Scottish football now just produces pussycats, not lions
THE successful Scottish footballer was never the tallest. But he was pugnacious, dogged and daring. He was never likely to lift the World Cup. But he would have some influence in who did.
He was a Billy Bremner. A Jimmy Johnstone. A Hughie Gallacher. He didn’t wear pink boots. He didn’t gel his hair. If he had a tattoo, it was hidden beneath a thick cotton vest. An opponent could boot him up in the air once. It wouldn’t happen twice. He could play for a World XI select and not look out of place.
The current Scotland team has none of these types. The Under-21s and youth teams are no better. There are no Bremners, Jinkys or Willie Hendersons emerging.
It’s a depressing situation. One Gordon Strachan plans to address before Christmas.
Inevitably, people will ask what youth football has to do with the national team manager.
His job is to win football games with the A squad. To take the senior Scotland team to European Championships. To World Cups.
Scots will spend the next few days watching the likes of the Republic of Ireland, Norway and Hungary battle out the Euro 2016 play-offs. It’s a lamentable state of affairs and, as Scotland’s manager casts an eye over the Under-21s instead of playing a friendly, some query if he might have used the time better.
It’s a natural question. But it overlooks the fact Strachan lived through — and played in — many of our game’s finest hours.
And unless there are drastic changes in the culture of Scottish football, there may not be many more.
Strachan has experience. He has ideas. He has energy. Most of all, he has passion. The ‘In Gord we Trust’ stuff is embarrassing at times. But it’s no more absurd than the idea of a man of his ilk taking a back seat while Mark Wotte oversaw SFA strategy.
After nine failed campaigns for the national team, Strachan can see an obvious truth. The academy system in Scottish football is failing. It produces players who are soft. Kids who think being ferried to and from training in a 4x4 in their branded tracksuits with a huge set of earphones stuck to their head makes them players.
Bremner (right, with Johnstone) began his career at Gowanhill Juniors. He travelled by bus to train on a mud heap of a pitch. His style bordered on the feral for the simple reason that Scottish football was best suited to those with well-honed survival instincts.
The game’s disproportionate success in the 1960s and 70s owed much to poverty and poor living conditions. No one seriously pines for those days. They are gone — and good riddance. But the consequences of a rise in living standards have been ruinous. Kids no longer play football in the streets because they have computers and more comfortable ways to fill their time. There are other ways to escape the boredom of vast deserts with windows like Drumchapel or Wester Hailes now.
They play video games and iPads. They watch wall-to-wall satellite television. Parents wrap them in cotton wool for fear of abduction. Playing football in the rain plays havoc with hair products.
When they do play, it’s in a strictly structured coaching environment. They are told what to do and how to do it. If they are half decent, they are quickly swallowed up by the academy system. They are cosseted in an environment which no longer produces lions, but domesticated, house-trained pussycats.
Kids are snapped up by clubs in huge numbers, fed, clothed and hidden away from statistics which show most of them haven’t a cat in hell’s chance of making it as a pro with a senior club. Only the very few will make it.
They are denied the enjoyment of playing for their schools. They are carted on coaches all over the country, many travelling home without touching the ball. If they play one competitive game a week they are lucky. Most will never make the first team because managers in a 12-club league won’t take the risk of losing football games and their own jobs by playing kids.
Rejection comes and it hits many like a brick. Peterhead manager Jim McInally, a former Celtic youth coach, claims to have witnessed kids suffer depression after being told they weren’t good enough. If this is progress, then hell mend it.
To be clear, gems still shine through. John McGinn of St Mirren and Kieran Tierney of Celtic are well brought up, intelligent and impressive football players. They have a real chance. But they are no longer the rule, they are the exception.
A country which once produced lions is now clinging to an endangered species. Unless Strachan is given a free hand, the next step is extinction.