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Why Are We Getting It So Wrong?


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I just had a wiki look at Elfsborg's stadium, where Celtic will be playing next week. it is right next door to the old stadium where St Mirren played their first ever European tie in September 1980. How things have changed.

In 1980, Their stadium, although tidy, was owned by the local council and doubled as an athletics arena, it still stands as part of the same complex. It held far fewer than Love st and lacked the atmosphere of our old ground. they now have a grand-looking 14500 capacity stadium with state of the art synthetic turf and 2 big stands

The elfsborg side couldn't live with our quality back then, their players were mostly part time and lacked fitness (though not heart). These days, they are champions-league and Europa league regulars (at least in qualifying), where we havent featured for decades. our lovely old ground had to be raised to pay for a new one, they kept theirs and with it a link to their history. Elfsborg also seem to regularly enjoy 10,000 plus crowds and have given themselves the luxury of extra capacity for big games, we have gone for the option of a stadium that disadvantages home fans when a large away support comes along. They seem to hold a pretty prominent position in Sweden and regularly usurp the bigger teams from Stockholm and Gothenburg. the opposite is true for us, although the cup win may signal a return to us being cup contenders for the near future. Apparently, they also make a decent skin from the earnings from the stadium, I understand that we struggle to make any money outside of match days.

Back then, we scoffed at scandinavian teams, now we envy them. i remember talking to a guy who toured in a youth team in denmark in the 70s, he told us that the facilities were outstanding. We all laughed, after all, what had the danes done for soccer up until that point?

i think these things show how we have deteriorated in so many ways over the last 30 years or so in Scotland. How can we as a club and scotland as a nation have continued to let football decline so far in the last 3 decades?

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Perhaps by not trying to hang on to the coat tails of the OF and concentrating on creating a bed of talent from the youth ranks instead of buying useless foreign journeymen we would be in a position to take advantage of said OF current lack of domination. I say that for all Scottish teams outside OF and not just Saints.

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Scottish football is skewed towards the Old Firm. That is the problem IMO. If attendances were more evenly distributed then we'd much better off. The scandanavians aren't dominated by 2 massive clubs like we are.

It's nothing to do with attendances and everything to do with coaching, attitude and diet.

The OF can't buy up every single decent player.

Complacency has cost us our status in the world.

You might want to look at African countries.

In the 70's and 80's they were World Cup fodder.

How many of them could we realistically compete with now?

There's a whole raft of people from smaller countries than ours playing at the top level in the world from countries with no money and starvation being rife.

This is true in so many sports that I've lost count.

That's in just 30-ish years.

I'd be comparing the setup amongst countries used to producing fabulous talent and comparing it to ours.

If the process is identical then it's attitude which is the problem.

I still think we have coaching deficiencies.

Why we are not resolving those is another debate.

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Maybe Swedish youngsters prefer participating in sport to sitting at home playing computer games or drinking Buckfast in the street.

I'm pretty sure there's not a single professional footballer in the SPL drinking Buckfast in the street.

The question is why are the players our country have already produced so far behind their EPL counterparts?

Why are they so far behind the Swedish, Danish, Swiss, Dutch leagues?

Those leagues aren't ALL buying in their talent. Most of them are producing talent themselves.

Is it a coaching thing or attitude amongst young professional players?

I know that argument about TV money but it's a red herring.

Obviously we can't expect the SPL to contain French and German internationalists but why is Scotland not producing a crop even close this standard (even if they are playing elsewhere in Europe)?

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I just had a wiki look at Elfsborg's stadium, where Celtic will be playing next week. it is right next door to the old stadium where St Mirren played their first ever European tie in September 1980. How things have changed.

