Ranked Rotten

THE latest FIFA rankings were announced this week, with Scotland having fallen to 77th. I am no great fan of the rankings system as worked by FIFA - I believe the UEFA system, which only counts competitive games, is superior to the FIFA one which counts every game - even those meaningless friendlies in which national managers are clearly experimenting, but, I don't make the rules, FIFA does.

Also, the rankings take no cognisance of the relative strengths of the various FIFA confederations, so that a reasonable team in a confederation of minnows will have an artificially high ranking.

When ever I view the latest rankings, I prefer to have a look at where we are within Europe. Right now, we are ranked 35th; in effect, we are the Peterhead of Europe, since that team is currently the 35th best in Scotland. Or put it another way, we are nearer to the foot of what will be pot four for the draw for the 2016 European Championships than we are to getting out of that pot and into three.

Nae pressure on WGS then.

Actually, a somewhat significant anniversary was allowed to pass unnoticed this week. Tuesday was the 50th anniversary of 'Baxter's First Wembley' - 9 April, 1963, the day 10 Scots beat 11 Englishmen on their own ground, with the Slim One with a wand for a left foot scored two goals, after Scotland captain Eric Caldow was carried off with a broken leg after scant five minutes.

Of course, the reality was slightly different. Ten didn't beat eleven, our ten men beat ten and a half Englishmen, because Bobby Smith, the Spurs centre forward whose clumsy challenge ended Caldow's stellar Scotland career was also carried off, only to resume and, hirpling on the left wing throughout the second half in those far-off days of no substitutes, be England's most-dangerous forward in that period.

Not that that prevented the Fans With Typewriters of the Scottish Football Writers Association from going over the top at our first Wembley win since 1951, but a read of the contemporary match reports indicates that, for instance, Jimmy Greaves, who couldn't miss two years previously, squandered more chances in that single game than in the rest of his outstanding England career.

But, let's not allow the facts to get in the way of a good story.

Anyway, that season 1962-63 was arguably the high point of post-World War II Scottish international football. I concede the legend states 1967 was our golden year, but a comparison of the two seasons shows us different.

In 1962-63, Scotland played 7 internationals, winning 5, losing 2, surprise losses 3-4 to Norway and 0-1 to the Republic of Ireland on an end-of-season continental tour. Prior to those defeats, which came inside five days, that season we beat Wales 3-2, Northern Ireland 5-1, England 5-1, Austria 4-1 (in a game abandoned after 79 minutes) and bounced back from the two losses to countries we then considered "minnows", to beat Spain 6-2 in the Bernabau.

Denis Law scored 11 goals in 7 internationals that season - it took Kenny Miller, our current top gun 40 games to score that many goals for Scotland by the way.

In 1962-63, we won 71% if our internationals, and, at 3 points for a win and 1 point for a drew, we won 71% of the available points. In 1966-67, we drew 1-1 with Wales,beat Northern Ireland 2-1, then came 15 April, 1967 and suddenly we were unofficial World Champions after hammering England 3-2, then, being Scotland, we lost 0-2 to the USSR, in spite of fielding six Lisbon Lions. That meant we only won 50% of our games that season, and 58% of the available points; so, definitely not as good as 1962-63, which was actually our best international season since 1950-51.

Back in 1963 we were definitely one of the four or five best sides in Europe; Scotland didn't sully its golden reputation by playing in the still infant European Championship back then, but that Spanish side we beat - nay hammered at home, would within a year, be Champions of Europe.

You have to wonder at the faffing about and incompetence which could, in half a century take us from those heights to our current place among the bottom feeders of European football.

I don't subscribe to the theory that we have lost our way and are no longer producing the players. Sure, back then we had Law, Baxter, Dave Mackay, Caldow, Ian St John, John White and Willie Henderson and Davie Wilson on the wings, while by 1967 Billy Bremner, Jimmy Johnstone, Bobby Murdoch, Bobby Lennox and John Greig were in our squad. But, believe it or not, in season 2011-2012, you remember, just about the time it started to dawn on the great thinkers of Scottish football that, just maybe, Craig Levein wasn't the answer, we actually matched the performance of 1967 - winning 50% of our internationals and 58% of the available points.

From that statistic, I reckon we can conclude - we have gone backwards in the past 50-years, whilst most of the rest of Europe has got better and overtaken us.

Can somebody please tell the SFA, they don't pay any attention to me. But, as I have hopefully shown above, reality bears scant relation to Scottish fitba's view of itself and its place on Planet Fitba and rarely has.

We are now in our eighth decade of football since the end of World War II - in none of these decades has Scotland won over 50% of the internationals played; in fact, our most-successful period was the 1940s, during which we won 47% of the internationals and garnered 51% of the available points (at 3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw).

Next most-successful decade was the 1990s: 45% - 53%, followed in descending order by - 1950s: also 45% - 53%, 1960s: 44% - 60%, 2010 - 2013: 43% - 49%, 1970s: 42% - 42%, 1980s: 40% - 49% and finally the noughties (2000 - 2009) 32% - 40%. Since 1946 our overall figure is 43% of internationals won and 51% of available points garnered.

Amazingly, given the popular conception of where we are today, our form in the current decade since 2010 is at 43% - 43%, just about average. I think the explanation for this is, in business management speak: "managed decline".

Aye, we've declined, but nobody at the top has managed to notice.