Pundits have a nerve in talking down our game
PEOPLE who don’t care about Scottish football tend to care a great deal about who knows it. Take a minute to scan the comments beneath MailOnline’s Scottish output.
The opinions of engaged Scots fans are outnumbered two to one by the trolling of Bored Brians from Bristol.
Like walking into a bar sober when everyone else is bladdered, the comments win no prizes for wit or originality.
The SPFL Premiership is a Sunday pub league. The Old Firm would be lucky to survive in the English Championship. And nobody cares about Scottish football anyway.
No one expects boozers in Manchester to crowd round the pub telly when Ross County are on. But consider this. To post an online comment, users have to take a bit of time registering their details.
They fill in their name, address, phone number, email address and password (twice). And every time they log on they have to hammer said password into a keyboard with a flabby finger.
All of this to tell the world that Scottish football isn’t worth their time and effort. It’s not only funny. It’s tragic.
Listen, no-one in this deeply flawed little piece of hill and glen should labour in a state of delusion.
The last time Celtic or Rangers were up there with the world’s best, the Bay City Rollers were number one. The New Firm are now decrepit. In European terms, Scotland’s top clubs cling to relevance by their fingertips.
Pedro Caixinha is no Jose Mourinho. But he might be the best Rangers can get.
Celtic, meanwhile, are strolling to a sixth successive title.
And there’s not much respect or applause floating around. Only insults and sneers about a twohorse race where one of the nags has pulled up lame. No one is kidding themselves. Scots can — and regularly do — criticise the game with a black, scathing humour.
But it’s our game; we can say what we like. When Henry from Hemel Hempstead starts wading in, the defensive streak kicks in.
Baiting and abusing Scottish football has become a blood sport. A pursuit beloved of English football fans and have-ago pundits.
Nicola Sturgeon has no need to hit the streets recruiting members. Not when radio stations inflict intellectual pygmies like Jason Cundy on the nation’s airwaves.
Talk SPORT has cornered the market in mouthy broadcasters offering all the insight and intelligence of a lobotomised London cabbie.
Yet the ignorance and trolling is hardly restricted to self-publicists and shock jocks.
The Times newspaper dispatched a writer north last week to pen an article pretty much written before the train reached Wigan.
With Celtic 27 points clear in the Premiership, we were told crowds are falling off a cliff (they’re not).
Meanwhile, Willie Miller and Archie Macpherson were wheeled in to pad out a preordained hypothesis that this is officially the worst league race ever.
All of which concluded with a question. What is the point of Scottish football? Oddly, no one asks that question of Serie A.
Juventus are cruising towards a sixth successive Italian title. In Germany, Bayern Munich are going for five-in-a-row. Dinamo Zagreb are gunning for a 12th successive crown in Croatia.
In fact, the dominance of Paris Saint-Germain, Olympiakos and BATE Borisov (Belarus) in their respective nations would suggest Europe is full of pub leagues.
Yet the Premiership is the only one singled out. Poked and prodded like the fat kid in class with chronic acne. Forgive some of us, then, for revelling in a piece of schadenfreude on Tuesday night.
No one actually wants to sound like a Cybernat grievance merchant. But when Bayern Munich stuck a fifth goal past Arsenal to secure a 10-2 aggregate win, cries of
Vorsprung durch Technik echoed through Scotland’s living rooms.
For years, England’s top flight has been proclaimed the best league in the world.
It’s an outstanding league, no question. Match of the Day when the kids are in bed is one of life’s simple pleasures.
But, for all the billions of dollars and dirhams swimming around the English league, Spain and Germany somehow manage to be better.
Bayern’s dismantling of Arsenal is the latest confirmation of an increasingly obvious truth. You won’t hear this on
TalkSPORT. But the English Premier League is no more the best league in the world than the Premiership is the worst.