In 1980, Their stadium, although tidy, was owned by the local council and doubled as an athletics arena, it still stands as part of the same complex. It held far fewer than Love st and lacked the atmosphere of our old ground. they now have a grand-looking 14500 capacity stadium with state of the art synthetic turf and 2 big stands

The elfsborg side couldn't live with our quality back then, their players were mostly part time and lacked fitness (though not heart). These days, they are champions-league and Europa league regulars (at least in qualifying), where we havent featured for decades. our lovely old ground had to be raised to pay for a new one, they kept theirs and with it a link to their history. Elfsborg also seem to regularly enjoy 10,000 plus crowds and have given themselves the luxury of extra capacity for big games, we have gone for the option of a stadium that disadvantages home fans when a large away support comes along. They seem to hold a pretty prominent position in Sweden and regularly usurp the bigger teams from Stockholm and Gothenburg. the opposite is true for us, although the cup win may signal a return to us being cup contenders for the near future. Apparently, they also make a decent skin from the earnings from the stadium, I understand that we struggle to make any money outside of match days.

Back then, we scoffed at scandinavian teams, now we envy them. i remember talking to a guy who toured in a youth team in denmark in the 70s, he told us that the facilities were outstanding. We all laughed, after all, what had the danes done for soccer up until that point?

i think these things show how we have deteriorated in so many ways over the last 30 years or so in Scotland. How can we as a club and scotland as a nation have continued to let football decline so far in the last 3 decades?

Should excite one poster! whistling.gif

On a more series note it's a combination of our domestic game being designed to benefit the OF and other countries with larger populations developing their own professional set-ups. Our game has been in decline for the bulk of my lifetime - the establishment of the Premier League in 75/76 was the first of many attempts to rectify this.

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Should excite one poster! whistling.gif

On a more series note it's a combination of our domestic game being designed to benefit the OF and other countries with larger populations developing their own professional set-ups. Our game has been in decline for the bulk of my lifetime - the establishment of the Premier League in 75/76 was the first of many attempts to rectify this.

OK how does the OF prevent every other team in the country producing any top class football players capable of competing on the world stage? Not a single world class player from Scotland since the 80's.

The OF doesn't even begin to explain that and frankly it's a red herring - a nice wee bogeyman we can invoke to excuse us from our own failings.

Edited by oaksoft
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Obviously we can't expect the SPL to contain French and German internationalists but why is Scotland not producing a crop even close this standard

Oaksoft, I'd go a step further and say why can we as a nation not produce any truly international level players?

I think maybe the last player we produced that might get into a European starting 11 would be Souness, since then I can't for the life of me think of any really good Scottish internationalists.

In previous times we had many - Dalglish, Bremner, Law, loads of Celtic players, White of Tottenham, even Archie Gemmel, you could go on and on - so what's happened that we can't produce any in the past 10 years or so?

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OK how does the OF prevent every other team in the country producing any top class football players capable of competing on the world stage? Not a single world class player from Scotland since the 80's.

The OF doesn't even begin to explain that and frankly it's a red herring - a nice wee bogeyman we can invoke to excuse us from our own failings.

Like I said other countries have developed professional structures in this period leaving us as the minnows we clearly are.

But moving onto the OF they have bought their success with largely non-Scottish players since Souness took over at Rangers in 1986 stifling the development of our best players. How many young OF starlets make the step up to the first team successfully - most of them are cut at 21/22 years of age with little or no first team action by which time they've fallen behind similar youngsters from other countries and are never able to catch up. If you couple this with their using their financial muscle to buy the best players from other clubs many of whom are only ever used as fringe players at the OF I reckon that's a decent case. In every league there are a few large clubs which dominate but nowhere else is the gulf as big as it is in Scotland.

As to why we haven't developed a player of the stature of Bale or Giggs like Wales, who knows? Luck maybe, but I certainly don't think it nullifies the argument that the OF are a major factor in the decline of our standing in world football.

Edited by Bud the Baker
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OK how does the OF prevent every other team in the country producing any top class football players capable of competing on the world stage? Not a single world class player from Scotland since the 80's.

The OF doesn't even begin to explain that and frankly it's a red herring - a nice wee bogeyman we can invoke to excuse us from our own failings.

As I said previously, it was other teams trying to keep up with Rangers signing foreign internationalists that really took away the grass roots of Scottish football. Why else would we have been signing ex Barcelona stars?

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Maybe Swedish youngsters prefer participating in sport to sitting at home playing computer games or drinking Buckfast in the street.

