SPFL soap opera is no match for English panto
CRITICS of our national game often portray Scottish football as nothing more culturally significant than a particularly trashy soap opera. A tangled mess of ugly characters appealing to only the lowest common denominator.
And these armchair arbiters of quality entertainment inevitably base their hotter-than-hot takes upon one rather odd comparison.
Why, they wonder aloud, can’t the distinctly low-rent SPFL be more like the Premier League? Right. Quite. About that...
Antonio Conte agreeing to make a special appearance in The Tottenham Hotspur Story, one of the longest-running tragicomedies in British sport, merely confirms what many of us have long suspected.
When it comes to ludicrous plots, cringe-inducing dialogue and bad-faith actors chewing the scenery at every opportunity, the Scottish Premiership has nothing on the world’s richest football league.
Sure, our near neighbours invest far more in hair and make-up, not to mention special effects.
And their annual marketing budget probably eclipses the total transfer spend of Scotland’s top dozen clubs in any given window.
But beyond that? The ‘drama’ produced often feels about as intellectually challenging as watching Charlton Heston wrestle with a stuntman in a rubber ape mask.
True, this has not been a classic week, month or decade for highbrow footballing content north of the border.
However thrilling some of the games have been in the SPFL over the past few days, we all understand that the Scottish game is never that far away from a furious spat or silly farce.
There’s currently a tit-for-tat away-supporter ban going on between Rangers and Celtic, meaning broadcasters will again be denied a ‘proper’ Old Firm atmosphere for the one game that matters most to them.
Not that Sky Sports are likely to complain. Why bother, when there are so many other terrible flaws in their deal with the SPFL, including restrictions that leave many of the biggest fixtures blacked out to a live audience?
In other news, Hearts have been forced to apologise after an ‘inappropriate’ song made its way on to the playlist at their family fun day. You genuinely couldn’t write this stuff.
Hibernian, meanwhile, are involved in a good old-fashioned
Everyone involved in the SPFL product should ramp up the madness
Covid quarantine controversy. How very 2020 of them.
Scottish football is arguably more interesting and inherently valuable than the mass-market dross — big, loud and dumber than a Steven Seagal ‘vehicle’ — churned out by the major players next door.
Yet there’s no denying that, through its dedication to sheer spectacle and enjoyable lunacy, the English Premier League remains a huge draw.
Let’s start with Spurs. A club whose summer search for a manager seemed to cover every free agent on the continent — and a few not-so-free coaches still in gainful employment. Before settling on a guy who left Wolves in the summer.
Over the last 30 years, Tottenham have churned through gaffers at a ridiculous rate, winning just a single League Cup for their troubles.
They’ve hired all different sorts, from ‘proper Spurs men’ to hired hands, Ossie Ardiles and Glenn Hoddle to Harry Redknapp and Mauricio Pochettino, not to mention Jose Mourinho or the less memorable Jacques Santini and Juande Ramos.
Now they’re going to give Conte £13.2million a season. Which presumably gets paid even if he doesn’t last a full campaign.
This is the English model. A false economy where the most powerful decision makers have only one move — spending their way out of yet another mistake.
It’s a system that has so far enabled Mourinho, in particular, to make a variety of increasingly ineffectual ‘special guest star’ appearances in different costumes.
As an example of how wasteful such a philosophy can be, look no further than Ole Gunnar Solskjaer burning through schedules and budgets in, potentially, the most expensive flop since the film version of Cats, with daily rushes veering between weirdly promising and truly horrifying.
In the context of so much nonsense, even the news that failed Arsenal boss Unai Emery is getting the Newcastle job may struggle to generate interest beyond the Toon Army.
Already, of course, the trailers for the rest of this season’s action are promising mayhem and madness aplenty.
Former Chelsea boss Conte is being touted as somewhere between a saviour and a dictator who could either transform Spurs — or throw a tantrum over one failed transfer swoop.
Speculation about Newcastle spending hundreds of billions in January will keep generating interest. And Manchester United will surely be looking for a new/old boss within weeks. Roll up, roll up…
Perhaps, on reflection, there are things Scottish football can learn from our more polished friends in the south.
Maybe everyone involved in the SPFL ‘product’ should embrace the madness and ramp up the chaos. Issue crackpot statements every hour, on the hour.
Make blockbuster moves that tread a fine line between genius and madness. Give Dick Campbell the Rangers job and stream his press conferences on pay-per-view TV.
Be aware that most of our major stars will always want to jump ship and join the Premier League’s travelling circus.
But don’t let anyone talk down our local production as being something less valuable or worthy than the noise and colour on display in the big top next door.