FLIP THE CALENDAR
A decade ago our clubs were dumping Lyon and Milan and now they’re losing in Luxembourg and Lithuania... but there’s a way to fix it...
RANGERS were winning 3-0 in Lyon, Celtic dumped AC Milan 2-1 in the Champions League and Aberdeen were booking a UEFA Cup group spot with an away triumph in Dnipro. It reads like a snapshot of a bygone age before Scottish football’s decline in European competition – it’s actually almost a decade ago to the day. Jackie McNamara believes it was a vintage season and a starting point in a downward spiral of continental failure which is nearing no end. At the time he was playing for the Dons after ending a career at Parkhead which included a UEFA Cup Final appearance. And McNamara has called for a change in the football calendar in a bid to improve our fortunes. Fast forward 10 years and while Celtic are our standard bearers in continental competition, we’ve witnessed Luxembourg side Progres Niederkorn’s elimination of Rangers, Cypriot side Apollon Limassol claiming Aberdeen’s scalp and St Johnstone exiting at the hands of Lithuanian minnows FK Trakai. McNamara insists it’s time to tinker with the fixture diary to stop history forever repeating itself with clubs ill-prepared for Europa League challenges. He said: “The landscape for our clubs in Europe has changed dramatically in 10 years but it’s nothing new, we seem to have the same problems every season.
“Our teams are playing qualifiers before they are game ready and there’s not the same continuity in the squads.
“We see our teams starting their European campaigns when they have just returned for pre-season and they are already up against it.
“If you asked Rangers to play Progres from Luxembourg now, they would beat them. I believe they’d do it comfortably and you could make the same case for Aberdeen and St Johnstone.
“Rangers would hammer Progres if they played them this week.
“You look back 10 years and assess the squads of all these teams and it’s difficult to dispute that the players were better.
“That’s just a consequence of the difference in finance available back then
to what there is now. There was also more continuity and clubs knew what they were doing well in advance of playing in Europe.
“If you take Aberdeen as an example, they had a bit of continuity but then they lost three key players in the summer and had new ones coming in. Jonny Hayes, Niall McGinn and Ryan Jack all left so there were big changes there.
“Our clubs now go for long spells in Europe where we struggle to qualify past the early stages and the biggest factor is we are asking them to be up to speed when it’s too early in their preparations.
“That has been the case right back to when I started my career, we never seem to get it right.”
Now working as York’s chief executive, McNamara also admits the quality of player now being asked to help our clubs progress in Europe isn’t on a par with his generation.
He said: “Ten years ago the players were a lot better but money has dropped out of the Scottish game. You look at Rangers and they aren’t anywhere near the standard of what they were then.
“They are still so far behind and you saw that during the Old Firm game on Saturday and in the way they have started this season where they are already playing catch up.
“There has been a reduction in the standard, it has been years since Scottish football had a Henrik Larsson, a Paul Gascoigne, Chris Sutton, John Hartson or Brian Laudrup.
“Even clubs like Hearts tried to spend big in a bid to make an impact and paid the price for that, Rangers likewise.
“No team has managed to bring in anything like the same quality they had a decade ago.
“You can quite simply put that down to the lack of finances and what has happened with clubs trying to chase things as there isn’t a big enough pot to go around.
“Aberdeen are in the process of a transformation after losing star players
and it’s the first time Derek McInnes has had such a dramatic change in his squad during his time in charge.
“St Johnstone have had a few changes but not as many as either Rangers or Aberdeen but they clearly just weren’t ready for Europe in July. Our teams aren’t good enough to handle European qualifiers when they aren’t really fit.
“We are asking our clubs to play competitive games against teams who are halfway through their own seasons so we are hamstrung from the start.”
McNamara also points to Scotland’s inability to qualify for major finals as a reason why we should throw caution to the wind and have our domestic campaign up and running well before continental competition.
He said: “We need to give our clubs a fighting chance to progress in Europe. I would understand the lack of a will to change the calendar if our national side was qualifying for major finals.
“But we haven’t qualified for anything since 1998. If the calendar was affecting the national team then you could argue that it’s more important to try and work something better but the status quo we had hasn’t been working in terms of the timing of our season.
“Surely it’s not too much to ask for the powers that be to change the schedule a little bit to try and assist our teams in Europe? Scandinavian leagues give their clubs the best possible chance but the biggest thing is for us to work it around the TV deal so it’s difficult.”