SCOTLAND'S STRANGE attitude to Football was perhaps best summed-up by the late Hugh McIlvanney's almost off-hand re-telling of an encounter he had with one of the High Heid Yins of the Scottish Football Association as they departed Hampden Park following the 1960 European Cup Final, in which Real Madrid hammered Eintracht Frankfort 7-3 – the Germans having reached the final via a 12-4 win over Rangers in the two-legged semi-finals.
As McIlvanney told it, this pillar of football administration assured him: “The ordinary Scottish football fan will never pay to watch that sort of football on a weekly basis.” As I understand it, the bold Hugh's response was a two-word reply, familiar to anyone from Scotland: “Aye right!”
Fast forward nearly 65 years, and I suppose, along the sixth floor corridor of power inside the same SFA's Hampden Park bunker and the successors to that 1960s “blazer” are probably, being Scottish, not exactly indulging in wailing, renting their garments, gnashing teeth and doing: “woe, woe and thrice woe” Frankie Howard impressions, in the wake of last night's Dortmund doing for Celtic.
At this juncture, we can rest assured, any sadness being felt by the High Heid Yins of the Celtic Family will be assuaged by reflecting on the wisdom of another SFA High Heid Yin from the sepia-tinted days of the 1950s – the blazer whose response to Uruguay 7 Scotland 0 at the 1954 World Cup in Switzerland was: “Ach! The fans will forget all about this one if we beat England next season.”
Unfortunately for him, the score at Wembley, ten months later, was: England 7 Scotland 2, and, nearly 70 years on, this writer still bears the scars that defeat inflicted on his eight year old self.
So, while heavy defeats in Europe are now becoming an all-too-familiar burden on the Celtic Family, I suppose a big win against Ross County, in Dingwall on Sunday and all will again be sweetness and light in the East End of Glasgow.
Perhaps in the cheaper seats, among the massed ranks of the Green Brigade and among the many in the corporate seats to whom, looking down on The Other Lot is their main kick in life, a typical multi-goal win on Sunday and, once again, all will be well with the world.
But, I would suggest that view will find little traction in the rarified areas of Dublin, in the locker room at The K Club, or the Members Club at The Curragh where no doubt, Dermot Desmond will be the butt of some humourous asides from the other movers and shakers of the Celtic Tiger – (that's Keltic with a hard K) he encounters there.
Perhaps Mr Desmond is having second thoughts about bringing back Brendan, after yet another European disaster. Maybe he is questoning a management model which sees his club paying over the odds for B or C List players, who may well be a tier or two above those they encounter in their domestic league, but who are found wanting on the big stage.
One of my Facebook friends, a Former Pupil of The Academy, who has blighted his reputation as a member of arguably the school's finest football team, by not just supporting Talbot, but also joining the Celtic Family. Well, he's hurting this morning and is suggesting: perhaps it would be better if his team and (maybe) The Other Lot, got out of Scottish football and into a European League – to allow the other Scottish clubs to find their own level.
Sorry Tam, won't happen. Not that you are wrong; I firmly believe there has to, sooner or later, be a European League, but, the entrenched interests of the long-established national associations, of FIFA and UEFA, werll, for a start, they will want their pound of flesh in setting-up such a League. They will also place every obstacle they can erect in the path of that League getting going, far-less thriving.
Even getting the Ugly Sisters into the English system would not really work – that would require the SFA to be taken over by the English FA. Good luck in selling that to the “blazers”.
Good luck too in the obvious answer to the problem, by raising the standard of players, coaches and team managers and overall club managers in Scotland. We could make a start to this, by making the Scottish League more Scottish.
I did a wee search this morning, on the number of Scottish players playing in the top flight in Scotland. It wasn't easy, but here is what I found:
Celtic – 29-man First Team squad – 9 Scots – only 2 of whom are first-team regulars
Rangers – 30-man squad – 12 Scots – only 1 of whom is a first-team regular
Aberdeen – 30-man squad – 11 Scots
Dundee – 26-man squad – 11 Scots
Dundee United – 42-man squad – 21 Scots
Hearts – 30-man squad – 10 Scots
Hibs – 35-man squad – 10 Scots
Kilmarnock – 30-man squad – 21 Scots
Motherwell – 45-man squad – 19 Scots
Ross County – 34-man squad – 16 Scots
St Johnstone – 34-man squad – 16 Scots
St Mirren – 30-man squad – 17 Scots
This adds up to 399 professionals across the 12 clubs, only 173 of whom (43%) are Scottish. Only two of the clubs, Kilmarnock, with a staff who are 70% Scottish and St Mirren, with a staff who are 57% Scottish have more than half their sqaud qualified to play for Scotland.
I would suggst that no national governing body worth its salt should be allowing their memebr clubs to so openly recruit players who are not qualified to play for the national side.
In the early days of the Bosman Ruling, UEFA introduced the Three Foreigners Rule, which Chick Young immediately christened: “The Eight Diddies Rule”. Maybe we should go back to those days.
I would suggest, no Celtic XI composed entirely of home-grown Scots would have shipped seven goals in Dortmund. After all, look no further than the greatest Scottish, far-less Celtic club XI: Simpson; Craig and Gemmell; Murdoch, McNeill and Clark; Johnstone, Wallace, Chalmers, Auld and Lennox.
None of them born more than 40 miles from Celtic Park, nine of them brought through the ranks at Celtic Park.
Or: McCloy; Jardine and Mathieson; Greig, Johnstone, Smith; McLean, Conn, Stein, MacDonald, Johnston; again, every one Scottish, five of them home-grown, the other six bought from other Scottish clubs.
Or: Leighton; McMaster and Rougvie; Cooper, McLeish and Miller; Strachan, Simpson, McGhee, Black and Weir. Once again, 11 Scots, 8 of them home-bred by the club.
I do not accept the: “That could never happen nowadays,” as if we suddenly lost the knack of recruiting and training-on talented young Scots. I am convinced we still have diamonds out there, maybe we have lost the skills to polish those raw diamonds.
So, today, I caution my fellow Scots:
Let's not laugh at Celtic, because, if we do not waken-up and smell the coffee, such results may well become more-common.
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