Whatever happened to the great Scottish strikers?
A NATIONAL SIDE WHICH ONCE BOASTED HOMEGROWN STARS LIKE McCOIST, DURIE, GALLACHER AND McCLAIR IS NOW CRYING OUT FOR GOALSCORERS ... BUT NO ONE SEEMS TO BE ANSWERING THE CALL
TIn the next seven to eight years we’ll see the best-ever Scotland team
HIS summer marks the 30th anniversary of Ally McCoist winning his first Golden Boot. He would soon assemble a pair. Named by adidas as Europe’s premier goalscorer in back-to-back seasons — before new organisers changed the rules to penalise players working in smaller leagues — McCoist’s record-setting excellence came in an era of high achievement for Scottish strikers.
The Rangers icon’s 34 club goals guaranteed him a place in the squad for the European Championships in Sweden, then consisting only of eight elite nations. Brian McClair, Duncan Ferguson, Kevin Gallacher and Gordon Durie joined McCoist in providing Andy Roxburgh’s forward options. Two years earlier, at the Italia ’90 World Cup, Mo Johnston, Alan McInally and Robert Fleck had been part of the gang.
It’s easy to wallow in nostalgia, but the cast list available then does provide a reminder of how a nation of five million people once produced an abundance of high-level goalscorers. Fast-forward to the present day and the picture is markedly different.
Che Adams and Lyndon Dykes, both immensely welcome additions to the national squad, owe their upbringings in football to England and Australia respectively. Adams hit his first goal in 17 games for club and country in this month’s 4-1 win in Armenia, while Dykes — whom the Scottish league system can at least claim credit for refining at Queen of the South and Livingston — missed those Nations League ties through injury.
Pairing them together had failed to produce an attacking spark in the earlier World Cup play-off defeat to Ukraine.
Former Ross County player Ross Stewart’s progression at Sunderland makes him the next in line, but the domestic game doesn’t offer a great deal of encouragement about who else might step up.
While a fit and firing Kevin Nisbet would undoubtedly help, only one Scottish player has managed to net more than 15 Premiership goals in the past six years. That was Kris Boyd — then 34 and now retired to the Sky Sports studio.
Writing in a recent newspaper column, Boyd admitted he was almost ‘embarrassed’ to finish as league top scorer in his latter days at Kilmarnock, amid a lack of more youthful competition, and pondered whether the art of being a penalty-box finisher was becoming lost altogether.
It’s an interesting point. What has happened to the Scottish striker? And what does the future hold for the prospect of goals in dark blue? The landscape might not look particularly appealing right now but ex-national manager Craig Levein doesn’t feel any sense of despair. Heavily involved in setting up the SFA performance school system and later director of football at Hearts — with a keen eye on youth football — Levein confidently predicts green shoots of recovery will appear in forward areas and help Scotland truly flourish. It’s just that a little more patience might be needed. ‘If you’d asked me this question five years ago about full-backs, I’d probably say the same thing as I’m saying now,’ Levein tells Sportsmail. ‘These things are cyclical. ‘Sometimes you get a glut of really good players in certain positions. We’ve had that with full-backs and midfielders. It’s probably time, or hopefully it’s time, that we get three or four young strikers that go on to become full international players. I am hopeful.’
The accusation made by some is that modern strategies — or the modern academy system — can almost coach out some of the individualistic traits needed to be an effective, consistent scorer.
‘I don’t think that’s fair,’ argues Levein. ‘From around 2012 up to 2019, I had the privilege of watching a lot of youth-team football. And the standard of player is improving all the time.
‘I think in the next seven to eight years, we will see the best Scotland team we have ever seen. I believe that.
‘There are a lot of people doing really good work in the academies. I come back to the same point. It’s cyclical. You just have to be patient and trust the process.
‘I don’t think you can say clubs have been concentrating on producing full-backs, or any other position. I don’t know how you do that.
‘Rory Wilson has gone from Rangers down to Aston Villa and he’s a striker. That tells a story. There are some really talented boys coming through.’
Wilson, 16, has claimed goals for Scotland’s Under-17s. The challenge for him and others is to stay on a path that could one day lead to senior caps.
Kevin Gallacher was top scorer when Scotland last qualified for a World Cup in 1998. He feels it’s harder than ever for strikers to make a breakthrough and takes a view similar in part to Boyd’s.
‘One aspect, I think, is just the style of football now… people want everything,’ says Gallacher.
‘They want an all-rounder, but to find a perfect centre-forward who can do everything is almost impossible.
‘We’re looking for the Kenny Millers, the Kris Boyds who can score goals but I don’t think the selfish qualities of a goalscorer are always foremost in some people’s eyes.
‘In our day, you had four strikers in any squad. Two backing up the other two. But that’s very rarely seen across the nations now.
‘I don’t think it’s just Scottish football. It’s the way the game has changed its philosophies. Many of them only allow for one centre-forward.’
Levein doesn’t see tactics as a barrier to creating excellence. However, he recognises one advantage the likes of Aaron Hickey, Calvin Ramsay and Nathan Patterson may have had over their striking contemporaries.
‘This might sound a bit silly but the hardest ones to introduce are the ones who play straight up the middle of a team,’ he says, considering his time as a club manager with Hearts, Dundee United and others.
‘Goalkeepers, centre-backs, central midfielders and strikers.
‘Sometimes managers are reluctant to put in young players in these central positions because there is a more physical element to playing there.
‘I go back to John Souttar being introduced to the Dundee United team at 16. He wasn’t ready to compete physically but that game-time did him the world of good.
‘I do feel it’s only a matter of time (to see more strikers coming through). But they still need access to other things that are important.
‘The moment when that young player is ready to gain access to men’s football is critical. If you get to 19 or 20 and are not playing against men, you’re hampered. Even worse are the ones who get access to first-team football at one club, then get sold and stuck in the reserves. That’s hugely detrimental to their development.’
Levein’s vision of the national side — and its strikers — thriving like never before towards the end of this
If you get to 19 or 20 and aren’t playing against men, you’re hampered
decade is certainly a heartening one. Perhaps a future Golden Boot winner might even emerge.
Time will tell. For now, it’s up to those already plying their trade to show that Scottish goalscoring excellence can still be seen — beyond old YouTube clips of McCoist and his ilk.