Vogts under attack for staying away

Published on Saturday 8 March 2008 19:13

SEPP Blatter, president of FIFA, has said he will raise the issue of foreigners coaching national football teams at a meeting of the FIFA technical committee in Zurich tomorrow. "We will bring this up," he said. "If there was a rule it would impinge on the freedom of the national associations to make the choice but I believe in the principle that the national coach should at least live in the country.

I speak about my old friend, who has now been rejected again (by Nigeria] and who was here with you, Berti Vogts. He wasn't even living in Nigeria

"There is a principle that the national team coach shall understand not only the people but the soul of that nation. You have seen what has happened in Africa (after the African Nations Cup] with all these foreign coaches who didn't succeed and they are all away. They are just coming in and going out. Sometimes I would say it's good to have a big name in a smaller country but how you can motivate your players when you have to motivate through interpreters?"

This, of course, doesn't exactly tally with his big idea for more national players in club sides. Why one rule for players and another for managers? By 2010 he wants every club side in the game to field a minimum of four homegrown players, that number rising to five in 2011 and six in 2012. Blatter says this is his biggest challenge as president and he intends seeing it through the European Union and through the courts if he has to. The opposition among the major clubs of Europe is considerable.

The SFA have been encouraged to bid for the world club championships in 2010-11. Sepp Blatter said that the tournament would fit Scotland because of its more manageable size. Six teams compete.

"I'm sure Scotland would be able to organise it," said Blatter. "You have enough stadia and you have shown the interest after staging the U-17 tournament in 1998. I remember that people couldn't even enter the Dundee stadium for a semi-final. We had to make sure that there was no harm (done to spectators] such was the interest."

Blatter remembers the final of that competition well enough, Scotland beaten on penalties by a Saudi Arabian team that, in his diplomatic words, "weren't from the same school" as the Scottish lads. This a reference to the long-held suspicion that the Saudi Arabian boys were too manly to be U-17.