing debate in Rugby Union around “the 20-minute red card”. If introduced, this would see a side, reduced to 14 men by a red card, able to replace the sent-of player after 20 minutes. The reasoning being, when a side goes down a man it immediately spoils the entertainment value of the match.

Now, it's maybe something we could also look at in football. In some of the team sports I have covered, sports such as Basketball and Ice Hockey, when a player is chucked out of the game, he is replaced, in ice hockey after the requisite power play, and in that sport, a goal scored against a depleted side cancels-out the one-man disadvantage immediately – so, there is something to be said for looking at replacing a sent-off player in Football.

Maybe then, we would only have lost 1-3, but, we would still have lost.

Another thing about last night's defeat was the immediate mobilisation of the 'Disaster for Scotland' headlines. Friday night in Munich was hugely-disappointing, but, when sat alongside such disasters as Wembley 1961 and 1975, Peru 1978, Iran 1978, Morocco 1998, this was a large traffic bump.

This match was always going to be an Iffy international:

If we play as well as we really can, and all 11 players burst a gut, and if their top players fail to turn up, and one or two others are below par; if we take one of the few chances we will create, we could snatch a draw.

Ignore the: “We are Scotland, we fear nobody” bullshit from the lunatic platoon of the Tartan Army, the preceding paragraph, I think, come close to the rationale of the thinking Scottish football fan.

Just considere the reality of our group in Germany. Germany are ranked an extremely, for them, lowly 16^th in the FIFA World Rankings. Switzerland, our next opponents, on Wednesday, are ranked 19^th. We then face Hungary, on Sunday, 23 June; they are ranked 26^th in the FIFA standings – we are ranked 39^th.

If you consider only the rankings within Europe, Germany are ranked 9^th, Switzerland 10^th and Hungary 14^th, we are ranked 21^st. Then, if you look only at the 24 nations playing in Germany, you find we are ranked 17^th – so, not expected to get out of our group.

As a veteran, in my eighth decade of supporting Scotland, I have been on the roller-coaster for a while. I can vaguely recall the 0-7 loss to Uruguay in 1954. I have better recollection of the unmitigated disaster of Sweden 1958. I took an afternoon off school in 1961 to see us lose to Czechoslovakia in a play-off in Belgium, a defeat which kept us out of the 1962 tournament.

In 1965 there was another afternoon off work to see us lose to Italy in Naples, so we didn't go to England the following year. Then, after being in the crowd when we drew with West Germany at Hampden in 1969, like every other Scot I had to be content with: “That cheatin' bar steward had it comin;” when Tommy Gemmell booted Helmut “Hamlet” Haller up the bahookie, as they beat us in the return game – so no tri to Mexico in 1970.

Things then got better for a time and we became regular qualifiers for the World Cup, however, the European Championships, from our first excursion in the 1968 qualifiers, have largely been disastrous. This is our 15^th go at the Euros and we have qualified for the finals just three times – a 20% success rate – not exactly inspiring.

In some Euro qualifying campaigns our squad had been stuffed to the gills with inductees into the Scottish Football Hall of Fame, but, we still crashed and burned. Either, we have seriously over-rated these playeres, or, maybe we really are generally shite. These are some of the reasons why I now refuse to get worked-up about Scotland's chances in the big games.

Another reason for not getting over-excited about our chances, is the fact, we have lost the knack of producing quality players. Look at the current squad, aside from skipper Andy Robertson, we don't have a single player who is a guaranteed starter with one of the real heavyweight European clubs.

Robertson, might, depending on the formation we wanted to play, be a contender for an all-time Scotland squad, but, the skipper apart, we lack genuine quality across the squad.

We could still qualify for the last 16 in Germany, but, I am not confident of this. Steve Clarke might, when it is all over, decide he has taken us as far as he can. Time will tell, but, and not just because of my misery at last night: “forward tho' Ah canna see, Ah guess and fear.”