IF Scotland votes against independence in next year's referendum, will the time have arrived to wave goodbye to our football autonomy as well?

It is a question which would have been unthinkable even five years ago, but recent events suggest that a "No" vote should cause us to consider whether we might also be Better Together within Fifa and Uefa.

Scotland – along with England, Wales and Northern Ireland – has enjoyed a historical independence within these organisations thanks to our contribution to the evolution of organised football. But if there is no will for political separation in the first test of public opinion since the Acts of Union in 1707, should we really expect to hang on to privileges won by our pioneering predecessors?

Morally, it's questionable. On a practical level, too, it is becoming harder to justify. A British Football Association, for example, would enable Scottish clubs to compete in a new British league structure which would eliminate Uefa's objections to cross-border competitions.

It could also be argued we should jump before we are pushed. A "No" vote in September 2014 would play into the hands of disaffected Fifa nations. Already stirred by the double standards of British men's and women's teams competing at the London Olympics, they could, with some justification, point to a status quo referendum result as clinching evidence that there should be only one United Kingdom team.

What would Scotland be hoping to preserve anyway? For the entire 20th century, being accorded independent nation status within Fifa was a win-win situation – cocooned politically inside the United Kingdom, but allowed to have our own football team competing in World Cups and European Championships. Our clubs, meanwhile, had their own leagues from which they could qualify for Uefa competitions.

The first 12½ years of this century paint a very different picture. No major championship finals since 1998 and next year's World Cup in Brazil already a lost cause. At club level the odd flourish by Celtic – and before their financial collapse Rangers – is balanced by our other teams being ritually and humiliatingly eliminated before the tournaments have properly begun.

Should anyone have missed the point, Scottish football, once such a source of national pride and passion, has plunged to a depth those of us of a certain vintage could never have envisaged.

The downgrading of the Scottish FA to regional status within a new British structure is a development many could live with. Like the FA in England, it has been a reactionary and parochial organisation for much of its 140-year existence, declining, for example, to participate in the World Cup until 1954.

While – we are told – recent streamlining has made the SFA more efficient, the organisation is still perceived as failing to provide the necessary vision and leadership. The Scottish Premier League, for its part, has been an unmitigated disaster in almost every respect, and not least in failing to provide the country with the better standard of footballer which is the only solution to our rapidly escalating problems.

All these matters are related, and if it seems utterly unpalatable to relinquish our right to a separate Scotland side in the event of a "No" vote, what does the future actually hold? Results are palpably getting worse, to the extent that it's reasonable to ask if the 16-year slump is cyclical or irreversible.

Also undermining the case for a continued national team is the fact that more and more players selected for our squads are only tenuously Scottish. Taking advantage of lax international regulations is the option of many other countries, but most of the players we are importing are nowhere near good enough to be considered for the land of their birth. Do we need to prolong this embarrassment for much longer?

Yet, if public opinion – and the never-ending thirst of the Tartan Army for international football – would probably be outraged at the prospect of Scotland losing its separate identity, it is increasingly arguable that a British FA may be the only solution to the financial woes besetting Scotland's clubs.

Even if they had been historically well run, it would still have been impossible for them to compete on level terms once satellite television and rich foreign owners altered the English financial landscape. The anomaly of Welsh clubs qualifying to play in England's top flight only emphasises Scotland's growing isolation. A British league would offer enticing prospects not just to Celtic and a revived Rangers, but other Scottish clubs also.

The situation is mirrored in women's football. If a "No" vote led to a British FA it would be a bitter blow for the Scotland side which, much against the national tide, is over-performing. As the Olympics demonstrated, probably only three or four Scots would get into a British squad which, inevitably, would be weighted in favour of English players. This despite Scotland having won and drawn the last two games between the countries.

Yet, at club level, the arguments are as persuasive as the men's. The FA is ploughing money into their Women's Super League while the SFA has no such initiatives. Unless that changes, if Scottish women's club football is to flourish it may have to be in a British context.

Better Together? The irony is that if the vast majority in Scotland still probably regard the prospect of a British FA as abhorrent, there would almost certainly be even fiercer resistance from within England. Apart from Gareth Bale, is there any reason why they would want a British football team at the expense of their own? And nor would their clubs be queuing up to embrace teams not just from Scotland, but potentially Northern Ireland also.

Unless there is a rebellion within Fifa, and a demand to end the status of the four Home Nations, it's unlikely that the outcome of the referendum will have much effect on how football is played out on these islands. A "No" vote will allow those of that persuasion, including the three recent Scotland managers who put their names to an advertisement opposing the break-up of the Union, to continue to have their cake and eat it; albeit one that is increasingly stale and unappetising.

As things stand, the prospect of a "Yes" outcome is remote. Would it be a game changer? Given the inflated importance of football it's difficult to envisage a resourced Edinburgh government sitting back while the Scottish game declines, but independence itself is no guarantee that the patient can be revived.