Gerrard set to be schooled in circus of Scottish game
THE UEFA Pro Licence is broken down into four key modules: Professional Communication, Leadership and Management of Self and Others, Performance Management and Football Business and Finance. As Steven Gerrard is about to discover over the course of his studies, though, it is somewhat lacking in the infinitely more important issues of corporate governance in the Irish media, the regulatory powers of the Takeover Panel, how a Wee Tax Case is different from a Big Tax Case and nothing at all to do with a dodgy film investment scheme, the monitoring period of the licensing system for the 2011-12 Europa League, all past court judgments involving the South African Revenue Service and the rights and wrongs of wearing an orange top.
An unfortunate oversight on UEFA’s part, no doubt. Still, it can surely all be packaged up to form a fifth pillar of the course for next season’s registrants. Maybe with a catchy, neutral title like, say… Sporting Integrity?
Mercifully, there is no shortage of experts on Twitter happy to serve the common good by sacrificing time, careers and other mindless frippery such as country walks or meeting someone nice and raising a family to provide exhaustive — or should that be exhausting? — streams of consciousness on all of the above and more.
Other corners of the information superhighway can also be mined for rather more niche issues such as songs still on the banned list (remember that?), masonic conspiracies and ‘How To Read The Facial Features Of Diddy-Club Chairmen And Tell What Their “Big Team” Is’.
All part of getting to know your enemy, which, for the avoidance of doubt among everyone entering the Scottish game and particularly the Old Firm, is everybody. Unless they do what you tell them.
This, of course, is not to say that this year’s Pro Licence course cannot be tweaked, that Gerrard cannot provide some special insight for his fellow students over the year ahead.
One strand of the Professional Communication module, for example, is ‘communicating with the media, wider community and supporters’.
Gerrard’s new home of Scottish football, let’s face it, is reinventing the wheel in this field, an enterprise at the vanguard of rewriting the Public Relations handbook.
It is the statement epicentre of world football, for starters. Where reigning champions Hearts can issue one website address blaming the absence of seats in their new stand on the inclement weather before reappearing 24 hours later to admit that some bloke just forgot to order them.
Where Rangers, themselves, can rationalise an on-field riot at the end of the Scottish Cup final — already dismissed as ‘overexuberance’ by the vice-president of the SFA — by painting it as a golden example of upstanding citizens protecting women and children from harm, the brave knight’s brandishing of the lance replaced by the modern-day equivalent of scudding someone on the nut with a corner flag.
Where Derek McInnes can turn down an approach to become manager at Ibrox and then be lambasted on their official channels for being a dud they never really wanted anyway. Where the Old Firm can slash each other’s ticket allocations without ever mentioning each other by name.
It is where Dundee United use Twitter to try to flog their goalkeeper while Inverness Caledonian Thistle stick to something altogether more vanilla such as providing links to porno vids.
Gerrard has a golden opportunity from which to become the apple of the teacher’s eye, bringing a never-ending diet of fascinating case studies to the table as he moves towards earning his qualifications.
Just look at the material available from this week alone from the SPFL, an organisation whose commitment to ‘communicating with the media, wider community and supporters’ involves having a chairman who is now almost a year on from being appointed and refuses to say a single word in public about anything whatsoever.
It has certainly provided some eye-opening examples of ‘How To Do Things Differently’ over the past few days.
It will have come as no surprise to regular readers of one wellestablished satirical magazine that said SPFL chairman Murdoch MacLennan has emerged as a person of interest to Rangers. Twitter, naturally, has all the details. Go far enough down the rabbithole and you will discover, if you didn’t know already, that everyone from Opus Dei to Pope Francis himself has a direct line into Hampden. Anyway, Rangers chairman Dave King has let it be known — in a statement, naturally — that he feels MacLennan should be suspended pending an investigation into links with Celtic’s biggest shareholder, Dermot Desmond.
HOW do the SPFL go about handling this particular powder keg? By insisting — yes, in a statement — there is nothing to worry about and that Desmond is little more than a ‘minor shareholder’ in Celtic and Dublin-based company Independent News and Media, where MacLennan is non-executive chairman.
Technically true, but Desmond does own 39 per cent of Celtic and only recently admitted he wouldn’t stop the manager Brendan Rodgers speaking to interested clubs. He holds just 15 per cent of INM, but has his right-hand man John Bateson on its board. However you dress it, he is somewhat more in both businesses than a passing investor putting a couple of quid in for a punt.
Perhaps it is intentional, though. Perhaps the SPFL want to make doubly sure that the tone for the next season of this ever-more improbable soap opera we call our national game is set.
Cover-ups, conspiracies, paranoia, fear and loathing, misinformation, cyber warfare, death by statement, the Old Firm on a war footing (if there was such a thing as the Old Firm any more) and a wee bit of actual sport to fill in the gaps.
The telly companies will lap it up. If it gets this next contract over the £60million mark, we can even look into getting King and Desmond fighting it out in a paddling pool full of jelly to replace the 2019-20 play-offs.
Ridiculous? Well, it wouldn’t be any sillier than sticking with the 33-game split, would it?
Welcome to the circus, Mr Gerrard. This is the life you’ve chosen. If nothing else, it will most certainly be an education.