The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Time for old men to shut up
Any rational society would not celebrate something it failed at. Venetians would not dance as another Palazzo sunk into the water, Parisians would not whoop for joy as another bistro closed.
Celebrating failure is unusual – making a national ritual out of it is bizarre.
As the football World Cup starts next week, so Scotland’s strange relationship with a sport it struggles to play is rekindled.
We aren’t in the competition, nor have we qualified for 20 years, much as we haven’t won a European club competition for decades.
When we did qualify for the World Cup, we never got past the first round, and frequently lost to developing nations – Costa Rica, Peru, Iran.
One goal scored in the World Cup of 1978 rates as something special, but otherwise, a history of the competition would only mention Scotland in the Index.
Football as the ballet of the masses was created by other people, other countries.
Pele, Maradona, Zidane – Brazil, Italy and Spain.
Our talent seem to be as supporters in the modern equivalent of the Ain’t Half Hot Mum entertainment troupe, the Tartan Army.
Middle aged men will watch rapt in a few days time as Iceland (yes, they qualified – a nation with just 300,000 people) kick a ball, or Saudi Arabia shows the world their passing skills.
On average, the data shows bigger nations do better than smaller ones, while South America and continental Europe provide the winners.
In this context, Scotland is no failure. It has qualified for a lot of World Cups. It hasn’t won, in common with a lot of nations of similar size.
Our performances at global tournaments over the last two decades (none) is an accurate reflection of our standard of player – we just haven’t produced players of the quality.
That can be attributed to some factual things – we have lost our culture of recreational sport and we are fat.
Instead of looking to facts, we have turned to myths to explain our failure.
The outgoing national manager Gordon Strachan, who possessed a footballing skill which would have got him a place in any national side at his peak, left lamenting at how short Scottish players are.
He was lambasted for this, and later said it was his big regret over his leaving.
This is a pity as he was pointing at a set of verifiable data.
Scots are small – compared to the EU average, and the global average for developed countries.
Bernard Hill of Strathclyde University points to diet and environment as the factors which keep us relatively small – its not genetics but how and where you grew up.
We don’t like to discuss this because it feels like straying into pseudo-science and some kind of negativeism
That said, height is no determinant in football – some of the best players are short – Maradona, Messi, Mr Strachan.
A more pernicious myth is that we are heroically destined to fail.
The idea has sunk into Scotland’s consciousness that there is a Scottish jinx, a hoodoo which means we might beat big teams but are sure to fail against Iran, Peru and Costa Rica.
This fanciful idea came about in 1978, a World Cup in a country run by a military Junta – not Russia, but Argentina (global football likes corrupt regimes).
There was yet another recollection of this on BBC TV last night. I haven’t seen the programme at the time of writing but the story is well known.
We had some of the best players in the world, who played in some of the best club teams, and we screwed it up.
Beaten by minnows, victorious over the brilliant Dutch
The myth is persistent about our heroic plight, like some Greek tale of the gods dashing Caledonian hubris, despite having no evidential base.
Statistically, we are more likely to lose than win against any opposition.
In the 1960s and 70s, we had some exceptional players, and they won things, or at least qualified.
After that, the quality declined, ergo we didn’t qualify for competitions.
We cling on to the myth of football , as the core of (some) males’ identity, as there is cohort of Scots who remember the glory days and prefer myth to fact.
They tell youngsters Scots are destined to fail.,
Scotland failed with good players because individual arrogance led to splits in the team.
Scotland continues to fail with average players because they are out-skilled by other teams.
The greatest gift we could give our young players is for old men to shut up about jinxes and national traits, and let the next generation play according to their own ambitions, not the broken dreams of men like, well, me.