EVEN now, at a safe distance of some 14 years, the name of Berti Vogts remains a toxic brand for many Scottish football fans. His eventful four years in charge of the national team are still widely regarded as a byword for a hapless managerial bungling, characterised by a scattergun selection policy where caps were ‘handed out like confetti’, a calamitous failed experiment in importing a foreign footballing philosophy for which the likes of Lars Lagerback et al. are still paying a price.

Yet just perhaps, though, the time is ripe for a reassessment of the Vogts’ reign. After all, all Gordon Strachan’s Scotland are trying to do when they take to the field at Ljubljana’s Stadion Stozice at tea time today is the chance to return to the play-offs for the first time since the bold Berti led us into battle for a Euro 2004 spot against the Netherlands in November 2003. And the national team manager is still wrestling with many of the same systemic issues which drove Vogts to distraction back then.

As much as misadventures like the scrambled 2-2 draw with the Faroe Islands will live long in the memory, it is probably worth noting that Scotland’s achievements during that campaign were at least good enough to finish in Europe’s top 20 nations. Scotland, you will recall, weren’t even in the top 24 when it came to Euro 2016.

Who could forget the high of our bravura first leg win against Dick Advocaat’s side at Hampden Park, punctuated by excited young players like Darren Fletcher and James McFadden combining for the so-called cheeky boy’s winning goal? Who would want to remember the crushing low of the second leg, when Rab Douglas fished the ball out of the Scotland net no fewer than six times, including a Ruud van Nistelrooy hat-trick? Let’s just say it wasn’t too long after that a particularly eccentric Vogts selection was crashing 4-0 to Wales in Cardiff and the German was appearing on the back pages of papers, dressed in jungle garb, beneath the headline ‘I’m a Silly Berti, Get Me out of Here!”

“I remember those games well,” Vogts told the Sunday Herald last night. “That day we beat the Netherlands in that first leg at Hampden was so amazing, it was a great day, one of the biggest of my life after winning Euro ’96 with Germany in England.

“But the biggest problem for Scotland, and for me, was that Christian Dailly, who was a big player for us at that time, got a second yellow card in the first match and couldn’t play for us in the second game against the Netherlands. After we went 2-0 down just after the half hour mark we had to open the tactical side of it up, and it became very easy for them to score many, many goals.”

Vogts is 70 years old now, and far too content with life to waste too much time raking over the past. He looks back fondly on his time here, has a “lot of good friends here” and enjoys his occasional summer golfing jaunts. In April, before they embarked on their new life together in Germany, his son Justin married his Scottish fiancée Claire at a ceremony in Glasgow, the two meeting whilst at school together during Vogts’ time in office. He always has his “fingers crossed” when it comes to the Scotland national team.

As for whether Scotland have learned their lessons in the last 14 years or so, he is not so sure. While Germany has more football players than we have total population, he hopes the stewards of Scottish football have taken a page out of Germany’s book circa Euro 96 and have as much of an eye on the nation’s succession plan as they do in the present. In particular, he hopes the clubs have bought into it, and enough hard cash has been invested to make these plans a reality.

“We did have quality players, especially the captain Barry Ferguson and James McFadden,” said Vogts. “All the journalists attacked me and said ‘why did you cap so many young players’ but I saw that it was the only way forward for the Scotland national team.

“I told them, you have to change things in Scottish football, you have to change at Under-18 and Under-21 too, you have to try to do something special,” he added. “I said that to the club coaches, they had to look to their academies, look to the young generation, and more importantly invest money in this new generation. That is very, very important. It is far better to invest the money in young Scottish players, in Scottish talent, than waste it all on an expensive player who comes from somewhere abroad like Russia.

“I think Gordon has done a good job, as part of the head coaches’ role, he knows he also has to do something about the future. He can’t just think about the players for the present, he also has to think about the future. Germany did it after Euro 96, they invested in a new sport academy, and now the German national team has maybe around 30-35 players to choose from rather than just 18. It doesn’t matter who is actually playing. That was the start of the German success.

“I didn’t really find these things frustrating, it was all part of the job. I remember the Scottish people couldn’t understand why we couldn’t beat Belarus and by the end the time was right for me to move and start a new chapter.

“Is it a surprise that Scotland haven’t been back at the play-offs since? Well, Scotland are in a very tough group. You look at the group Germany have, with Northern Ireland, Norway, Czech Republic, San Marino, we are very lucky and you have to say that sometimes Scotland haven’t had the luck.

“But whether it is the World Cup, or the next European competition or the World Cup, Scotland have to learn their lessons, take something from every single qualifier. Like how the Celtic players will find it be a good experience when they play against Bayern Munich. I always cross my fingers for the talented players in Scotland. I hope Scotland has finally learned its lesson.”