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Standard Of International Team


Weebaw1
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I sometimes wonder if the whole "Argentina thing" has permeated so deeply into the psyche of Scottish football and the Scotland supporter, that the mentality of "Do-a-deer" and a cheerful acceptance of defeat/non-qualification/astonishment if we qualify, now makes it almost impossible for the nation to get involved in international football to anything like the extent it used to. Of course there are "new" nations who now outstrip us - very few Scottish players play at the top level in top leagues (specifically in England where other nations' footballers-particularly those from the African continent as well as Eastern Europeans are now proving to be technically way ahead of their Scottish (and in many cases English) counter-parts). Times move on, of course, football is probably less important in societal terms nowadays - particularly international football - the Champion's League (or in Scotland the "Summertime Challenge Cup for possible admission to the Europa League if we're lucky" tournament) is now all consuming and even some of the more modest of SPFL clubs rarely have a "Scottish spine" to their team.

 

I will confess to being less than an avid Scotland supporter (seeing Scotland play a yellow shirted/red short Wales team in the early 70s kinda ruined it for me!!) but it is none-the-less a shame that the national side seems now to be becoming little more than a (relatively interesting) side-show for many football followers in Scotland.

 

I too blame the collapse in Communism - but also the demise of the Home Internationals!!

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When you look at the top dozen teams in England, there would be say 15 players from each team that you'd call a regular, ie lots of starts and always in the squad with a chance of getting on.

 

That is 180 players.

 

Then when you consider that not a single one of them comes from the next country to the north (a country that continues to send its best players to England), you can see why we have a problem

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Strachan hit the nail right on the head.......... We cant pass.

We have a league set up that stifles a passing game No matter what team tries to play it you very rarely see more than four completed passes in a row in our top flight. It's a symptom of the fear and pressure of playing in a division with only 12 teams in it.

A couple of seasons for a young player in our spl will knock any ability to play a consistant passing game out of them.

We are not now producing enough players to play to even in our own sh1tey league , look at the pre season signings for bottom six teams already.

I blame , the fall of Communism, Ernie Walker and The old firm. ........and Chick Young

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Aye, Ernie Walker, when's his 'think tank' paper being published, supposed to sort Scottish football out and set us up like the Dutch model from the 70's if I remember?

 

Was about to make a similar comment. He spent years producing nothing (though plenty of free dinners and foreign holidays were financed by the report) and so did all the others in the SFA who claimed to be "sorting out" Scottish football. The Scottish football league has to take some blame too. I don't buy, btw, the idea that we are too wee or kids have too many distractions - some smaller nations have better teams and most (European anyway) countires have to deal with the attractions of new sports and video games and so on.

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Was about to make a similar comment. He spent years producing nothing (though plenty of free dinners and foreign holidays were financed by the report) and so did all the others in the SFA who claimed to be "sorting out" Scottish football. The Scottish football league has to take some blame too. I don't buy, btw, the idea that we are too wee or kids have too many distractions - some smaller nations have better teams and most (European anyway) countires have to deal with the attractions of new sports and video games and so on.

 

I'll cite one example. Nov '99 Ugly Sisters game goes ahead 6 days before the 2000 Euros double header v England. Tho' full of foreign players both sides contain Scottish internationalists (7 iirc). The inevitable happens and one of our internationalists gets injured and misses both England games. Worse in my mind as it's Paul Lambert who I regarded as probably our best player at the time, experienced into the bargain. Scholes, who Lambert would no doubt have been tracking scores a double in the first game.

You have to ask if there would've been many countries in the World who would sanction a club match containing 7 of their international squad immediately ahead of such important matches. Perhaps the fact that both supports in the club game show little enthusiasm for their country never mind its football team played a part. Perhaps a governing body was too weak to stand up to the TV company. Probably a case of both.

Edited by lady-isobel-barnett
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I'm struggling to come up with one positive thing to say about the Scottish international team apart from we're not very good and we're certainly not improving. In tonight's game I think there is a decent chance of France giving us a sever doing. In many ways I'm relieved we didn't qualify, as on recent form we'd likely be severely embaressed.

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Just seen our starting XI tonight. Taking Robertson out of the equation would I be correct in saying the average age of the other ten players is above 30 year old? Whatever, I've gotta ask the question, win, lose or draw, what the **** is to be gained from tonight?

