PLAYING FOR SCOTLAND SHOULD BE THE PINNACLE
Grant says call-offs are missing out on ‘ultimate’ accolade
PETER GRANT was always clear about what represented the pinnacle of his footballing career. It was reached in the two Scotland caps he earned in the summer of 1989.
Grant’s senior international career actually lasted all of four days in May. A 2-0 defeat to England at Hampden was followed by a 2-0 win over Chile at the same venue in the old Rous Cup. He never represented his country again. But the mountain had been climbed.
Almost 30 years on, Grant still feels the same way. Playing for Scotland should be the peak for every player eligible to pull on a dark blue jersey. Yet the reality of the current age seems somewhat different.
The national squad Grant is helping to coach ahead of Saturday’s Nations League trip to Albania is shorn of English Premier League talents.
James McArthur has retired. Matt Ritchie has asked not to be picked for the foreseeable future. And Robert Snodgrass has remained with West Ham to manage fitness issues.
Grant (below) recognises that the intensity and finance of the modern game has changed the pressure placed on its participants.
Yet he’ll never alter his belief that representing your country should be the foremost ambition of any youngster with sufficient talent.
‘You had a dream to play for the club you supported,’ reflected 53-year-old former midfielder Grant, who spent 15 years with Celtic. ‘And, hopefully, if you do well for them, you can play for your national team.
‘I don’t care how much money you’ve got. That’s the ultimate, representing your country at any level. If you can, it means you’re doing well at your day job. That should never change.
‘Celtic, as a player, was my dream but the ultimate was to play for the national team.
‘Unfortunately, I never got that opportunity many times. I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t see myself as an international player. But I’d love to have been in the Hall of Fame with 100 caps with some of the greats.’
Nowadays, the vast amounts of TV money available to English clubs has created an immense financial imperative to get results.
Grant suspects that managers, who feel the pressure in that environment, may pass it on to players they fear could suffer costly injuries on international duty.
Whatever the truth behind the recent absences from the Scotland squad, it limits options for Alex McLeish and his backroom staff.
‘For the modern-day player, it must be different. It must be,’ admitted Grant. ‘When we went to the national team, if you wore a certain type of boots, your money was doubled.
‘If you went to the national team, the money you got for sponsorship was more than the wages you’d get for a month.
‘Did that make a difference for us? No. People talk about that but, for me, it meant you were playing well for your club side.
‘Now it’s a little different. Clubs put players under a lot more pressure now.
‘I genuinely believe, because of the quick turnover of games, they want them available (all the time). They maybe get back on the Thursday for a Premier League game on the Saturday. Is that enough time?
‘The players are in the team, they want to stay in the team. We understand all these things but, for us, the most important thing is still Scotland.
‘We can’t tell managers about the pressure they’re maybe putting on their players.
‘I’m not saying all managers are like that, but there’s a quick turnaround of managers now. They could lose their job. They want the best players available. It’s just a vicious circle.
‘Anybody at training today would see the enthusiasm they train with. That makes it worthwhile. You get disappointed when you lose guys through injury but when you see the quality and the enthusiasm of the ones who are here, that’s more important. It gives you hope.’
Even so, Scotland’s defensive numbers continue to dwindle.
Rangers midfielder Ryan Jack, who could have covered at right-back, withdrew yesterday due to an injury in Sunday’s 7-1 victory over Motherwell, while Aberdeen defender Mikey Devlin is another fitness doubt. McLeish can, of course, still call upon two top-quality left-backs. But trying to fit both Kieran Tierney and Andy Robertson in the same side presents a long-standing conundrum.
And Grant was not giving away any clues yesterday about whether Scotland would operate a three- or four-man central defence in Shkoder.
The latter option could see the Celtic man switch to right-back as a solution.
Tierney operated there during Gordon Strachan’s time as national team boss and, while clearly not his preferred role, Grant insisted the 21-year-old had not declared any resistance to reprising it.
‘No, never,’ he added. ‘You see these boys who turn up, they play a hell of a lot of games, especially players like Kieran who are involved in Europe.
‘They come in with enthusiasm. The way they train is the way they play. They do it every day. There’s no issue with any of them. That’s the beauty of it. You could see (someone saying): “Ach, I don’t want to play there”. But we have never seen that.
‘They might play for their club in a different area of the pitch. Circumstances sometimes dictate it for us.’