IT is a fine day and I am in my extended back garden. The King George V park sits in the shadow of my garret and it is the scene for an under-14 boys’ match. The strips are pristine, the coaching is unfailingly positive, the technique is decent and the sun is shining.

My talent is to bring the gloom. Another generation of Scots youngsters is stretching its hammies and I wonder if it will ever witness the national team in a major finals. Euro 2016 kicks off next month [June 10] and Scotland will not be there, extending a major tournament absence that stretches back to 1998.

The Republic of Ireland, Wales and Northern Ireland will be there. Iceland, Slovakia and Albania will be there. Scotland, yet again, will be left on the sidelines, the national pain exacerbated by the realisation that Euro 2016 in France is a competition that was expanded to allow such as Gordon Strachan’s team to qualify.

We did not, and the Tartan Army chanted the manager’s name after a meaningless victory against Gibraltar that ended an increasingly feckless campaign. The national psyche over the national sport seems attuned to accepting blows not with a whimper but with a breezy, even cheesy acceptance. The manager said Scotland would be missed in France. We won’t be. Four Euros and four World Cups have managed to cope without us. Everybody likes us but they don’t care.

Fifty three teams, including the might of Gibraltar, Liechtenstein and Andorra, competed to claim the 23 places in the finals, with France assured of participation in their roles as hosts. It was difficult for any competent football nation not to qualify. Scotland – and, almost shockingly, the Netherlands – managed to do so. Our failure was feeble, dispiriting and marked indelibly by not only losing to Georgia but failing to have a shot on target in a dismal defeat.

Our under-achievement was met by that Tartan Army sing-song in Gibraltar, a concerted media drive to rehire the manager, the SFA almost pleading with him to stay, and the customary, almost obligatory mouth music that proclaims we will qualify for the 2018 World Cup in Russia. No we won’t. Or, at least, we will have to confound form and history to do so.

The winners of each of nine UEFA groups will qualify. The eight best runners-up will play off to supply another four qualifiers. Scotland is in Group F (for forlorn) with England, Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania and Malta. There will be those – and they understandably include the Scottish coaching staff – who suggest that this is a group that can be merely a preliminary to the finals for the Scots. And then there is the rest of the sporting world.

England will surely take first place. They won every match in Euro 2016 qualifying and have beaten Scotland home and away recently. Slovakia, who beat Spain en route to Euro 2016 qualification, and Slovenia, who lost in the play-offs, will be eyeing the second-place spot. Stripped of the feel-good rhetoric, it is difficult to make a case for Scotland. The nation lacks an international goalscorer and is fatally weak in the centre of defence. The cavalry is not rushing over the hill. The two most promising Scottish players are Andrew Robertson of Hull City and Kieran Tierney of Celtic. They are both left backs.

So how can this tide of failure be addressed? In truth, all the major figures are doing Canute impersonations. They may be suspiciously gung-ho but they are not daft. Strachan knows he cannot make a centre half, SFA chief executive Stewart Regan must accept that the revolution in producing young players still has years to run. The club academy directors have been in their professions too long to be definitive about the chances of greatness for their young charges.

Scotland has not produced a world-class player in generations. For the under-14s haring around King George V Park, they are better known as TV pundits or managers: Dalglish, Souness, McGrain, Miller, who were superb in the 1970s and the early 1980s. Since then, Scotland survived on substantial stock (Lambert, McAllister, McCall, McStay, Nicholas, Cooper) to qualify for major tournaments but the gruel has become increasingly thin. There is not one Scot now playing a leading role with a leading club in terms of European competition.

The only hope is hope. The work at under-age level has been dedicated and, at times, inspired. There has been investment. Complaints will always be made about the dearth of extraordinary talent but it is futile to expect a true great to be somehow manufactured though he can be nurtured and refined. The truth is that Scottish football is now competing in a competitive market as regards talent. Football is not the only game in town. Athletic youngsters can pick their sports. The uninterested can simply choose not to do them. There is the reality, too, that the number of hours required to be an extraordinary footballer is beyond the scope and discipline of many.

It is a huge step from being the best player in school to becoming a professional. The path is strewn with lifestyle obstacles, the occurrence of injury and, ultimately, the presence of other nationalities when it comes to breaking through at any club, whether it be Celtic or Ross County. This is a brutal trade with a high rate of attrition. The only bright spot for Scottish youngsters is that the financial downturn in the domestic game is allowing them more opportunities.

A chat with academy heads will thus provide a measure of optimism. They will hint at a promising midfielder, a defender with strength and resolve, a scorer of some certainty. Results at under-17 and under-21 level have been good but there is no evidence that a “worldy” is coming soon.

The most powerful indictment against Scotland is that the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland qualified when we did not. Did they have better players than us? In the case of Northern Ireland, the answer must be a certain “no”. Michael O’Neill picked players who would not make it into a Scotland squad. Apologists will say they had an easier group. This observer is not convinced. In the case of the Republic of Ireland, who qualified from Scotland’s group, the comparisons become more awkward. Martin O’Neill did not have a demonstrably better squad than Gordon Strachan. He and his team will travel to France.

The best hope for Scotland and Strachan is that the team tightens defensively, Leigh Griffiths progresses in the international arena as he has done so spectacularly in the club game, thus providing a scorer, and that any luck falls the way of the boys in dark blue. There is a prayer in all of this rather than any strong faith.


Beyond Russia and 2018, the last, best hope is the uncovering of a “worldy” – that is, a player who is so brilliant, so far above the rest, that he carries a team on his shoulders. This is the Gareth Bale solution. It owes something to coaching and development but almost everything to a perfect alignment of the stars, something beyond talent or reasonable expectation. Unfortunately for Strachan and the Tartan Army, Scotland’s Bale wields a racket as Andrew Barron Murray hung up his boots some 15 years ago.

But somewhere in Scotland there might just be the youngster (is it too much to hope for the plural?) who can rise to the very top of the world game, towing the international side in his wake. He may even have been in Bearsden on that sunny Saturday. We live in hope.

It is all we have once we become tired of the nostalgia.


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