Another Disaster For Scotland - Or Was It?

ONCE AGAIN, in the wake of another (to quote dear old David Francey) “Disaster for Scotland” I find myself wondering about the direction of travel of our national team. Was defeat in Copenhagen, after we finally reached a major championship final tournament, the one step back which followed two steps forward; or are we shuffling around in ever-decreasing circles until we vanish up oor ain jacksie?

I suppose it's been thus for Scotland – at least for the duration of my lifetime, and I am a proud post-war “Baby Boomer.” Through all that time – from the first Scotland team in my lifetime: Willie Miller; George Young, Jock Shaw; Archie MacAuley, Willie Woodburn, Alex Forbes; Gordon Smith, Andy McLaren, Jimmy Delaney, Billy Steel, Tommy Pearson, to Wednesday night's team: Craig Gordon; Scott McKenna, Grant Hanley, Liam Cooper; Andy Robertson, Kenny McLean, Billy Gilmour, Callum McGregor, Kieran Tierney; Che Adams, Ryan Fraser, I get the impression – we have never been as good as we think we are, but, that reality check never hits home.

Another constant about the national team has been, no nation has greater triumphs, of suffers bigger disasters than Scotland – win or lose. Equilibrium and a sense of perspective has never sat easily on the shoulders of your average Tartan Army foot soldier; and even less so on the shoulders of the so-called Intelligence Corps – the “fans with lap tops.”

Let's look at our record against Denmark, our conquerors on Wednesday night. We have met the Danes 17 times, since our first encounter, in 1951. We have won 10 of these 17 games, losing the other 7. BUT, look at the timeline and it makes far-less satisfying reading.

The record is: win – win – win – win – loss – win – win – win – win – loss – loss – loss – loss – loss – win – win – loss.

We've been playing against the Danes for 70 years, in the first 35, we won eight of the ten meetings between the nations. In the last 35 years we have won just two of seven encounters.

That mid-way point in Danish/Scottish football relations was 1986 – the year it all changed in Scotland, with the arrival of Graeme Souness and a loss of belief in home-grown talent.

There's not a lot of difference between Denmark and Scotland. Their population is 5.8 million, ours is 5.4 million. But, when you look at football in the two countries, it's a different story. The Danes have 361,078 registered players, to Scotland's 152,483. They have 1628 registered clubs, to Scotland's 3719 clubs, and they have 6135 registered coaches, to our 41,790.

In UEFA's current country coefficients table, Scotland is ranked 8th, Denmark 22^nd; in the FIFA rankings Denmark are 11^th, Scotland 49^th.

There are a mere seven Scottish clubs ranked in UEFA's clubs' coefficient table: Rangers are ranked 43^rd, Celtic 50^th, Aberdeen 156^th, with Hibernian, St Johnstone, Motherwell and Kilmarnock respectively filling places 160 to 163.

There are ten Danish clubs among the 433 European clubs listed. FC Copenhagen are ranked 49^th, Midtjylland are ranked 103^rd, Brøndby come in in 193^rd place, with AGF Aarhus, Ronders, SønderjysKE, Esjerbg, Nordsjaelland and Lyngby filling places 273 to 278 respectively.

Lets dig through these figures. Each Danish club has an average of 222 players. Each club has an average of 4 coaches – one coach for every 55 players.

Each Scottish club has an average of 41 players, and an average of 11 coaches. This means, in Scotland, we've got one coach for every 4 players, but, by common consent, the Danish players are more technically-gifted than the Scots.

Clearly we are doing something wrong. Are we over-coached, or do we have too-many bad coaches here?

The teams on Wednesday night were drawn from similar sources. The Danes had four players from the English Premiership, four from Italy's Serie A, two from Germany's Bundesliga and one from Spain's La Ligua. Our team had eight from the English Premiership, two from the Scottish Premiership and Scott McKenna from the English Championship.

So, if we take every factor into consideration, given they had home advantage, given, last time out, Denmark reached the semi-final of the European Championships, we finished bottom of our group in the final tournament – was losing 0-2 to the Danes the disaster our sharpest media brains are making out?

As I have said, nobody has bigger triumphs, or worse disasters. This, of course, suits the suits who run Scottish football down to the ground – it puts the blame onto the Head Coach, or the Players, everywhere but where it belongs – to the stumblebums who have mismanaged our national game for generations.

Maybe Stephen Clarke picked the wrong team. Perhaps he did get the tactics wrong. But, what I do know is, had everyone been fit – he would have fielded a different team, we had more key men missing than the Danes, and that probably made a difference. But, while losing to a better side was disappointing – it wasn't the absolute disaster our fans with lap tops are making out.

A wee bit of level-headedness would maybe help us – oh! I forgot, this is Scotland we are talking about. Level-headedness doesn't come into it.

No matter what we do, we will still – as far as I can see – have the same muddle-headed thinking at strategic level, we will still have too-many so-called “senior” clubs, whose only ambition is to continue to be a “senior” club. We will still have any player with a modicum of ability desperate to move south for bigger money and we will still put our club game first ahead of the international side.

We will still be ruled over by two clubs, desperate to leave Scottish football for the richer game south of the Tweed and Solway; and they and the other leading sides will still recruit second-rate foreigners ahead of young Scottish talent.

The only place Scottish fitba is going is doon the stank, slowly.