Flowers of Scotland are wilting

CHELSEA are opening negotiations with N’Golo Kante to tie him down to a £200,000-a-week deal. It’s a wise move. In the past three seasons the French star (right) has won two Premier League titles, an FA Cup, the PFA and FWA Player of The Year Awards and now reached a World Cup Final. And more importantly been the heartbeat of all three of those successful teams – Leicester, Chelsea and France. A man-of-the-match showing on Sunday will have the biggest sides lining up mouth-watering offers if they’re not already. Chelsea should get the deal done ASAP. THE death of Spurs legend Alan Gilzean is another reminder of how the production line of skilful Scottish players dried up long ago.

Gilzean (above, challenging England’s Gordon Banks), was described by Steve Perryman as “Nureyev on grass because his movement was so balletic”. Yet he only won 22 caps for Scotland between 1963 and 1971 due to the quality of the competition.

He couldn’t get into the team that beat England at Wembley in 1967 to call themselves unofficial world champions, which boasted a front six of Jim Baxter, Billy Bremner, Jim McCalliog, Denis Law, Bobby Lennox and Willie Wallace.

And even at his peak he’d have struggled to get into the one that beat Holland 3-2 in the 1978 World Cup, who had Bruce Rioch, Asa Hartford, Archie Gemmill, Graeme Souness, Kenny Dalglish and Joe Jordan.

The demise of Scottish football is baffling when you think of how passionately it is still supported.

More than 41,000 turned up at Ibrox on Saturday for a friendly with Bury and Celtic’s average home gate last season was 58,000.

It hits home when you’re seeing lesser-populated countries shining at tournaments like this, that something must have gone drastically wrong at Scottish grassroots level if such a historic footballing nation of 5.4million people can’t put together a decent international side any more.

It may be too much to ask that they start challenging smaller countries like Croatia and Uruguay overnight, but Iceland?