Scotland away to Slovakia

[Jormungand]

Has he ever explained why he continues to pick (and actually played last night) a Hibs player? A guy playing in Scotland's lower leagues?

[Stewart]

Has he ever explained why he continues to pick (and actually played last night) a Hibs player? A guy playing in Scotland's lower leagues?

 

Think it's down to how difficult it is to get out of the squads once you've been called up a few times. At least that's the only thing I can think of.

 

It's a shame I've already booked and paid for Wembley as I really can't be arsed going now.

 

Was already giving up away games (underthethumb.gif) but I doubt I'll be at a home game for the rest of this campaign now.

 

Might as well get Shagger Broon in the dugout for Wembley and try and get someone else in after that.

[1903_Redz]

Sitting in Stanstead trying to work up enthusiasm for this but failing miserably. Could eliminate Slovakia with a win but I know that Strachen will set us out to go for a draw. He does not have the balls to try and win from the start if at all. As Manx has said Griffiths has to start and McArthur should start instead of Bannon however full expect the stubborn cunt to pick the same team as started Saturday if all fit.

 

Need more beer.

 

Jute, when you said you were in Stanstead... was that on the way to Slovakia? What was the reaction like at the end? Hopefully the travelling Tartan Army have turned on him too.

[RicoS321]

Has he ever explained why he continues to pick (and actually played last night) a Hibs player? A guy playing in Scotland's lower leagues?

 

My mate's a hibee, says he's been poor so far this season, so it's good to see Scotlandsquaditis doesn't just turn our players to pish after being picked.

 

In this instance though, I'm with Strachan. I think there needs to be a batch of youngsters that step up from the u21s with a view to integrating them in future years. They're nae likely to get much game time, but are promising enough that we can give them a wee round aroon when we're getting our airses handed to us and hte game's over. I expect there'll be plenty of opportunities for McGinn in this campaign.

[cupidstunt]

very nearly, I spelled it blanc to begin with.

 

 

Are you pacman in disguise?

 

No, I wasnt on abmad.

Well, I was but only for a short spell and it was years ago.

 

[Stewart]

Jute, when you said you were in Stanstead... was that on the way to Slovakia? What was the reaction like at the end? Hopefully the travelling Tartan Army have turned on him too.

 

One of my mates who was across said the majority booed at the end though not sure if that'd mean the majority are anti-Strachan yet.

[Donser AFC]

Absolute mince, can't believe i wasted my eyes on that...

We should've went for the Swedish guy Lagerback, he's a serial qualifier...

[1903_Redz]

I've just seen the St J manager, Tommy Wright touted as a possible replacement for WGS. I thought we needed a youngish manager but i think that he would be a strong candidate. I kinda see Scotland in the international scene in the same sorta way as i see St J in the domestic scene and i think he could do a good job. Just my opinion mind. 

[Jute]

Jute, when you said you were in Stanstead... was that on the way to Slovakia? What was the reaction like at the end? Hopefully the travelling Tartan Army have turned on him too.

 

Left when they scored the third so never heard what reaction was like at the end. Everyone I spoke to after the game want him gone now including a couple who were still backing him at the start of campaign. Sadly Strachen is to stubborn to step down and SFA are the same inept clowns who extended his contract so are unlikely to sack him yet. Not looking forward to England game as can see it being another disaster.

[DollyLongstaffe]

I want Strachan and McGhee gone, but it's because I despise them as people, not because I believe anyone else can do a significantly better job. 

 

Scotland is a basket case.  We've stopped producing the kind of talent we need to field a decent international side, and there's no sign that's changing among the kids growing up.  End result is we'll continue to chop and change managers in the hope the next guy will have a magic wand.

 

Not enough people are seeing the connection between the corruption in our club game and the state of our national side.  When I started watching fitba, it was a working-class sport in the UK and taken seriously in far fewer countries.  Scotland was on a par with France as an international side, because although we had a small fraction of their population we took the game a lot more seriously.

