Teachers Do It Better Than Coaches

ALEX McMenemy, in his ascent of the greasy pole of the teaching profession, to become Depute Rector of Renfrew High School, put an awful lot of extra-curriculum time into schools football. Alex will tell you, he wasn't the only one – indeed, the history of Scottish football would be a lot different but for Alex and the countless thousands of teachers over the years who supported and ran schools football.

 The Scottish Schools FA - a fine body of men, women and children

I would perhaps not have had this enduring, life-long love affair with the game, but for the encouragement of teachers such as Alex Rowan, my old Headmaster and coach at Lugar Primary School, and “Wee Miffy”, “Big Swim” and “Charlie” - Messrs Bob Smith, John Hunter and Charlie Wilson, at Cumnock Academy. In many schools the football team was the responsibility of “the Jannie”, and, long after I left the Academy, the great “Bongo” Smith – one-time Academy team captain, who played in the old English First Division (now the Premier League) for Sheffield United, but came home to be Head Janitor at his old school did a superb job there, on the likes of Craig Burley and Billy Dodds – and got an MBE for his services to Cumnock football.

The Scottish Schools FA, as various office bearers have for years been at pains to tell the press: “exists to provide football for boys (and now girls), rather than boys (an girls) for football. I still believe, when the Boys Clubs superceded the schools as the main source of supply for young players to the adult game – that's when Scottish football began to go backwards.

But, to return to Alex McMenemy. He, before he escaped the chalk face, rose to be vice-president of the schools equivalent of UEFA. He had friends and contacts across the continent, and Andy always insisted: “At schools level, Scotland can compete with any country – we have even beaten Brazil in schools internationals, but, once we hand-over our top talent to the clubs – they seem to go to pot.”

Alex had a point, but, try pointing this out to the Hampden High Heid Yins and they would not believe you. They were doing Fake News decades before Mr Trump, convincing us, Scotland was good at fitba.

Brian McLaughlin - onwards and upwards for his Under-17s

So, it has reached the stage today, we barely mention our age group teams, which is a pity, since wee Brian McLaughlin and his Scotland Under-17 squad have just returned home from qualifying for the Elite Round of the European Under-17 Championships.

This is the fifth straight year the Under-17s have qualified, so, at that level, we must be doing something right. Now, I am not getting carried away at this feat, however, Scotland did win their qualifying group, and will be in Pot A for the draw for the next stage of the competition, when eight, four-team groups will be pitted against each other in the spring of 2018.

Just, please, reflect on that again – a Scotland team in Pot A, the top pot, in the draw for a pan-European championships. And reflect, our big team, the A squad, will, maybe, scrape into Pot C, the third level, the next time they are involved in a championships draw.

You know, there just might be a lot of truth in Alex McMenemy's statement.

BROWSING the online Guardian this morning, in the middle of their coverage of Spurs' victory over Real Madrid, in the Champions League on Wednesday night, there was a link to a piece, written back in 2008, about former Liverpool midfielder Igor Biscan.

Igor Biscan - an interesting interview

I followed the link, and the story made for interesting reading. Biscan began his career with Dynamo Zagreb, before embarking on a tour of Europe's top clubs and leagues, prior to a return to Dynamo. At the time of doing the interview, Dynamo were celebrating a third straight Croatian League title, but, Biscan reckoned, because, the club was not being stretched at home – they were falling short in Europe, since they had difficulty coping with the better-coached and trained opponents, with better players, they encountered in the Champions League and Europa League.

Does this sound familiar? It does to me, and we thought, somehow, Celtic was the only team which suffered from this problem – untouchable in their domestic league, out of their depth in the Big Show.

It is a Catch-22 problem for Celtic and Scottish football, but, it is not new. The Biscan interview, remember, was written in 2008. Here are the final two paragraphs of the story:

“And yet the terrible catch-22 is that even if Dynamo do prosper in Europe, and so generate the funds to establish an academy, that would not necessarily help the Croatian league. Yes, success would stimulate interest, but if they were, say, to reach the group stage of the Champions League, the income that would bring in would simply widen further an already vast gulf between them and the rest. Whether that would have an impact on the national side, given it is already so divorced from the domestic game, is debatable, but it would only push the Croatian league further into irrelevance.

Unless there is a cataclysmic collapse in football's finances, it is, as Biscan says, an impossible situation. No wonder he looks so gloomy.”

Just what can Celtic and Scottish football do – other than hope Brexit is as big a clusterfuck as it seems to be turning out, and English football goes broke? Then we might see a levelling of the playing field, which Financial Fair Play has so-far failed to provide, and, once again, perhaps Scottish clubs will be in a position to win things in Europe.

WHAT IS it with football management? There is Ally McCoist, who was badly-burned by his less-than-stellar term as Rangers' manager, and who was just last week saying how much he was enjoying being a talking head on BT Sport and elsewhere, and with a nice little side line in advertisements; reportedly being interested in the vacancy for Sunderland manager.

Manager McCoist - Don't do it Ally, at least, not at that club

Sunderland Manager, that's one of these jobs, like the Leader of “Scottish Labour” in which the only guarantees are – you'll be replaced within a year, you'll make a lot of enemies doing it, and, even if you succeed, you'll be damned with faint praise. Don't do it Ally, you are better-off where you are.

Since the Black Cats parted company with Roy Keane, on December, 2008 – the club has been managed by: Ricky Sbragia, Steve Bruce, Eric Black (caretaker), Martin O'Neill, Paolo Di Canio, Kevin Ball (caretaker), Gus Poyet, Dick Advocaat, Sam Allardyce, David Moyes, Simon Grayson and now Billy McKInlay and Robbie Stockdale are temporarily in-charge. Some of these guys have a far-superior managerial record than McCoist can demonstrate – it's obviously not a job you touch if you have ambitions towards long-term job security.