Forget optimism of Irn Bru ads, Scotland need belief at Euros to make history

OPTIMISM’S back, the Irn Bru ads tell us.

And what a lovely thought that is.

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When we feel good about ourselves, the world’s a far easier maze to pick our way through.

Telling ourselves that ‘We Can’ makes any problem far easier to solve than shrugging ‘Naw We Cannae’.

But optimism only takes us so far.

Optimism might get us to the marathon’s starting line, to the foothills of the mountain, to a place where it seems like anything is possible, but that’s where it’s job ends.

What gets us to the finish line, what hauls us to the summit, what makes a possibility into reality is something much more powerful. Belief.

That’s what separates those who win from those who take part; the inner strength to go beyond ‘We Can’ and convince ourselves that ‘We Will’.

We saw this in Real Madrid’s Champions League triumph at Wembley on Saturday, a match where they were outplayed for long spells by Borussia Dortmund, where they could have been two or three down by half-time.

Yet no one who knows football seriously doubted they’d find a way to win.

We’ve heard the phrase over and over these past few weeks from the likes of Brendan Rodgers and Pep Guardiola as their teams survived sticky spells to top the pile again.

Now, it’s one which has to be Scotland’s motto as our greatest adventure in a generation looms on the horizon.

I don’t want Steve Clarke and his players to be optimistic about their chances in Germany this month.

I want them to believe they can achieve something special.

I want them to back up the manager’s words that they’re not a group built for friendlies, but one which finds a way to win when the chips are down.

That’s belief. That’s trust in himself and his dressing room.

That’s not Ally McLeod saying we’ll conquer the world when he hasn’t bothered scouting our first opponents.

That’s a man who knows his own men inside out and who knows they’ll go to the wire for each other.

For me, there was no better illustration of this than the night last June that did more than any other to propel us to the Euros — our last-gasp victory from the jaws of defeat against Norway in Oslo.

If the finals kicked off the morning after that performance, you’d have fancied us to lift the trophy itself.

That’s how good a place we were in, that’s how magnificent the feeling was, the sense of togetherness and happiness among the players.

We were a team made from girders that night.

The night we beat Spain at Hampden had been a whirlwind of joy and disbelief.

The night we won 3-0 in Cyprus would be that rarest of feelings for a Scotland fan, the one where winning is never for one second in doubt.

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But there was nothing quite like Oslo. If there was a state of mind we could bottle and sup from before going to Munich a week on Friday, we brewed it there that night.

It wasn’t that we’d played out of our skins. We’d been bang ordinary for long spells.

Once we went a goal behind, it never looked like we’d get back into it.

When the gaffer then made a raft of changes with less than 15 minutes to go, you got the sense he was settling for it and saving some legs for Georgia a few nights later.

Yet just when optimism was fading in the stands, belief kicked in on the pitch.

The moment we equalised through big Lyndon Dykes, a man your heart goes out to as injury smashes his dreams to smithereens, you could see the whole team believed they’d score again. You could also see Norway had gone.

Next thing, we’ve robbed the ball off them, switched it right to left and there was Kenny McLean to win it at the death.

I came away from that night breathless, exhausted, with no need for anything more than a pizza and a good sleep.

The result was the party. Knowing we had one foot in the finals was the buzz.

That’s how I want to feel these next few weeks, happily drained by the experience of seeing our boys find that way to win, producing heroic performances that leave us feeling beyond proud.

It’s doable, too. We’re good enough to go one better than any team in our history by dragging ourselves into the knockout rounds.

That’s not optimism. That’s not the heart ruling the head. I believe this group is ready, that they’re all the better for the blows they took at the last Euros and in the World Cup play-off against Ukraine.

They showed that against Spain at Hampden, they cemented it in Oslo.

Now, they have to show it against the Germans, the Swiss and the Hungarians.

Tomrrow, we warm up against little Gibraltar in Faro. On Friday, we wave goodbye against the Finns at Hampden. And then, it all gets very real.

As soon as Clarke leads his boys onto their plane for Munich, that’s the moment optimism becomes redundant and belief takes over.

Hoping for the best won’t help us make history these next few weeks. But believing we can live with the best?

That’ll do for starters.

Caley catastrophe

YOU know it’s dawned on someone that they’ve made a terrible decision when they’re reduced to: “Well, let’s see if YOU have a better idea…”

That was Caley Thistle chairman Ross Morrison’s plaintive cry a few days back as opposition to their idiotic proposed flit from Inverness to Kelty grew arms and legs.

Last Monday, this column branded the plan a betrayal of an entire city. The next day, local paper the Inverness Courier used the same word on its front page.

That night, hundreds of fans announced plans not to renew season tickets and said they’d rather the club faced administration than its day-to-day operations were shifted to Fife.

By the time it then became clear would-be landlords Kelty Hearts don’t actually own the pitch they were hoping to rent out but that it was Fife Council property, the whole brainfart looked doomed.

Cue the beleaguered Morrison, who last week stuck a further 40 grand into the kitty on top of the £1.5million he’s already invested, hinting that “you can get out of deals”, distancing himself from the mess by revealing that it was chief executive Scot Gardiner’s idea — and then, uttering those words that always signal defeat.

“If someone has any better ideas, by all means come and tell us.”

To me, that smacks of the whole caper being a dead duck. The people running the show, though mostly Gardiner, it appears — have made a last, desperate attempt to think outside the box after years of the club spending way above its weight, but no sooner had they blurted the plan out than even they realised how silly it sounded.

I’ll be honest, their whole mindset on the financial situation baffles me. On one hand, they’re telling us they need to save as much as £400,000 to remain viable.

On the other, they’re still desperate to outbid rival clubs to sign senior pros.

So, I’ll repeat a message from last week’s column: Whatever this Kelty nonsense would cost, put it into subsiding housing for prospective signings, or cut your cloth and attack League One with a mix of youth players, Highland League stars and locally-based Ross County cast-offs.

That might seem like failure to Morrison, Gardiner and manager Duncan Ferguson.

But if the alternative is season ticket sales falling through the floor, commercial income collapsing, the threat of administration and the loss of points and jobs it brings?

Well, it seems a no-brainer. If, that is, you’re thinking straight.

Security breach

WONDER what Buckie Thistle thought as they saw that joker chaining himself to the Hampden goalposts on Friday night?

If it was that the game’s bent, then no one could have blamed them.

Why? Because they’re the club the SFA banned from the pyramid play-offs because their home ground didn’t meet safety requirements.

Yet next thing, some guy’s sneaking into the National Stadium before a high-risk, closed-door international match which was supposed to be protected by a ring of steel and turning himself into a martyr.

And as the call went out for a set of bolt-cutters to remove the guy from the premises, you couldn’t help but ask where the SFA’s safety standards were at that moment. You couldn’t help but wonder who’s holding THEM to account.

As it goes, they got off hell of a lucky that the pitch invader’s only impact on the women’s game against Israel was to delay kick-off for a while.

But what if he had been hell-bent on promoting his cause by launching an attack on a visiting player?

Can you imagine the fall-out from that?

For our governing body to allow that possibility on its own turf is a massive failure to police its premises — and for me at least, it’s far more serious than a Highland League outfit not being able to find a GP willing to volunteer for duty on matchdays.

Though then again, our Blazers have always been way more Do As We Say than Do As We Do.

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