 

Since then the game has broadened out and gentrified.  Many people don't like that, but it has implications for the amount of money coming into the game, the quality of coaching, and aspirational parents encouraging their kids to get involved.  When fitba was a hard-core working class game huge swathes of England wanted nothing to do with it.  So we matched them in producing fitba talent. Things have changed.  Who wouldn't want their kid to be a multi-millionaire superstar?  With that broadening of the game's appeal the English, whatever their shorcomings, have produced far better players than we have over the past 20+ years.

 

In Scotland the broadening of the game's appeal beyond its original fanbase hasn't happened to anything like the same extent.  Why?  Well, our club fitba is dominated by two clubs, both built on sectarian bigotry.  At least one of those clubs has a recent history of being mired in corruption, and the behaviour of its fans in Manchester and elsewhere is rightly seen as a national disgrace.  The reaction of the authorities, football and otherwise, to anything challenging the power of those clubs, is to bend the knee.  The fitba authorities think only of the short term impact on income flow, and the establishment fear violent unrest or turning a section of the electorate into single issue fanatics gunning for any politician perceived as a threat to their clubs. 

 

The evidence is everywhere: the refusal to countenance strict liability, or to enforce laws on sectarian singing, the Houdini trick of pretending that Rangers is a continuing club, the series of bizarre court and enquiry decisions confounding the expectations of informed lawyers, the refusal of the authorities to stand up for taxpayers against tax cheats, the ostracism and defenestration of journalists refusing to toe the pro-Rangers line.  And the utterances of the authorities that make it clear that not only do we need Rangers (and Celtic) to survive to be successful, we need them to successful to be successful.  The message to fans of other clubs: for the game to prosper we need clubs like the one you support to normally fail.

 

The end result that the game has failed to broaden its appeal to those not already emotionally invested.  The sons of ordinary working men who got a better education and ended up in middle class jobs often retain their childhood allegiances, but many decent Scots either give fitba a wide berth or bypass the Scottish game and focuss on the EPL,  And when you see the sectarianism, the corruption, the willingness to bend the rules, the lack of sporting integrity, who can blame them?

 

Now I know some posters will say, if the middle classes don't like the game, fine by me.  We want the game to keep its soul, not sell out the the prawn sandwiches mob.  But that comes at a price. Nowdays any footballing country that has a big section of the comfortably off, the influential and the opinion formers turning its back on the game is fighting with its hands tied behind its back.  if aspirational parents don't want their kids playing football, we'll produce fewer good players.  People have been contrasting the success of our Olympians with our football team, but the harsh fact is that a disproportionate amount of our Olympians, and of successful sportsment generally, come from the sort of families who are turned right off by the negatives attaching to our "national game".

 

I don't think Scotland will start punching its weight in international football again until a bigger and more representative proportion of country is more wholeheartedly invested in the team; and I don't think that will happen until our club game starts to at least gain respect from the sort of people who haven't been steeped in it since childhood.  That would require a massive injection of decency and fairness into the domestic game.  It would require an upgrading of our football media, too often partisan, lickspittle and frightened of any show of integrity that might put their cushy gig at risk.  It would need us to get rid of the perception that our game is run by spivs and chancers who'll bend any rule for the sake of a fiver and operate in the conviction that there is virtually no risk of them being held to proper account.  In short, it needs Scottish football to be something that decent, aspirational families would be prouder for their kids to be part of.

 

In other words, not gonna happen.

[BigAl]

Wow, just wow.

Given your first post was only to introduce yourself as a Mad refugee, I for one am going to count this as your first post on here and tip my hat to you Sir.

There has never been a more thought out first post on here.

You are right on so many points it is unbelievable.

When are you standing for election.

I look forward to subsequent posts from you.

You have set the standard mate

[CarlukeRed69]

I want Strachan and McGhee gone, but it's because I despise them as people, not because I believe anyone else can do a significantly better job. 

 

Scotland is a basket case.  We've stopped producing the kind of talent we need to field a decent international side, and there's no sign that's changing among the kids growing up.  End result is we'll continue to chop and change managers in the hope the next guy will have a magic wand.

 

Not enough people are seeing the connection between the corruption in our club game and the state of our national side.  When I started watching fitba, it was a working-class sport in the UK and taken seriously in far fewer countries.  Scotland was on a par with France as an international side, because although we had a small fraction of their population we took the game a lot more seriously.

