Is it such a tall order for Scots to think big?

IF the source of the observation seemed a little odd, given Gordon Strachan’s previous life as a pint sized tormentor of giants, the logic behind the Scotland manager’s verdict bordered on the baffling.

Let’s l eave apart the sheer nonsense of an argument that says a team with small creative footballers in key forward positions will always be up against i t when opposed by oversized supermen.

Spain. No need to add an explanation to that o ne word r e buttal, surely.

Instead, focus on the rather defeatist theory — formulated and espoused by both Strachan and assistant Mark McGhee — about this nation’s fatal i nability to produce big, strong, powerful athletes who can take on the likes of Belgium, a country perceived t o be blessed with a plentiful supply of raw talent from their former colonies.

‘What do we do about genetics?’ says Strachan ( pictured), not quite embracing the racial stereotyping flirted with by his No 2 last week. Well, we can get our facts right, for a start.

The average Belgian man is less than two centimetres taller than his Scottish counterpart, according to available statistics. Two centimetres. Jeez, how do we ever bridge that gap, eh?

Ah, but the Belgium team who took the field at Hampden on Friday were almost all a great deal bigger than the national average of five feet, nineandahalf inches. And there were one or two of our boys who might struggle to reach the Scottish median mark of a smidgen under fivenine. That’s not about genetics, though. It’s about selection, nurturing the elite, maybe a bit of health education. And it’s about getting the right big fellas — of which we have plenty, honestly — involved in the right sort of football training. Have you ever seen a Scottish rugby player up close? Sean Lamont is 6ft 2in, weighs i n at 16andahalf stone, boasts electric pace and obvious ball skills. He’s just one of some pretty massive and powerful flying backs.

In the forwards, Johnnie Beattie is a 6ft 4in man mountain of such sporting ability that he probably could have played any game to a decent level, if he’d been given the choice young enough. And this is before we factor in the galloping behemoth that is Richie Gray.

Scotland, as a nation, has produced towering rugger chaps, longlimbed and powerful rowers, even a basketball player good enough to play the ‘big man’ role in the NBA not so very long ago. So spare us the idea that we’re all moderately sized average Joes, at best.

If size does matter, it is in the numbers available from a population of five million. We’ll greedily pounce upon that old crutch in order to prop up our belief that the odds are stacked just too high for little ole’ Scotland.

There may also be continuing problems when i t comes to development. Is there still a tendency to stick any big kid at centrehalf as soon as he’s old enough, to win a header and go through the back of somebody? Would Marouane Fellaini have been allowed to develop as a central midfielder in our system? Just asking.

Strachan is fortunate that, as a rule, most of us understand that he is working with players who are not all worldclass talents, to say the least. We’ve got some good ’uns, some big ’uns, some little ’uns and some wrong ’uns. He doesn’t need to search for new excuses.

Maybe being someone who has never troubled the upper ends of the height register makes it difficult for this columnist to see the bigger picture. But, from a view in among the wee fellas, wouldn’t we be better talking about touch, technique and talent rather than pretending that Scotland i s some nation of Lilliputian lightweights?