Swedish, Dutch, German and Spanish kids all play computers and have other interests so let's debunk this myth. What the Swedes and the other aforenamed mentioned countries have is the infrastructure that takes talented kids from knee high to estalished professionals. You only have to drive through most Dutch and German villages and towns to see the number and quality of football facilities. I know we did not have those way back in the past in Scotland but neither did we import hoards of foreign players, and football was played morning, noon and night by a lot more kids in the street and in the parks. We need to invest in the game from grass roots level but we all know this already and little is being done. The malaise in our game has been here for decades and kids having other interests including computer games is only a part of the problem.

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I spend quite a lot of time in Sweden and have lived there on an off for 15 years,over which time the standard of football has improved hugely. There's not the same difference between the 'bigger' teams, which to be fair include Elfsborg, and who in my view are a pretty typical upper table team. In a country with twice our population Malmö are probably the biggest club with maybe crowds of 15000, Elfsborg probably around 10 000. My own local team BK Häcken have Saints-sized crowds and stadium I'd say and after being promoted only a few seasons ago and nearly won the league last year (we don't like Elfsborg much for some reason; no-one I've spoken to at the club can tell me why, 'you just don't' I was told).

I'm pretty sure the squads of most sides are a mix of pros and part-timers, but I could be wrong. Overall, it's just a much more even mix of quality with no absolute runaway teams, so it's more open and interesting. Beneath the top two tiers there's a regional system as Sweden is bigger than France so travel is a real issue. The number of teams results reported in the sports pages down to very local level is astonishing. Football's not the only show in town here, and to be honest Hockey has the bigger stars and coverage. But one of the things I really like about football in Sweden is the fact that it is so relatively low key - at least in the press. Players aren't put on pedestals, never mind the managers; it's all very informal and friendly and well, less intense and resultingly more about fun than elevating a wee game to a matter of crushing importance. Oh yeah, they play in the summer, which as far as I'm concerned has a lot to do with the enjoyment factor. Heja Häcken!

Edited to say Ned's point about facilities rings true for me. Our tiny village in Sweden has four (i think) very good quality pitches and a very active club with its own clubhouse and bleachers etc. Far better sports facilities in general and better weather means loads of kids are playing at loads of levels.

Edited by Barney63
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I can't believe how many no ball game signs there are about these days.

They are plastered all over Paisley. The councils have put a stop to kids playing in the parks/street too not just technology.

How many parents these days are happy to let their kids go to the local park where there is needles and piles of dog shit lying about? Not to mention the amount of weirdos hiding in bushes ect.

Even during the summer holidays i've hardly seen any kids having a game kick about in parks ect. 10-15 years ago i'd be out all day playing football with kids from my street or pals from school. It's changed days.

It's hard to prove if any of the above has made an impact but I'd say theres a decent chance it has.

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Like I said other countries have developed professional structures in this period leaving us as the minnows we clearly are.

But moving onto the OF they have bought their success with largely non-Scottish players since Souness took over at Rangers in 1986 stifling the development of our best players. How many young OF starlets make the step up to the first team successfully - most of them are cut at 21/22 years of age with little or no first team action by which time they've fallen behind similar youngsters from other countries and are never able to catch up. If you couple this with their using their financial muscle to buy the best players from other clubs many of whom are only ever used as fringe players at the OF I reckon that's a decent case. In every league there are a few large clubs which dominate but nowhere else is the gulf as big as it is in Scotland.

As to why we haven't developed a player of the stature of Bale or Giggs like Wales, who knows? Luck maybe, but I certainly don't think it nullifies the argument that the OF are a major factor in the decline of our standing in world football.

Bale was first spotted by Southampton at 9 years old and trained with them from not long after that in Bath .Giggs moved to Manchester when he was 6 ,so not really the Welsh that have developed their talents more so the English .

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As I said previously, it was other teams trying to keep up with Rangers signing foreign internationalists that really took away the grass roots of Scottish football. Why else would we have been signing ex Barcelona stars?

But the foreigner thing ended almost a decade ago and we are still going backwards as a nation so that can't explain it either.

