The defeat by Rangers at the hands of Luxembourg part-timers was put in perspective on the other side of Glasgow this week by the upset generated at the World Badminton Championships.

Malaysian superstar Lee Chong Wei is a multi-millionaire, his wealth far outstripping that of most Scottish football clubs, yet he was quite literally brought to his knees at the end of his latest failed bid to win a global title by a Frenchman who is no longer financially supported by his national federation and has set up a clothing business to make ends meet.

Brice Leverdez is far from unknown hereabouts, having won the Scottish Open Grand Prix on his last visit to The Emirates Arena four years ago, and he has been a steady performer on the global circuit for a number of years but has by no means made a fortune.

Yet he displayed exceptional skill and fitness to sustain a level of play that ultimately proved too much for the former world No.1 who has contested three Olympic and three World Championship finals without ever managing to get the big title he craves.

I watched their encounter just a couple of days after my latest very convivial discussion with a couple of Scotland’s more forward- thinking sports administrators, men involved in athletics, about how we should be investing in sport.

It should be noted that theirs is one of the few Scottish sports that has properly done so at grassroots and is now getting its reward for that in the numbers pouring into international teams.

We were chatting during a Scottish age grades championship that Mark Munro, chief executive of Scottish Athletics, reckoned would have been almost unimaginable in terms of quality and quantity of participants as recently as six years ago. That is the breeding ground for the international success and in turn is fed by large numbers of youngsters engaging in club activity and pushing one another on.

The first part of that process is the one that matters most in terms of public spending, and the best explanation of what should be happening at the elite end of sport was, perversely, offered by a Scottish government spokesman when seeking to justify the poor decision this year to axe the funding for JogScotland, an initiative that is, no pun intended, doing the heavy lifting when it comes to the nation’s health issues. 

At the time, a spokesman said that money had been provided to the bodies overseeing JogScotland to try to help it become self-supporting as an organisation, which would have been absolutely valid if, in its ongoing, politically motivated medal mania, UK Sport and, in turn, Scottish sport still did not have a huge commitment to issuing state subsidies to sportspeople, allowing them to be pseudo full-time professionals. 

In doing so I believe they damage the prospects of most of those they support and the sports themselves at elite level because the athletes are not being forced to be as competitive as they need to be to make a living and those running the sports are either failing to maximise their capacity to generate revenue, are not distributing what money they generate properly or are not genuine professional sports.

Only last weekend I listened to biathlete Scott Dixon explaining how he has to hand over some of his funding to his British governing body in order to keep it going. That seemed all the more ridiculous when he then painted a picture of a sport that is in ruddy financial health, attracting some of the biggest crowds in Europe if not the world.

Something did not compute and when I suggested that like the tennis professionals of half a century ago it might be time that the biathletes got together and demanded a bigger share of the money that is being generated, he seemed to think that might be a good idea. 

I hope they do it and will not even demand the standard agent’s 10%.

Public money needs to be used for the greatest possible good and in the case of sport that means getting the maximum number of people involved in healthy  activity.

To inspire them to do so there is a case for helping create a route to the top for those capable of achieving that, but once there they need to make their own way.

AND ANOTHER THING 

Brice Leverdez believes his win over Lee Chong Wei at the World Badminton Championships was good for business and not just on the court.

The Frenchman still principally regards himself as a professional badminton player, but having had a good crack at that at the age of 31 he now devotes 40% of his time to developing his clothing business.

Like the lucky few who are paid large sums to wear commercial outfits and logos, he is aware of his capacity to be an on-court billboard. 

“It will help the company, maybe not just this victory though. I have to go further in the tournament, but hopefully next season we are launching some sporty clothes, so it will help my company at some point,” he said.