Andy’s Sting In The Tale (21/06/24) “From Negative Normans to Hopeful Harrys” – Scottish Football Supporters Association – SFSA

Date: 21st June 2024

(Photo:BBC)

As our crunch game in Stuttgart approaches we are still in with a chance and maybe that’s all we could ever have wished for.
Germany in Munich was a gubbing in every way and if those who run our game are clever it was an overdue lesson and could be a catalyst for the future.
The Tartan Army were what we all expected, magnificent.

And on Wednesday in Cologne our indomitable team spirit fought back.
Technically outclassed we ended the Switzerland game as the more likely.
Not bad against higher ranked opponents.

I’ve been consigned to the Home Guard this time around and at the mercy of the media when it comes to Scotland and mostly Engerland but I’ve also enjoyed the football, so much good football on free to air channels.

For me Phil’s reports on BBC Radio Scotland with real fans and his now famous cousin and all the noise and music have been a highlight and kept me smiling.

Last night’s Spain vs Italy shows just how good that young, very young, Spanish team can, and will  be.
4 players in Germany 21 and under.
I still somehow can’t rationalise 16 year old Yamal starring at this level.

Set that against our one youngster, late call up and bench-warmer Tommy Conway at 21 the youngest of a squad whose average age just happens to be the highest of the 24 qualifiers.

After last Friday I was initially shocked by our team’s performance against a very, very good German side who came across as better in every football sense.
The truths are we just couldn’t and didn’t compete.
The ball control ability of most of our players let us down, and their athletic and aggressive high press made it worse because it gave us no room, anywhere, everywhere.
When they lost the ball they got it back.
We relapsed to ‘Inverness Welfare’ tactics and went long basically because we had few and difficult options.
Perhaps the biggest negative is it looked to a man like we only start our thinking after the ball had been controlled with two or three touches.
They were playing a one touch game and that befuddled us.

Against Switzerland our team still looked significantly less technical than the opponents but our spirit rallied when needed and the outcome was positive.

I’m nervous ahead of Sunday and hope Hungary are downcast rather than righteously keen and hopeful to come 3^rd with 3 points.
Time will very soon tell.

Anyway, I was reading ‘The Athletic’ an on-line football mag this morning and Jacob Whitehead one of their journalists wrote a really insightful piece about us.
The kind of insight that only comes from being on the outside looking in.
It got me thinking big time, but first I’ll start with his conclusion which is something I’ve been saying for weeks.

“This Tournament Needs to Serve as a Spark for Reinvestment for Scotland Rather Than the End of This Generation”.

Insights in Jacob’s article include:
Scotland currently have only 6 players competing in Europe’s 5 Top Leagues.
Other similar sized countries at the Euros would be Croatia with 12, Denmark 17 and Switzerland 21.
(It gives them a conveyor belt and real depth).
Jason also identifies a clear shortfall in top-level quality through our squad and sums up what we all think, namely that in ‘high-pressure moments’ we ‘underperform’.
He quotes ‘CIES Football Observatory’ who revealed last season that the Scottish Premiership sides give the fourth lowest percentage of first team minutes to players trained by the club between ages 15 and 21.
(Our score is a paltry 7.2% of time and only Turkey, Italy and Greece have performed worse).
He also makes the point that we need players comfortable in possession and uses Switzerland’s ,wonderful to watch, 22 pass goal against Hungary as beyond us.
He’s right.

There are ‘elephants in the room’, reasons that we all know intrinsically.

– We are not overtly committed to football outside of our dominant Glasgow bubble.
– We have no reserve league and haven’t had a proper one since god knows when.
– We let our family silver ‘Schools football’, the omnipresent feeder of our best players, wither back in the early ‘80s.
– Since Brexit, clubs in England are starting to systematically observe and pinch some of our very best club-trained players. (Gilmour and Doak led the way but an amazing 30 players under 18 have moved south in the last 3 years).
– We are somehow still producing players and performances under 16 who have shown Scotland can compete physically but after that we fall away because what we are producing fundamentally lacks the technical ability needed at the older youth  end and into the real game.
– Our whole Performance School set-up dates back to 2012 and needs a full, urgent reappraisal and something quite difficult and well beyond our ingrained habit of ticking boxes to support pre-agreed lack of actions.

We need a future-proofed strategy that underpins our whole game right into and through the future.
And that’s just the easy bit.

Without long term commitment and feeding whatever we do will wither and we will go full circle and end up back where we are.
Yes we’re a wee country at 5.4 million but serial qualifiers Croatia at 4.0 are smaller, and Denmark a little larger at 5.9.
They are both examples of what we need to do if we want to be Euros and World Cup regulars, and to get further than being group stage rabbits every 20 or so years when we harvest some foreign-borns.
Iceland over-deliver too.

In Steve We Trust

No matter what the outcome on Sunday.
The truth is we have collectively let him down for 40 years  because the conveyor belt of talent he needs isn’t functioning.
Every ‘workaday’ professional in our SPFL who can’t ever play for Scotland is keeping our home grown talent out and hurting us.
We all know that Celtic, Rangers and Aberdeen prevailed back in the day with home grown talent.

Our game has collectively let our kids and our future down.

Andy’s Sting in the Tale

1. Our Wonderful Tartan Army
2. Infrastructure Issues and 9 Euros Beers
3. Karyn McCluskey on the Radio
4. Wrong Part of Scotland
5. Chinese Materials
6. Goodbye to Unsung Heros

1. With Thanks to Pie and Bovril

This is poetic.

I’ve laughed a lot.
I’ve drank a lot.
I’ve not slept a lot.
I’ve walked a lot.
I’ve even cried a couple of times.
I’ve spoken with fans from dozens of other countries including England and everyone has been sound.

