World Cup 2014: Times change but difficult questions Craig Levein must answer remain the same

YOU won’t have to look beyond the walls of Hampden on Saturday to know how much has changed since Scotland last made the finals of a major football championship. Their opponents this weekend, for instance.

Serbia didn’t even exist as an independent nation in 1998 when the Scots had a seat at the top table of the game at the World Cup in France. Nor did the euro, the currency that some of the visiting Serbians are paid in by their clubs. Back in ’98, had you mentioned Twitter and Facebook and YouTube to the Tartan Army you would have been met with blank stares. These things weren’t invented. The thought of taking a picture or recording a video on your mobile phone from your seat at Hampden and zapping it in an instant to a mate in a far corner of the planet would have seemed like witchcraft.

The world has changed in 14 years but, in Scotland, everything to do with the national team seems to remain the same. They play failed campaign after failed campaign and it’s like they’re stuck in a timewarp, always pining for the glory days. Nobody under the age of 20 can remember watching what happened in France all those years ago. James Forrest was only six years old when Scotland last played in a World Cup.

And so it starts again, this yearning for relevance on the international stage. How are Scotland fixed? It’s a tricky one to answer. Some will take a look at Craig Levein’s squad and be cautiously optimistic and others will take a look at the Scotland manager and be hopelessly pessimistic. Some will look at the group – Croatia, Belgium, Serbia, Macedonia and Wales – and will see loseable games all the way. Others will look and see only winnable matches from start to finish. One camp will think Craig Levein is right to ignore Steven Fletcher and right again to omit Kris Commons and others will think the opposite. Where there is unanimity, though, is in the analysis of the Levein era to date.

The manager did not impress in the last campaign. That’s an undeniable truth. Levein lauds his players and the more he does it the more the fans are entitled to ask, “Well, if they’re that good how come you’re not making more of them?” It’s a question that Levein hasn’t found an answer to yet. His three victories from eight competitive matches – 2-1 at home and 1-0 away to Liechtenstein and 1-0 at home to Lithuania – leave an awful lot of room for cynicism. Judgment Day is upon Levein for real now. And he knows it.

He’ll know, too, that Scotland must get off to a flyer. Two home games must bring six points. Anything less could cost Scotland dear down the road. If Levein’s team are to have a realistic claim on qualification, then they need to signal their intent early and see off Serbia and Macedonia.

True, there are problem areas. The fitness of Allan McGregor and the vulnerability at centre-half that might be complicated further if Christophe Berra’s heavily pregnant girlfriend goes into labour close to Saturday. There’s no Scott Brown and no Darren Fletcher in the midfield but there is quality in there all the same. Two wins should be within their gift. Wales and Belgium away in October will be a different story – especially Belgium – but Scotland may as well forget it if they don’t lay down a marker at Hampden.

Even allowing for the absence of Brown, Darren Fletcher, Steven Fletcher and Commons through a mixture of injury, infantile stubbornness and, in the case of the Celtic player, a risky gamble, Scotland’s squad has still got plenty of players – especially midfield players – performing well at a high level. James Morrison is frequently West Bromwich Albion’s best performer, Robert Snodgrass has taken well to Premier League life at Norwich, Steven Naismith is looking like his old self at Everton, Forrest is flying, Ross McCormack is in good form at Leeds, Shaun Maloney is a regular now for Wigan and Charlie Adam might just be invigorated by a move from Liverpool to Stoke. Levein is a huge fan of Blackpool’s winger, Matt Phillips, pointing out a number of times lately that Phillips has been the subject of a £6 million bid by Southampton. Then there’s the emergence of Jordan Rhodes up front. The upshot is that Scotland should respect the Serbs on Saturday, but fearing them is another matter.

Serbia haven’t qualified for a major championship for 12 years, so they know something of Scotland’s angst. They have marquee names in their ranks, but most of them are defenders – Chelsea’s Branislav Ivanovic, Dortmund’s Neven Subotic, Manchester City’s Aleksandar Kolarov and his Eastlands team-mate as of Friday, the teenager Matija Nastasic. Riches at the back, but a relative paucity elsewhere, as their results testify. An awful Estonia side beat them to the play-offs for the Euros and, since then, they’ve played eight friendlies and have lost five of them, winning only one, against Armenia.