 

Since then the game has broadened out and gentrified.  Many people don't like that, but it has implications for the amount of money coming into the game, the quality of coaching, and aspirational parents encouraging their kids to get involved.  When fitba was a hard-core working class game huge swathes of England wanted nothing to do with it.  So we matched them in producing fitba talent. Things have changed.  Who wouldn't want their kid to be a multi-millionaire superstar?  With that broadening of the game's appeal the English, whatever their shorcomings, have produced far better players than we have over the past 20+ years.

 

In Scotland the broadening of the game's appeal beyond its original fanbase hasn't happened to anything like the same extent.  Why?  Well, our club fitba is dominated by two clubs, both built on sectarian bigotry.  At least one of those clubs has a recent history of being mired in corruption, and the behaviour of its fans in Manchester and elsewhere is rightly seen as a national disgrace.  The reaction of the authorities, football and otherwise, to anything challenging the power of those clubs, is to bend the knee.  The fitba authorities think only of the short term impact on income flow, and the establishment fear violent unrest or turning a section of the electorate into single issue fanatics gunning for any politician perceived as a threat to their clubs. 

 

The evidence is everywhere: the refusal to countenance strict liability, or to enforce laws on sectarian singing, the Houdini trick of pretending that Rangers is a continuing club, the series of bizarre court and enquiry decisions confounding the expectations of informed lawyers, the refusal of the authorities to stand up for taxpayers against tax cheats, the ostracism and defenestration of journalists refusing to toe the pro-Rangers line.  And the utterances of the authorities that make it clear that not only do we need Rangers (and Celtic) to survive to be successful, we need them to successful to be successful.  The message to fans of other clubs: for the game to prosper we need clubs like the one you support to normally fail.

 

The end result that the game has failed to broaden its appeal to those not already emotionally invested.  The sons of ordinary working men who got a better education and ended up in middle class jobs often retain their childhood allegiances, but many decent Scots either give fitba a wide berth or bypass the Scottish game and focuss on the EPL,  And when you see the sectarianism, the corruption, the willingness to bend the rules, the lack of sporting integrity, who can blame them?

 

Now I know some posters will say, if the middle classes don't like the game, fine by me.  We want the game to keep its soul, not sell out the the prawn sandwiches mob.  But that comes at a price. Nowdays any footballing country that has a big section of the comfortably off, the influential and the opinion formers turning its back on the game is fighting with its hands tied behind its back.  if aspirational parents don't want their kids playing football, we'll produce fewer good players.  People have been contrasting the success of our Olympians with our football team, but the harsh fact is that a disproportionate amount of our Olympians, and of successful sportsment generally, come from the sort of families who are turned right off by the negatives attaching to our "national game".

 

I don't think Scotland will start punching its weight in international football again until a bigger and more representative proportion of country is more wholeheartedly invested in the team; and I don't think that will happen until our club game starts to at least gain respect from the sort of people who haven't been steeped in it since childhood.  That would require a massive injection of decency and fairness into the domestic game.  It would require an upgrading of our football media, too often partisan, lickspittle and frightened of any show of integrity that might put their cushy gig at risk.  It would need us to get rid of the perception that our game is run by spivs and chancers who'll bend any rule for the sake of a fiver and operate in the conviction that there is virtually no risk of them being held to proper account.  In short, it needs Scottish football to be something that decent, aspirational families would be prouder for their kids to be part of.

 

In other words, not gonna happen.

 

Outstanding! 

[manc_don]

Excellent post dolly longstaffe! 

[rocket_scientist]

Brilliant post DL. Totally agree.

 

It's never gonna happen unless and until Scotland get the right people in the right places.

 

And the self-serving nature of people with power means it won't happen.

 

There's nae cunt with any decency in the corridors of power and Ernie Walker set the culture way back then.

[rocket_scientist]

I want Strachan and McGhee gone, but it's because I despise them as people, not because I believe anyone else can do a significantly better job. 

 

This is the saddest truth for me. There's NOBODY decent in the Scottish game who can step in. It's the whole culture that's rotten. Totally agree with Strachan and McGhee out for the exact same reason.

