The first part of a series of reports by former Scottish first minister Hector McLeish on Scottish football has received a cool reception with Celtic interim manager Neil Lennon among the critics. The first report focuses on grassroots football. Most fans would agree that Scottish football is in crisis and that it is, as McLeish put
The first part of a series of reports by former Scottish first minister Hector McLeish on Scottish football has received a cool reception with Celtic interim manager Neil Lennon among the critics. The first report focuses on grassroots football. Most fans would agree that Scottish football is in crisis and that it is, as McLeish puts it, ‘under-achieving, under-performing and under-funded.’ But that is scarcely a revelation.
The problem is, what you do about it? McLeish wants investment of £500m over ten years. But the Scottish football authorities can’t afford that sort of money and the Scottish Government is hardly going to step in in the middle of a recession, even if the Barnett formula gives them more public money to play with than south of the border.
The dire quality of much of Scottish football is likely to discourage anyone from playing it seriously in the first place or, if they are any good, finding somewhere else to play it. The Celtic-Rangers duopoly is firmly embedded in Scottish football and although one might say there is a similar situation in Spain there is much more money to play with there. Consequently, Scottish clubs are having little success in European competitions.
The option of getting the top two clubs either into the English competition or into some league of smaller European nations seems to be a non-starter. Tinkering with the size or structure of the SPL isn’t going to help much. There is no clear way forward and that is hardly Mr McLeish’s fault.