Only one man can turn 2020 vision into reality
ARE you old enough to remember being a little creeped out by the calendar turning over into 1984, a year when even the chart success of Joe Fagin’s ‘That’s Livin’ Alright’ felt like the precursor to some Orwellian nightmare?
Or maybe you had a giggle at the gap between wildly inaccurate sci-fi prescience and mundane reality when the millennium rolled around.
Shockingly, the world’s biggest concern turned out to involve a quirk of the date format on old-fashioned computers — not our manned moon base being torn from its orbit by a nuclear explosion. Take that, Space: 1999.
There’s certainly plenty of wry amusement to be had in picking over the bones of ‘future worlds’ dreamt up by our finest creative minds down the ages.
The hope is that one of particular interest to Scottish football fans will, in a few months’ time, not be slipped into the same fantasy category as Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 moon buses or the horror of the Terminator’s Skynet becoming murderously self-aware in 2011.
Scotland United: A 2020 Vision was originally published by the SFA almost nine years ago, then later updated to cover the specific period between 2015 and 2020.
This ambitious document laid out exactly how our national game was going to be revitalised. And contained just the one teeny, tiny, almost-not-worth-mentioning potential plot hole…
It’s certainly true that many of the goals outlined, from grassroots growth to the rise of the women’s national team, have been achieved. In terms of accurate predictions, the Scotland United script scores better than even some of the most far-sighted Arthur C. Clarke brainstorms.
But the only official target that most football fans really give a damn about? Namely, our men’s side getting back to a major finals for the first time since 1998.
Well, everything now rests on the efforts of one Everyman character — a suitably ordinarylooking hero — thrust into an all-or-nothing struggle.
Steve Clarke is John Connor trying to prevent the rise of the
Terminator. Only with much more at stake than just the future of the human race.
In case you missed it at the time, the 2015 edition of the SFA report contained — under the heading of Section Two, National Teams Success — the following ambition: ‘Men’s team qualify for two out of the three next major tournaments.’
Just double-checking for a minute… no, didn’t think so. We didn’t make it to Euro 2016 or the 2018 World Cup.
But, honestly, if Clarke gets us to the European Championships this summer, nobody is going to quibble about ‘only’ hitting one out of three performance targets.
It won’t be easy, of course. Israel at home followed, hopefully, by Norway or Serbia away represents a stern test for any mid-ranking European nation.
Then there’s the block-bustersized body count sure to hamper our very own no-nonsense, hard-bitten, ever so slightly world-weary leader of men.
McGinn, Naismith, Tierney, now perhaps Christie as well, with more guaranteed to follow… no proper thriller captures the imagination without a proper sense of peril.
In this season of resolutions, predictions and looking ahead in hope, we can safely say that nothing is likely to be more gripping than the fate of Clarke’s men. If he gets us to Euro 2020, including two games at Hampden and one against you-know-who at Wemburlee, we’ll all look kindly on the SFA’s historical statement of intent.
We’ll nod sagely and acknowledge with pride that, hey, the women’s team did qualify for both Euro 2017 and the 2019 World Cup. Called it, lads. Well done.
Oriam was built more or less as planned. Hampden successfully bid for Euro hosting rights, too. Back of the net.
Project Brave, performance academy targets and lofty financial ambitions in a difficult commercial market? Meh.
None of the negative stuff will make headlines when Scotland are taking on the Czech Republic, England and Croatia en route to a place in the knock-out stage…
We’ll be living in a future that everyone hoped would become a reality. A world that a few brave visionaries even outlined in black, white and rainbow graphics way back when.
And if it all goes wrong on Judgment Day? The fact that the administrators’ predictions will be made to look as far-fetched as Blade Runner’s vision of 2019 — complete with replicants, space colonies and flying cars — will be the least of our concerns.
Everything that so many have worked for will be lost… like tears in the rain.