GEORGE Peat has denied the structure of the SFA requires to be radically overhauled in order to end Scotland’s agonising wait to reach the finals of a major tournament.
The disappointing start that the national team have made to their Euro 2020 campaign – they lost their opening game 3-0 to Kazakhstan away last month - has reduced their chances of finishing in the top two in Group I.
It has also brought the governance of the game in this country into sharp focus and led to calls for the current system – which sees officials, often from small provincial clubs, rise to important positions, including the presidency, simply as the result of their years or service – to be done away with.
However, Peat, who commissioned former First Minister Henry McLeish to carry out a wide-ranging review of Scottish football during his time as SFA president back in 2010, doesn’t believe that any change is required.
“At the end of the day, who becomes the vice-president or the president is voted on by the clubs,” he said. “It isn’t as if they just walk in. They need 90 odd votes to get them in. The president has to be voted in by the clubs.
“It has changed considerably since I first got involved in the SFA. We had committees for everything under the sun. It used to take weeks and weeks to get a decision made.
“It had been done like that for 100 years. I got Henry McLeish in to review the whole thing. What he came up with was revolutionary in the eyes of the people who were involved in the SFA compared to what it used to be like. Now if the compliance officer views that something is worthy of a punishment a decision is made within a week.
“People think the SFA just run the international team. I have been away for eight years now, but at that time we were running a £50m business. We weren’t just running an international side.”
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