LOVE AYE LAND
SFA chief insists cash boom is down to fans falling back in love with the game... and Clarke and his troops have been the real matchmakers
THE thought of grandstanding and number crunching in front of shareholders at an annual general meeting is not for everyone.
And it’s certainly not what gets Ian Maxwell’s pulse racing as he attempts to oversee the regeneration of Scottish football from his position at the top of the SFA.
“It was straightforward enough,” he said with a shrug of the shoulders yesterday at tea time after conducting the business of the day on Hampden’s sixth floor. “I don’t think anyone’s ever walked out of an AGM saying, ‘Well, that was brilliant! I really enjoyed it!’.”
And yet, despite the mundane nature of going through the books, the overarching message Maxwell delivered to the game’s stakeholders yesterday was actually quite an extraordinary thing.
A genuine good news story. In a world where good news often feels like a relic of the past.
“The numbers are up across the board,” Maxwell beamed and he wasn’t just talking about the SFA’s bank balance either even though these last 12 months have seen a record turnover in excess of £48million, after participation in last summer’s Euros.
No, Maxwell has drilled down into the detail and what he has seen is a country which has fallen back in love with football again. For the first time in a long time.
“UEFA say there are over a million people in Scotland who engage in grassroots football. Not watching professional games but playing, coaching, refereeing, whatever. That’s a fifth of the population. It’s something like every other house in the country has someone who has some involvement in football — that’s frightening!”
And Maxwell believes that’s almost entirely down to the success story which is being written by Steve Clarke and his players in their attempts to drag Scottish football back out of the wilderness years for good.
He went on: “There was a bit of concern around what would Covid actually mean, would people get out of the habit of football?
“But actually the numbers are really good, we are as strong as we were pre-pandemic. The men’s national team has been a massive part of that.
“It wasn’t that long ago that we played Israel at Hampden or Kazakhstan and we were selling 20,000 tickets. We have now sold 38,000 Scottish Supporters’ Club memberships which is the highest we have ever had and actually the highest we can accommodate.
“And that’s just the people coming to the games, there is everything else which comes with that. Young kids see the McGinns and McTominays and Tierneys and Robertsons, guys playing at top, top clubs. That’s what they want to emulate and it’s a similar story with the women’s game too.”
But it’s the job Clarke is doing which is really keeping the tills ringing. And Maxwell knows this resurgence is good for business – even if he’s still counting the cost of a World Cup play-off defeat to Ukraine which robbed the governing body of another nine million US dollars.
He went on: “When Steve was appointed I remember saying he needed to turn a Pot Four team into a Pot Two side – and that’s what he did in the Qatar campaign.
We finished second, we won the last six games, we’ve won eight out of our last 10.
“Everyone was massively disappointed with the Ukraine performance and result. We want to make sure we’re better equipped next time so we don’t fall at that final hurdle.
“But that is a symptom of the success we have had and the expectation that we now have a good enough team to get there.” It’s Maxwell’s job, however, not just to admire the green shoots but to determine if there are enough of them. After all, Clarke’s group of players is arguably as rich in talent as any Scotland squad
since the mid 1980s. It’s Maxwell who must decide when or if the manager might be failing to deliver the maximum return which has been the subject of much debate over these last few weeks.
But he remains in no doubt. Maxwell went on: “In the world we live in now, people want things to happen yesterday. We are in a society where everything is instant. You need to be more balanced than that.
“You need to look and ask: ‘Has there been progress? Have the team done what we wanted them to do? We can’t expect not to lose games of football. That’s not the real world.
“The Ukraine disappointment was hard to take. But the reaction is symptomatic of where we are as a society. ‘That’s not happened, so do something about it!’.”
Getting rid of Clarke is not even an option that Maxwell is willing to consider.
Asked if he believes Clarke is getting enough out of Scotland’s golden generation he nodded: “There’s no doubt at all about that. “There’s been no need for me to have a conversation with Steve. There’s been nothing that’s happened that gives me any doubt at all that he is the guy for the job.
“We will lose games of football, we are not a nation that can win every single match that we play. It doesn’t happen.
“So you can’t make a kneejerk reaction, because you are then constantly changing because of the size of country we are and the standard that we’ve got.
“But even then, Germany, France and England have all lost games in June and none of them have sacked their manager as far as I’m aware. So, there’s always that question when there’s a negative spell of results, but it’s about being balanced and coming through it.”
The numbers are really good. The men’s national team has been a massive part of that IAN MAXWELL