 

I'm not the least bit pro or anti Strachan but this selection tonight is just plain nonsense.

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Just seen our starting XI tonight. Taking Robertson out of the equation would I be correct in saying the average age of the other ten players is above 30 year old? Whatever, I've gotta ask the question, win, lose or draw, what the **** is to be gained from tonight?

 

I'm not the least bit pro or anti Strachan but this selection tonight is just plain nonsense.

 

The question that should be asked is, who on earth at the SFA thought it was a good idea to play this game? Why are we volunteering to give the French shooting practice? Ok, that's two questions. We are not in the Euros and should be looking forwards, building for the next disaster qualifying campaign.

 

I have no strong feelings for or against Strachan either. I wonder how he feels about playing this game. Perhaps he is protecting younger players by keeping them away from this morale sapping exercise.

 

We should be playing other no-hope teams like Wales, N Ireland, Albania... Oh...

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If Strachan doesn't want to bleed the young players in too early (which is a load of nonsense) in fear of sapping their confidence, why did we agree to be cannon-fodder for the likes of Italy and France? Just consolidates what we already know about the hopeless squad of players we have at the moment.

We are never going to be at the standard of Italy, France, Netherlands, Spain etc. and that's okay. So why didn't we play friendlies against similar nations with roughly the same standard of football or slightly higher? After all, when it comes to World Cup qualifying for Russia, the results against Slovenia and Slovakia will be more important than that of England surely?

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If Strachan doesn't want to bleed the young players in too early (which is a load of nonsense) in fear of sapping their confidence, why did we agree to be cannon-fodder for the likes of Italy and France?

 

A very good point but it would be fair to point out that I doubt a year has gone by in the last fifty when the SFA hasn't screwed up the national team. So nothing new, then. I'm not for a minute suggesting that we should've selected a starting side of eleven youngsters. I would tho' have thought by picking an experienced goalie and centreback, plus maybe another two or three others equally experienced throughout the team, would've allowed us to risk fielding players that won't be in or around their thirties come the next tournament finals.

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I may stand corrected but does the respective FAs not pay/ get paid for these matches. The fact that France and Italy want to play us (as a prep for matches against RoI etc) then they pay the SFA! Otherwise to get such a friendly against such quality teams would cost the SFA a fortune which they are unwilling to pay. I seem to remember this when we played Argentina at Hampden and also why some games are held in places such as Craven Cottage as a third party would pay both FAs...

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It's all a load of tosh. I gave up going after the Lichtenstein injury time game. And I probably won't ever go back. It's mind numbingly dull and boring. I'll save my cash to follow The Jags.

Didn't see either game but the BBC stats sum things up, for both Italy & France games we had a total of 3 shots on goal & 0 on target. OK we're playing decent opposition but to play 180 minutes and manage that stat seems rather lame, bet all we did with the ball was pass it sidewards & backwards.

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What do you expect when our players are looking forward to a holiday and the opponents are contenders to win the Euros? Was it not four years ago this month that we lost 5-1 to the USA? These last two results mean nothing, but I still don't expect to qualify for anything any time soon.

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I am probably stating the bleeding obvious but I don’t hear many others, especially from those who can or should do something about it.

Scotland is not producing enough youngsters, in all sports, from grassroots level to compete at the highest level. We are an unhealthy nation. Our children are some of the most unfit and obese, as are their parents, in the world. Okay we do produce some top sports people but they are in individual competitor sports and often they have to go abroad at an early age to progress. We are duff in all national team games.

What else can we expect but less than mediocracy. There is no point blaming the Scotland manger or the current group of players. I think they are trying to the best of their ability. The problem has to be fixed at grassroots. </font></p>

Edited by wee jim
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I am probably stating the bleeding obvious but I don’t hear many others, especially from those who can or should do something about it.

Scotland is not producing enough youngsters, in all sports, from grassroots level to compete at the highest level. We are an unhealthy nation. Our children are some of the most unfit and obese, as are their parents, in the world. Okay we do produce some top sports people but they are in individual competitor sports and often they have to go abroad at an early age to progress. We are duff in all national team games.

What else can we expect but less than mediocracy. There is no point blaming the Scotland manger or the current group of players. I think they are trying to the best of their ability. The problem has to be fixed at grassroots.

 

Bleeding obvious or not you're spot on. Just as obvious unfortunately is you could've posted that anytime over the last 20 years or so and you would have been equally pertinent

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