2020 ...and the dinosaurs are still in charge at Hampden
BACK in December 2010, when Henry McLeish was unveiling the second part of his exercise in stating the bleedin’ obvious — the imaginatively-titled Review of Scottish Football — he branded the SFA ‘decades out of date’.
How comforting it was to see the former First Minister come back out of the woodwork on Friday and confirm that the more things change in this odd little corner of the sporting universe, the more they stay the same.
McLeish’s report was the subject of much fanfare on publication. Gosh, how pleased they were with themselves in Hampden at the time.
George Peat, then the president, sat at a press conference with a plastic dinosaur in front of him — as if to prove it was even more of a two-bob organisation than you had imagined.
Henry’s Magnum Opus led to a shiny new strategy document called ‘Scotland United: A 2020 Vision’. It is still available to view on the official SFA website in case you don’t find clicking through the results of every single men’s team at every level since it was written demoralising enough.
Of course, with it now being 2020, it is time to look behind its pictures of smiling children, jazzy graphics and corporate jargon.
Time to examine how many targets were met. Time to assess just how much progress the SFA has made.
‘It’s decades behind,’ states McLeish by way of an update, showing his uncanny knack for telling everyone what they already know remains undimmed after all these years.
In a way, it is almost poetic that it has taken an entire decade to reach the conclusion that it is still decades out of step. What difference does another one slipping by make when you’re having such fun?
Of course, that ‘Scotland United’ document was updated in 2015. It set a target of having the men’s national team qualify for two of the next three major tournaments and being rated in the world’s Top 40.
We’re currently 50th, breathing down Jamaica’s neck, and haven’t been at a major championship for 22 years.
McLeish’s report also led to the introduction of special Performance Schools. At this moment, only three products from those have won caps for the national Under-21s.
Meanwhile, our underage teams, so long a beacon of hope at least until the Monster Munch and the Mad Dog 2020 caught up with them, no longer seem capable of qualifying for finals tournaments either.
The progress of the women’s game is one positive. No thanks to the SFA, mind you. When the players made it to Euro 2017, the build-up was scarred by a row over money.
Having also made the World Cup last summer, momentum has since slowed to the pace of the plate tectonics that split Pangaea into seven continents 175 million years ago — with an estimated £400,000 of FIFA prize money sitting around that no one knows what to do with.
As McLeish started biting the hand that fed him on Friday, the SFA revealed on their website that a working group is working on that, but won’t have any results for six months.
Providing they deliver their own particular blueprint in time, two years will have passed since Shelley Kerr’s side qualified for France 2019 and guaranteed those funds.
Kerr, she of the alcoholic drinks and fractious World Cup debrief, remains in the building. Somehow. During the week, she helped turn the irony meter up to 11 by imploring everyone to #bekind.
The thing is, it is hard to #bekind about the SFA. Let’s go back to ‘Scotland United’, the document that reflects upon the leadership of the national association in rather the same way the Marburg Files made it difficult to carry on making a case for Edward VIII.
It speaks of the SFA’s pride in their Judicial Panel set-up. That, with good reason, is now about to be ripped apart after a sustained period of chaos, unfathomable decisions and open revolt.
Ask most clubs about current compliance officer Clare Whyte, who must surely be scanning the job pages for new opportunities, and see how many are willing to #bekind.
Let’s not even discuss VAR. It is over a year since SFA chief executive Ian Maxwell went off to cost it up. We’ve heard nothing since. Other than the fact the clubs aren’t going to let it happen.
Who needs VAR anyway? Particularly when the fall-out from Inverness forward James Keatings’ sending-off against Rangers in the Challenge Cup shows the SFA still can’t get it right when there are countless camera angles telling you the officials got it totally wrong. Heaven knows what to make of yesterday’s statement admitting one tribunal member hadn’t even bothered to look at all the evidence before dismissing Keatings’ appeal against being given a second yellow for diving when Ciaran Dickson had clearly poleaxed him — and revealing another panel will be given a second crack at sorting out the omnishambles that has followed. It looks like someone being thrown under a bus. It looks like a desperate attempt to save face.
However, it also casts doubt on the dependability of the entire disciplinary set-up at a governing body that just doesn’t look capable of running its sport properly any longer. Does anyone have any trust left in it?
‘Scotland United’ made great play of boosting finances, too. That was before the national team finished up without a main sponsor for 15 months after Vauxhall pulled out.
Here’s hoping Maxwell will be faster in finding replacements for William Hill when they withdraw support for the Scottish Cup and the National Stadium this summer.
The SFA CEO has not delivered on a request by the BBC to react to McLeish’s criticisms. Hardly a major shock.
A quick read-through of his appearance in front of the Public Petitions Committee at Holyrood three weeks ago suggests he no longer wants to talk about anything that went on before he took the top job — not as any kind of political carve-up to give clubs a greater grip on power, by the way — 18 months ago.
He met MSPs to discuss the longest-running petition in Scottish Government history. Lodged in March 2010 and entitled ‘Improving Youth Football in Scotland’, it called for the SFA to detail where millions of pounds of public money received for youth development actually went.
That hasn’t gone far. Indeed, the petition hasn’t brought many results at all. One of many concerns it expressed centres on children being held against their will on three-year contracts that clubs have not always been willing to break.
Maxwell has another working group working on that. Its first meeting is scheduled for Wednesday. There is no time frame, though, on when it will report back.
Easy to see, then, why politicians suspect the game’s governing bodies of just kicking this particular can down the road in the hope it eventually disappears one day.
Passing the buck is about the only thing left that the office-bearers of the SFA are any good at.
‘We’ve got the same board set-up where you appear as vice-president and you jump into being president,’ reasoned McLeish.
‘No board of any company would have a president or board members if they kept delivering failure. A big question they should ask themselves is when do they take responsibility?’
One for a certain Rod Petrie, no doubt, who celebrates 13 years at the SFA this summer — when we will almost certainly be living through the nadir of hosting a Euro 2020 finals tournament we aren’t part of.
With three-and-a-half years of his current term still to go, Mr President really is the living embodiment of a useless organisation that has failed spectacularly. That’s no longer a matter of opinion. The pages of ‘Scotland United’ confirm it as fact.