Glenn Gibbons: Scotland's decline is so steep

Published on Friday 20 November 2009 22:53

IN THE course of a BBC documentary back in 1985, Bobby Charlton made a statement which, to anyone under the age of, say, 30 nowadays will sound like a fairy tale.

His claim concerned Scotland's victory over England in 1967, the latter's first defeat since winning the World Cup the previous summer.

"If anyone had asked me," said the extraordinary Manchester United player, "of all the world teams that were going to come to Wembley (and win) the year after you'd won the World Cup, I'd have said the most likely to do that would've been the Scots."

Were a World Cup winner in the present asked to tabulate, in order of merit, the national teams most likely to complete a successful invasion of his country, he would be talking longer than a filibuster before getting to Scotland.

Charlton's response, it should be stressed, was entirely sincere, without a trace of sarcasm or patronization.

The great man may have been recalling, as many who were around at the time will, that, when England came to Hampden the year before – in one of their final prep matches for the world championship – their 4-3 victory was seen almost unanimously as a proper shock.

It was achieved against the odds over a home side considered their superior, the Scots having been edged out of the World Cup finals by one of the favourites, Italy, and having won three and drawn the other of the four previous annual jousts with the English.

Comparing the different ages, of course, is often tedious, particularly when a perceived veteran is lamenting the poverty of the present.

But these recollections do give a fairly reliable indicator of the steepness of the decline of the average Scottish player and of the difficulties facing George Burley or anyone else persuaded to manage the national team.

However, an aptitude for improving very moderate players – or at least extracting optimum work from them through organisation and/or suffusing them with self-belief – is in the present circumstances a prerequisite of the job, what could even be called a condition of employment; Burley, it had seemed almost from the beginning, was unconvincing by every measure.

Given the standard of player in the squad, the SFA surely must look for a candidate with a certain charisma and credibility, the type who will impress and influence players as much by his manner, comportment and confidence as by his words.

The new man will also be required to take a realistic and honest view of his "assets", eschewing the usual natural, but deluding optimism of managers who tend to convince themselves that a mediocre player is talented because they want it to be so.

But it is one of football's inviolable truths that nobody has any idea in advance of how any manager or player will perform.

As Graeme Souness pointed out with unarguable relevance, not even Alex Ferguson or Arsene Wenger could be relied upon to restore the Scots to an acceptable level of performance.

Reflecting, though, on Craig Burley's typically forthright and chillingly insightful assessment of the current crop of players – "over-hyped and under-performing buffoons with an opinion of themselves way above their station" – it seems possible that the SFA conscripted the wrong family member.

Henry joins list of ignominy

WHOEVER first observed that "cheats never win" was clearly ignorant of the mores of professional football. The history of the sport brims with examples of skullduggery which contradict the aphorism, the latest entry in the book of infamy made as recently as Wednesday night.

By denying Ireland the chance of progressing to next year's World Cup with the perfectly conscientious, illegal use of a hand to construct his team's decisive goal, the France captain, Thierry Henry, intensified the depression that has been settling on football for a number of years as the incidence of deliberate duplicity has escalated to the point of scandal.

Sympathy for the Irish, however – initially ocean deep – had to be tempered on hearing the words of their defender, Sean St Ledger. "We were robbed," he said. "He's got his team to the World Cup and if it had been one of our lads he'd probably have done the same thing."

This chimes with the recent appalling admission of the Kilmarnock striker, Kevin Kyle, that he would 'dive' if it would get Scotland a penalty kick that would help them win. If players readily condone such conduct, they surrender the right to bleat when they become victims.

But it is the identity of the perpetrator that makes this latest episode the more distressing. Henry and his advisers have long cultivated his image as one of the coolest men on the planet, his distinctive French chic helping to sell products from cars to men's grooming, often in the company of those other sporting giants, Tiger Woods and Roger Federer.

Now in the twilight of his career, he has just passed up the most precious opportunity possible to demonstrate to impressionable youngsters – and to the most cynical of adults, including his fellow professionals world-wide – the very essence of the game.

By informing the exceptional, but, in that fateful moment, unsighted referee, Martin Hansson, of his offence and giving the Irish their free-kick, Henry could have remedied the damage done every time some half-witted former player or broadcaster abuses the cliche, "that's what the game's all about".

What football, in its purest form, is all about is celebration. Henry could have reminded everyone involved, from players to match officials to fans, directors and even the media of that fundamental truth. Instead, he chose adulteration, behaving like every other punk who has ever brought the old game into disrepute.