THE first wave of Great Britain's record-breaking Olympic heroes jetted home in triumph from Rio de Janeiro yesterday, just as Scotland's international footballers metaphorically lurked in the exit hall.

Gordon Strachan's side are preparing to skulk off to another qualifying campaign and once again we do so more in hope than expectation.

Eighteen years have passed since Scotland last reached a major football finals and, having failed to progress from a near one-in-two chance for Euro 2016, few hopes are being pinned on Russia 2018. The Herald: Scotland manager Gordon Strachan at Hampden yesterday.

Say what you like about England or Sam Allardyce but they haven't lost a qualifier for either a World Cup or European Championships since a 1-0 defeat to Ukraine in Dnipropetrovsk in October 2009 and are clear favourites to take the one automatic qualification spot. Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania and our first opponents Malta will all fancy their chances of denting our play-off hopes.

Defeatist talk before a campaign has started does nobody any good, of course, and this group of players will give everything for the cause. Neither am I in the Strachan-bashing camp as - with perhaps only a few exceptions - I don't feel there are a raft of other Scottish footballers out there who are significantly better than these ones.

The former Celtic, Southampton, Coventry and Middlesbrough manager is an experienced football campaigner who, to this observer at least, has improved Scotland, however marginally, in his time in charge.

It isn't really about that, though. If there is a lesson Scottish football can learn from Team GB's record medal haul then it is surely that throwing money and strategic thinking at sport tends to pay off when it comes to sporting success.

Sir Dave Brailsford may have moved on from his former position as the head of the brains trust operating British cycling - he now simply masterminds road cycling success with Team Sky - but his marginal gains culture permeates most areas of Team GB's Olympic successes and the SFA are missing a trick if they cannot adopt a similarly strategic approach to football.

Hard-headed, targeted, decisions on the doling out of lottery money have paid dividends in Rio this summer.The Herald: Sir Dave Brailsford is one of sport's great innovators

Contrast all this with the chaos of the SFA's performance programme, where Scottish football's governing body are currently searching for their third performance director since 2011.

If losing one performance director, in the form of Dutchman Mark Wotte, seems careless, seeing his successor, Brian McClair, follow him out the door suggests a system problem. Would Brailsford, or say Sir Clive Woodward, succeed if he were ever persuaded to try his hand in the job? Or would they too simply come to the conclusion that this is Scottish sport's most impossible role?

That there are plenty of clever folk within the SFA is undeniable. The nation's network of performance schools is at least a start, while McClair's post-exit assessment that there are too many kids in the system, and resources must be focused upon a smaller number, is not without merit.

Alistair Gray, of consultancy firm Renaissance & Co, is said to be a smart cookie who grasps the big picture. But even he must have felt a sense of deja vu when he sat down to write out his third draft of a job description for a position which often seems to be hamstrung between the various different vested interests in Scottish football.

The job advert, which went online last week, talks about defining a "Scottish style of play" to be emulated at all levels, in both men's and women's football. This is something a Dutchman (Wotte) once attempted to define as 4-3-3, regardless of the fact that individual managers would routinely - and understandably - alter their formation to try to get a particular result against a particular opponent.

Another impossibility is convincing all professional clubs to buy into your blueprint. Some of the bigger ones are quite happy doing their own thing thank you very much - Rangers have imported a full team of Englishmen this summer and Strachan's squad for Malta contains a grand total of just five players from Scotland's two biggest clubs - while some of the smaller ones are understandably bristling about being told to ditch their laudable efforts to allow the richer clubs to get richer. Are we really any further on than 2010, when the Henry McLeish report first landed?

Could the SFA be brave enough to go down the Brailsford or Woodward route by appointing someone from outside football? Well, the job advert asks only for a "proven track record in the development and implementation of performance management in football OR other sports" even if this is watered down by the line that "it is likely, though not essential, that the individual has had an international career as a player or coach".

Woodward's time at Southampton, of course, wasn't exactly a success, the former England rugby coach quitting after a serious of apparent showdowns with the likes of Harry Redknapp, Dave Bassett and latterly George Burley and in Scottish football culture there is often a similar wariness about someone who isn't a "football man".

It is quite a task for the headhunters but the old school likeability of Tommy Burns, the tactical acumen of Johan Cruyff, the detailed eye of Sir Dave Brailsford and the political abilities of Kofi Annan, and the SFA performance director's job is yours.