What a difference time can make to the fortunes of Scottish football! The new footballing season usually comes with a fresh air of excitement and in this non-major international football tournament summer a chance to become fully revitalised with the return of league football. However, though the Scottish football fan is well used to the feeling of hopelessness, this season begins with a new 'disgrace' for the Scottish national team and fresh questions to be asked of the way the national sport is being governed.
Rewind to season 2007-2008 and Scottish football was hitting the crest of a wave. A crest that peaked during the early months from September into Christmas. During this time, Celtic had qualified for the knockout stages of the Champions League having beaten European champions A.C. Milan at Parkhead and also taken care of Benfica and Shakhtar Donetsk. Rangers were also in the Champions League and though they finished third in their group and demoted to the UEFA Cup, they went on a memorable run to final of the competition. Aberdeen also restored pride in their fans with a fine effort in the UEFA cup reaching the knockout stages bringing Bayern Munich to a 2-2 draw in Pittodrie having been 2 goals up.
Most gloriously however, the Scottish team reinstilled pride, and ultimately expectation in the Tartan Army. There was no fluke in the campaign that brought the team painfully close to qualification. The battle started in Montreux where we were drawn in a group with the 2006 World Cup finalists and a quarter finalist, tricky Eastern European opposition and an unwelcome return to the Faroe Islands. Two brilliant victories over France and a couple of tearing aparts of Ukraine and Lithuania and quite rightly Scottish football felt confident again.
It's a mighty fall to take, looking at what has happened recently.
Lamentably for supporters of Scotland's provincial clubs, the standard bearers of club football in this country are the Old Firm. While there is debate about supporting other clubs in the international stage, their performance is a reflection on all of us. That reflection starts with Kaunas. A league and cup double serves as a reasonable tonic for being unceremoniously flung out of Europe by Vladimir Romanov's side project like a reveller flung out the back door of a Dundee nightclub (also coming off the back of their fans' efforts on the streets of Manchester). Celtic's exit from Europe was also as swift as could be finishing bottom of their group below Danish minnows Aalborg BK.
While Hearts, Aberdeen and Dundee United still figure out a way of reducing the points difference between the Old Firm and 3rd position in the SPL, Scotland have plunged the largest over the past international season. Gone is the possibility of achieving results such as that in the Parc de Prince, gone is the evidence of the team actually looking like an international side, gone is the belief in the team, gone is the idea of needing to expand Hampden Park to 75,000 due to the demand for Scotland tickets... hello George Burley. Hello as well to that feeling in the pit of your stomach when Berti Vogts was manager.
While Hearts, Aberdeen and Dundee United still figure out a way of reducing the points difference between the Old Firm and 3rd position in the SPL, Scotland have plunged the largest over the past international season. Gone is the possibility of achieving results such as that in the Parc de Prince, gone is the evidence of the team actually looking like an international side, gone is the belief in the team, gone is the idea of needing to expand Hampden Park to 75,000 due to the demand for Scotland tickets... hello George Burley. Hello as well to that feeling in the pit of your stomach when Berti Vogts was manager.
It's hardly going to leave anyone completely confused as to why we are doing so badly. One only needs to look at the names of the likely candidates that were to succeed Alex McLeish to become Scotland manager - Mark McGhee, Graeme Souness, Billy Davies, George Burley. Otherwise translated as: a young manager with Motherwell who took them to third in the SPL (and retrospectively finished in the bottom six the next season); a man who has failed to be as succesful with Blackburn Rovers and Newcastle United as he was with David Murray's chequebook; a man with rich experience in the Coca-Cola Championship... and George Burley.
It's glaring how unattractive the manager's post is with Scotland. Especially considering the previous two incumbents left to manage for Rangers and Birmingham City. Alex Ferguson?... fantasy. David Moyes?... a dream, though it is one he has gone on the record saying it is not outwith the realms of possibility, but if he has "a lot to do" with Everton, then there are some amount of years for him to fulfil the potential he has as a club manager.
There can be no doubts of the quality of manager the 'Largs Mafia' produces, David Moyes is a good example. However, is the coaching setup at Largs a victim of it's own success? It seems that if a genuinally talented Scottish manager breaks through, they are bound to become bigger than the Scotland job itself. A manager turning looks with a team in the bottom six of the SPL or in the English Football League has every chance. In the meantime, England bag one of worlds truely elite managers and the Republic of Ireland have a manager who has won everything an Italian club manager can.
The only evidence of talent needed to fill the Scotland job is how well a man works with the SFA powerbrokers; not with how well they work with the best of Scotland's footballers. That is the shame in the matter.
Burley has had a very testing time compared to any Scotland manager. So far he has failed in the park (7 points from 18 and yet to play the Netherlands for the second time), with the players (Lee McCulloch and Kris Boyd removed from selection, Barry Ferguson and Allan McGregor banned after having been on the lash behind the managment team's back with another five players) and the press conference. However much blame is shifted on Burley, it would be unfair not to make the SFA the crux of the matter. The Scottish game is broken between three organisations sharing the same building but unable to work as one, unable to support their clubs and unable to support the national team. Gordon Smith took up his role as a radical, free thinking young executive and is now constricted to being a stuttering suit.
The Tartan Army gathered outside the Ullevaal Stadium in Oslo after the Norway game to be held back from the SFA entourage with a chorus of 'sack the board'. This is a chilling repeat of the Berti Vogts era when this became the soundtrack to a friendly, 4-1 reverse by Sweden at Easter Road days after his resignation. After Vogts left and Walter Smith was drafted in, Scotland still had a chance with qualification for the World Cup in Germany for 2006. In 2009 with Scotland still in with a chance of qualifying for South Africa, it is difficult to see that George Burley is a man capable of leading us there.
In January 2010, it is expected Henry McLeish, Scotland's second First Minister (and former East Fife half-back) will be releasing his "extensive and thorough" review of Scottish football. As McLeish, alongside Donald Dewar, headed Scotland into a new dawning with the creation of the Scottish Parliament, Scottish football can only hope that he too enters it into a radical redressing to prevent further international stagnation and domestic dysfunctionality.