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Like I said other countries have developed professional structures in this period leaving us as the minnows we clearly are.

But moving onto the OF they have bought their success with largely non-Scottish players since Souness took over at Rangers in 1986 stifling the development of our best players. How many young OF starlets make the step up to the first team successfully - most of them are cut at 21/22 years of age with little or no first team action by which time they've fallen behind similar youngsters from other countries and are never able to catch up. If you couple this with their using their financial muscle to buy the best players from other clubs many of whom are only ever used as fringe players at the OF I reckon that's a decent case. In every league there are a few large clubs which dominate but nowhere else is the gulf as big as it is in Scotland.

As to why we haven't developed a player of the stature of Bale or Giggs like Wales, who knows? Luck maybe, but I certainly don't think it nullifies the argument that the OF are a major factor in the decline of our standing in world football.

As I said, there's no doubt that some talent from other clubs was snaffled up but no way have the OF ever been capable of snaffling up absolutely every single talented player.

Also, why have absolutely none of those talented youngsters at the OF ever become world class?

Not a single one.

They haven't all been sitting on the bench. Many of them did get their chance.

Sorry but the OF angle might make us feel better but it's not explaining the fundamental issue.

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As I said, there's no doubt that some talent from other clubs was snaffled up but no way have the OF ever been capable of snaffling up absolutely every single talented player.

Also, why have absolutely none of those talented youngsters at the OF ever become world class?

Not a single one.

They haven't all been sitting on the bench. Many of them did get their chance.

Sorry but the OF angle might make us feel better but it's not explaining the fundamental issue.

Yeah but my post met your original criteria "begin to explain why the OF is detrimental to Scottish football", it's you who've had to qualify your post. I never said they were the sole cause of our relative decline but they are part of it. I'll stand by what I've said so far on this thread while you twist and shout (sic) and qualify what you say - not for the first time.

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The whole set up of sport in general is a lot more structured in the likes of Sweden. There is a place for folk to participate even if they are f**king pish at whatever they are doing. The football clubs are more like community sports hubs with lots of different things going on, maw paw and the weans can pitch up and all f**k off and do whatever they want to do.

I think there is a real lack of quality coaching for football and alhough its still not fantastic I think in recent times there has been a bit more of an effort, but its still not good enough.

I played cricket to a decent level and as a kid the coaching was absolutely brilliant. I was taught every single aspect of the game, and once it was decided that I wasn't too bad, I was taken away and coached fairly intensively to hone whatever skills were there.

I also played football. Coaching consisted of running around the track, doing a bit of circuit work and then playing bounce games. Was never taught how to header. Never taught how to tackle, pass, trap a ball, was never taught the tactical side of things or the finer points of the game. Was basically flung a ball and told to play some football.

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Yeah but my post met your original criteria "begin to explain why the OF is detrimental to Scottish football", it's you who've had to qualify your post. I never said they were the sole cause of our relative decline but they are part of it. I'll stand by what I've said so far on this thread while you twist and shout (sic) and qualify what you say - not for the first time.

For goodness sake grow up. WGAS about all this "you're having to change your position" pish?

Edited by oaksoft
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Bale was first spotted by Southampton at 9 years old and trained with them from not long after that in Bath .Giggs moved to Manchester when he was 6 ,so not really the Welsh that have developed their talents more so the English .

Fair points but I'm sure the scouting systems for England's top clubs extend north of the border

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I also played football. Coaching consisted of running around the track, doing a bit of circuit work and then playing bounce games. Was never taught how to header. Never taught how to tackle, pass, trap a ball, was never taught the tactical side of things or the finer points of the game. Was basically flung a ball and told to play some football.

Yep that was my experience as well.

If it's still like this now then that'll undoubtedly be the problem.

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For goodness sake grow up. WGAS about all this "you're having to change your position" pish?

I've given you reasons why the OF are detrimental to Scottish football - yet again when faced with a polite, rational argument you rush into outraged mode and not for the first time in my dealings with you on this forum, here's the formula.........

overstated original point ⇨ qualifying of original statement (never acknowledged) + rage + abuse

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