 

Talk on the news that Strachan is considering his position. He must surely know that he's out of his depth.

[1903_Redz]

A very good read there Dolly, tho i must admit to losing track of exactly where you're laying the blame for the position Scotland find themselves.

 

If it's simply down to the corruption in Scottish fitba then i can see your point, but it sounded at one point like you're saying there's not enough money coming into our game due to people staying away for various reasons, the corruption being one of them. If that's the case then you can't really blame the Scottish authorities by bending the rules if it helps to increase the cash flow which in turn would help to grow our game. (I can not believe i just stuck up for the SFA SPFL ). As you say the game here isn't going to improve because it's a vicious fooking circle!

 

I know we don't have a strong league or a big population and while that is an excuse of sorts i think we are too quick with that sort of stuff. Ireland, Croatia, Switzerland and Uruguay all qualify for tournaments a lot more often than we do and have plenty of players in the big leagues, yet they have populations smaller or similar to ours and their national leagues are no big shakes, i could mention Wales and Iceland too but i believe they're just having one of those fantastic eras that come along every once in a life time, if you're lucky.

 

I actually thought things would be improving by know because i know there's loads of kids football played at weekends and i know that the coaching style has changed to a more modern game (1 of my mates is a coach for Colony and we regularly chat about what they try to emphasis to the kids) and i've watched the odd kids tournament and been impressed by what i was watching... i really don't know where it's going wrong.

 

Just going back to Dolly post again where it's mentioned about the authorities needing the bigot bros to be as strong as possible and winning everything.... Scotland's best run of World Cup qualifications is from 1978 to 1998 with our strongest squads being in the 80's, just so happens that there was another couple of teams in the mix for the silverware in Scotland at that time, not just the gruesome twosome, so perhaps the authorities need to start leveling the playing field again in the domestic scene for the national team to progress? Just a thought.

[DollyLongstaffe]

Thanks for the kind words.

 

1903 Redz, my point is that the game has broadened its appeal in other countries (especially England) but not here.  The stigma that used to attach to the game among the middle-classes has largely evaporated.

 

In the 60s it would have been a very rare politician who would have admitted to a passion for the game.  By the 90s Tory cabinet ministers were sitting side by side in matches at Chelsea.  In the 60s England suffered compared to the likes of Italy, where the game was less class-specific and where rich benefactors saw no incompatibility between being socially aspirational, culturally sophisticated and sponsoring a fitba club.

 

The English FA now receives big chunks of government money.  Virtually nobody has a real issue with that, because the country as a whole is well disposed towards the game and the national side, even though they're exasperated by under-performance.  If the Scottish government tried the same thing there'd be an outcry, because (for reasons developed in my earlier post) a huge chunk of our electorate regards fitba as a national embarrassment. Who'd want to see public money indirectly subsidising Rangers, ie a collection of near gangsters? If the government sees Scottish fitba as a social problem rather than a source of national pride, that hurts our game. 

 

Like it or not, middle-class households produce a way disproportionate amount of successful sportsmen.  I'm not saying we should be comfortable with that, I'm not, but it's a fact.  Middle class parents are better at encouraging ambition and focus, they can afford better coaching, they send their kids to schools with better facilities.  If middle class Scottish parents are much less likely than English ones to see fitba as a desirable sport for their kids, that hurts our game.

 

My point about the SFAs greed is that it is short term.  It's about keeping the cash flowing from the existing hard core of (mainly Rangers and Celtic) fans. If that means turning a blind eye to bigotry and corruption, and fostering a non-level playing field, that's what they will do.  That gives the game a toxic image that means we can't broaden its appeal beyond the already committed (and even makes it harder to hold on to them).  It means big business is much less likely to get involved with the game in the form of sponsorship or advertising.  It means government is less likely to help.  It means middle class and aspirational working class kids are much less likely to dream of playing in the Scottish leagues.

 

 

[OxfordDon]

Just to comment on one point, i'd nae be happy if the Scottish government did divert public funds to football - it's not exactly a frontline public service and there are far better beneficiaries of a very limited (and shrinking) financial pool, like health, education, social care, LAs etc.

 

Other than that, as you were