Scotland playing catch-up after barren 20 years
Scotland face Albania in their first Nations League match today with long-suffering fans hoping they can take the first step to end a 20-year absence from major tournaments.
The new competition is designed to replace friendlies with more competitive matches and also provides a second route to qualification for the European Championship.
And with Glasgow’s Hampden Park one of the host venues for the tournament in 2020, it gives Alex McLeish’s team, thumped 4-0 by Belgium in a friendly on Friday, added incentive to qualify.
The Scots reached five straight World Cups between 1974 and 1990 thanks to players such as Kenny Dalglish, Graeme Souness, Denis Law, Billy Bremner and Archie Gemmill.
But two decades and 10 major international tournaments have passed since Scotland faced Brazil in the opening game of France 98.
A generation of Scots has been forced to look on enviously as other, smaller, nations such as Iceland, Croatia and neighbours Wales and Northern Ireland have qualified for major tournaments.
Former Rangers, Brighton and Manchester City forward Gordon Smith – who was chief executive of the Scottish Football Association (SFA) from 2007 to 2010 – says everyone from the government down should shoulder the blame.
“Why has Iceland’s football improved so much? Because they’ve spent a lot of money on facilities,” said Smith, who added Scotland lacks facilities, including indoor pitches, but that the government does not see building infrastructure as their duty with all the money washing around in the game.
“The government has to get involved in order to get these facilities built because they are crucial to the standards we need to reach.”
SFA performance director Malky Mackay agreed that Scotland lacks sporting facilities.
“They [Iceland] built 10 indoor domes for them in a country that for six months of the year it was dark,” he said. “All of a sudden kids were able to play all year round and their touch got better.
“Lo and behold, their Under 17s and U19s and full squad have started improving.”
Smith said Scotland are slowly starting to reap the rewards for an increasing focus on youth development.
“One of the problems we had for a number of years was this pathway to bring through young players wasn’t there and we had very few players playing at the highest level,” he said.
“Rangers and Celtic had a lot of foreign players in their teams and there weren’t as many Scottish players at the highest level in England as there were in the past.
“But we are getting there. We are bringing through a lot more good young players and there’s quite a few now playing down in England.”