The Scottish Problem
September 23rd 2008 06:37
Now, imagine for a second if the phrase wasn’t ‘Big Four’ but rather ‘Big Two’. Scary thought.
Well, that’s Scottish Football. Rangers and Celtic, Glasgow’s rival teams, have dominated Scotland’s top division since it’s inception in 1890. In fact only two other clubs have won it in the last 40 years. Fans up and down the country know at the start of each season, and I mean literally know, that the eventual winner will be either Rangers or Celtic; and English fans think they have it bad.
English fans, and even the ones outside the so-called Big Four, can and do find solace in knowing that every week they are watching the very best footballers in the world. In Scotland they are not, no matter what they claim. Despite the incoherent bleating about Celtic’s good European record or the massive Rangers fan base, let’s get one thing perfectly clear. Scottish football and its top division are justifiably derided in England because it was, is, and always will be a joke.
The Glasgow teams can afford to be mediocre because their opposition is poor and they know that they really only have to finish above one single team to ensure Premier League victory. That doesn’t exactly put demands on the top two to go out and sign the world’s finest. Of course, they will argue that they do but the fact that the current transfer record in Scotland is the ridiculously inflated £12 million that Rangers paid for Tore Andre Flo back in 2000, would suggest otherwise.
Even the best teams in Scotland have taken to mixing average home grown talent with mediocre imports that are held up for praise despite pitting their talents against no marks. Take lanky Greek striker, Georgios Samaras, who floundered around the English Premier League looking like Bambi, on ice, on roller-skates. He was and still is an astonishingly ordinary player. In Scotland, at Celtic, he is thriving.
Similarly let’s look at rubbish Australian striker, Scott McDonald, who continues to be a force in the SPL, despite looking like he’s been eating way too much haggis. At any other club he would be forced to slim down and get his act together, but at Celtic there seems little point as his little talent is enough to get by against defenders that have no place earning money from the game.
That is the calibre of player that plies his trade in Scotland though and there is no scenario under which that will change. They just can’t attract the superstars that might actually make their league watchable, despite having the promise of the Holy Grail that we hear so much about… Champions League football.
The fact that Scotland gets two places for the Champions League is ridiculous and makes a mockery of the fact that the competition should be about finding the continents finest. If you can’t win the league in Scotland then rest assured you’re not the best team in Europe.
My suggestion, for what it’s worth, is to shut it down completely. Disband the entire league and allow them to be incorporated into the English one, much like Cardiff and Swansea are. That is the only way the teams up there are going to improve and get to a level that will really give their fans something to turn up for.
Then if Glasgow’s best really are as good as they say they are, who knows, maybe we’ll be talking about the (so-called) ‘Big Six’. Hmmm, I might just go and trademark that, right now.
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