As a nation we are absolutely adored and we should never take that for granted.

2. Infrastructure Woes

Our Fanzone in Munich was overwhelmed. Why?.
The local transport networks have been overloaded. Why?
Some parks are getting cut up, like they were not laid in time?
Is it Dundee’s groundsmen moonlighting?

None of this was not foreseeable.

3. SPFL Director On Radio Scotland

Travelling in the car the other day I heard the name Karyn McCluskey mentioned talking about a very sensitive issue of parents wanting what they saw as justice for their child who had been put though a quite disturbing ritual by a couple of kids who were then given a second chance through the system rather than named, shamed, charged and sent to borstal.

As a parent I could see both sides and I was mega impressed with Karyn answering some quite tough questions from a well briefed journo.
It was all about finding the best outcomes for all concerned into the long term and manoeuvring through the righteous needs of both parties.

It got me thinking.

Karyn on the radio is the same Karyn who sits on the SPFL board.
She is one of the money-focussed SPFL board-members who passed the recent sponsorship proposal with the gambling Mega player, William Hill.
Karyn knows that the close links with football ‘sportswashes’ an algorithm-driven money-sweeping machine and it is odds on that the deal will lead to human casualties in our wee football world.
That’s a horrible thing to write but it’s true.

So much so the SPFL board have agreed to run pre-emptive ‘gambling help’ roadshows with some SPFL members to protect their players and some of the fans.

Not Good Enough, Karyn

I don’t know you, but I do know from your appearance on Radio Scotland that you know that deep down the SPFL have done the wrong thing.
Did you speak up against it?
Is it on record?
Why is our game’s stock so low we have to damage our own?
One Day

Not the film.
One day a gambling addict will sue the SPFL for normalising the activity that spoilt his/her life.
Or worse still one day the parents or family of someone who took what they saw as the only way out will sue the SPFL or one of the clubs who thinks gambling pound notes are acceptable.

This pariah industry is not what it was back in the day when it was a shed behind the pub or a wee office up the stairs.
It is industrial, utilises well targeted and clever marketing especially on-line and it has learned how to recruit and hold.
The only reason it can deliver undisclosed millions in SPONSORSHIP to Karyn to Neil and his board is because it is pillaging and harming your customers.

Karyn’s Different Approach?

She advocated the controversial-ish protection of the ritual kids for maybe the right reasons, and fair play to her.

But she is also part of an SPFL  group who somehow thinks it is acceptable for non-protection of a predictable number of Scottish kids.
The Scottish kids who William Hill will spoil their lives and their families.
And Karyn, for definitely the wrong reasons, this is Filthy lucre to our football clubs.

Finally a Question for Karyn and Her Board

I’d like to come to the next SPFL Board and discuss the betting deal, which I know is legal but that in no way says it is the right thing to do.
And then I’ll write about it all in Sting and tell people why you all think it is OK.

.4. Danish Fans Made Me Laugh

They didn’t just walk round singing ‘Football was never coming home’, to the English, they also chanted that England was ‘just the wrong part of Scotland’.

Both made me smile as funny terracing banter.

I think the Tartan Army will find a spot for both songs too into the future.

5. What Happens?

When a major Scottish team’s ground update gets delayed and the outcome is they can’t fulfil home fixtures and that fans will have to travel significantly further, say to Murrayfield instead of Glasgow?
Or when Dundee’s pitch floods again and fans who have travelled and sent home are expected to shell out again?

The SPFL should have a policy in place and it should be fan-centred and one rule for all.
Just like when the trains are late or in football realities, too early.

6. Farewell Billy and John

Billy Abercromby was the kind of player that Scotland used to produce and he was young but captained that magnificent crop of youngsters that lifted the cup for St Mirren in 1987.
He was called a midfield enforcer but he could play and was way better than people realised.
65 is too young.

John Keane was not a footballer that I know of but when his team in the East End needed money, substantial money to pay the payroll he stood up and with no likelihood of a return did what he thought was right.
Others then picked up the reins and reset the club, and some even basked in the glory but John was the foundation on that difficult weekend and the cheque was presented on the Monday morning.

Are My Club Still in Turmoil?
I don’t know what is going on right now at my team, Inverness Caley Thistle, but we need a John to stabilise the numbers a Fergus to set up the company and a few one-club heroes like Billy to turn round the fortunes and guide a bunch of youngsters to glory.

That’s it from me again this week.

If you are not an SFSA please join and help us make the future brighter.

Join over 80,000 Scottish football fans and let’s #reclaimthegame – Scottish Football Supporters Association – SFSA (scottishfsa.org)

Andy’s Album of the week

Ring of Fire The Legend of Johnny Cash

I missed out on his heyday, too busy listening to Prog Rock non-entities who were never going to Prog very far.
Quicksilver Messenger Service were fine at the time but never the future.
Anyway fast forward to 2003 when I was in a posh fishing lodge in the wilds of Ireland chasing silver and hiding during a violent Atlantic thunderstorm when fishing is dangerous.
As the torrential downpour continued I noticed they had some CDs and a really crappy player in the library while I pretended to read a book.
I put on American IV – The Man Comes Around by Johnny Cash because it was better than Daniel O’Donnell or some obscure Irish Brass band and the Rubettes greatest hits..
I started listening, really enjoyed it, stopped reading and one track, ‘Hurt’ shouted out.
American IV is a great album for another week but it introduced me to the man and his music and I’m only scratching the surface now, just like todays sort of ‘best of’ album.
Ring of Fire, I Walk the Line, Big River, Personal Jesus, Give My Love to Rose and Hurt are standouts but there is nothing less than fab on this record.

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