Like Croatia, Belgium, Macedonia and Wales, Serbia have also changed their manager since the draw was made. They’ve been changing boss quite a bit, in fact. In the last few years they’ve gone from Radomir Antic to Vladimir Petrovic to Radovan Curcic as caretaker and then to Sinisa Mihajlovic, the former player whose job security is hanging in the balance after four games in charge and no victories.

“I watched Serbia away to France,” said Levein of the Serbs’ 2-0 loss at the end of May. “They are going through a transitional period. They have some very good players. This will be a tough game, really tough. The new manager has used 39 players in the last four games. That’s left Mick Oliver [one of Levein’s key lieutenants] pulling his hair out as he tries to guess what their starting line-up will be. They’ve played one system three times and then changed it for the Republic of Ireland game. So, we don’t know exactly what we’ll be facing. It’s baffling. But their period of change might help us, that’s what I hope. I wish they’d all stop changing their manager. That’s annoying.”

Levein looks on Belgium as the likely favourites to win the group, understandable given the class acts they have in their squad, from Vincent Kompany and Jan Vertonghen, to Eden Hazard, Moussa Dembele, Tottenham’s new £15m man, and Marouane Fellaini of Everton in midfield, to Kevin Mirallas, Everton’s new £6m striker and Christian Benteke, brought to Aston Villa by Paul Lambert on Friday for £7m.

“On players, probably Belgium,” said

Levein of the leading side in the pool.

“If you look at the strength of the individual players, but they haven’t performed as a team to equal the quality of the players up to now. They’ve a new manager in. I can see us as a horse sneaking up on the rails and nobody’s noticing us.” You don’t sneak up on the rails by faltering in the early furlongs.

To the visit of Macedonia, then. Since beating George Burley’s team in Skopje in 2008, Macedonia’s only competitive wins have come against Iceland and Andorra. Of late, they’ve been beaten by Luxembourg. In the qualifiers for the Euros they were hammered 4-1 by Armenia. If Levein is right and Scotland have come on in leaps and bounds, Macedonia should pose no problem. This is the reality. Levein needs to back up his words with results.

Rhodes, in many ways, is the most fascinating name in his squad. Twenty-one years old and already an £8m player.

“I know people might want to point out that it’s at a lower division, but the goals are still the same size and the type of goals that he scores requires one skill-set and that is getting to the ball quicker than anyone else in the box,” said Levein of the Blackburn striker. “That doesn’t involve being physically stronger than anyone else or being physically quicker than anyone else or bigger or taller – it involves having the kind of brain that takes you to the right spot. That in itself gives him an advantage over defenders, no matter what level he is playing at. He is a pure finisher. If you look at his goals, it is incredible how many he scores with one-touch finishes. He is either the luckiest guy I’ve ever seen in my life to keep doing it again and again and again or he is just naturally a pure-bred poacher.”

Scotland will continue with one striker behind a bank of five midfielders, so will Levein go with Rhodes ahead of the Vancouver Whitecaps man, Kenny Miller? Miller is wily but is in poor form in a poor team in a poor league. “Don’t think I haven’t thought about it,” said Levein when asked if he’d go with Rhodes instead of Miller. The answer, though, is a safe and predictable no. “The other part of it is experience. He [Rhodes] has played one game at Easter Road in front of 15,000 and [in a game where] we were very much on the front foot. Serbia would be a stronger team than Australia. He is not 100 miles away. It is not 100 per cent Kenny is playing and Jordan isn’t because I have put a lot of thought into it. I’m not declaring anything. Kenny is still my No.1 striker, but we’ll see what happens.”

As long as what happens involves two victories then Levein can silence the doubt. He says he has the players and we believe him. It’s high time he did something with them.

Sat 8 Sept 2012: Serbia (H)

Tues 11 Sept 2012: Macedonia (H)

Fri 12 Oct 2012: Wales (A)

Tues 16 Oct 2012: Belgium (A)

Fri 22 Mar 2013: Wales (H)

Tues 26 Mar 2013: Serbia (A)

Fri 7 June 2013: Croatia (A)

Fri 6 Sept 2013: Belgium (H)

Tues 10 Sept 2013: Macedonia (A)

Tues 15 Oct 2013: Croatia (H)