JUST back from Canada. A wonderland of nature. Saw a whale, a red-beaked tit and a bald-headed eagle. All in my shaving mirror.
If my daily stare at my increasingly haggard phizzog did not dent the romance of a wonderful country, then the odd conversation dispelled it brutally, if only temporarily. A chat with a waitress in an upmarket hotel was the very acme of how to see ourselves as others see us.
After informing me she was a goal tender for the college Sock Her team, she asked with a beaming smile: “Do you play Sock Her in Scotland?”
Pausing only to put on my sunglasses in deference to the glare from her set of gnashers whose brightness would have caused the sphinx to blink, I replied: “No, not really. We once did but there is not much call for it nowadays.”
This sentiment was expressed with a light-heartedness only induced in a Scot when he is ordering an Olympic pool of chowder followed by so many lobster they could constitute the squad for the Seafood World Cup. Presumably playing in the Pool of Death.
But, like some of my reporting, there is some truth in it. It is made all the more authentic by a glance at Scotland’s recent record in European competition. Suffice to say, the victory lap of the 2016 winners is interrupted by Scottish teams going out of next year’s competition.
This premature evacuation brings the annual hand-wringing of Scottish football. The answer, of course, is simple: we are not producing enough great players and we do not have enough money to buy them in.
The case of Ross McCormack is instructive. He was sold to Aston Villa from Fulham for £12m this week. Another Scot, Justin Rhodes, has accumulated such grand transfer fees in his jaunts around the Championship that he has been listed as the nation’s greatest revenue maker behind tourism and oil.
But it the difficulty in progressing in Europe invites other questions. First, is qualification for European football a reward or a punishment for some Scottish clubs? Second, is there a future in European competition for our clubs?
The first is easily answered. When Hearts and Hibs do the sums on Europe, they will find themselves in deficit. They will not have made money from their brief immersion into the qualifiers for the Europa League and the tournament may even impact negatively on their season. If either team reaches the Scottish Cup final, then their season could last 11 months from training to playing last game. They would then require to be back in training in under that remaining month of a rolling year to prepare for a potential duffing up from Liechtenstein Strollers.
I wonder, just wonder, if the chief executives of some Scottish clubs ponder the likelihood of qualification for the Europa League and consider the process financially draining and, frankly, not worth the effort.
And money, dear reader, is what it is all about.
There is no shame in that, either. Football is a business and those chief executives who fail to realise this are condemned to file for administration.
There is not enough money in Scottish football which is why Mr McCormack and Mr Rhodes earn the sort of money in the second tier of English football that would cause a Scottish Premiership chairman to believe it constituted the entire wage cost for the squad, the standing order for annual utilities and the season’s bill for fish suppers at Auchterarder.
Scotland is trapped by geography. The domestic TV deals are always going to be modest so Europe offers the chance to ramp up revenue significantly. But it is far from a certain earner as Scottish clubs, yet again, have proved this season.
It is why the “glamorous” pre-season tournament has gained such traction, particularly for Celtic. The International Champions Cup is as competitive as Usain Bolt v A Slug with a Bad Limp. It is pitched as glamorous but I find it as glamorous as your Auntie Cathie on the day she mislaid her dentures. And her wig.
But its purpose should not be dismissed. As players walk on and off the pitch as if it was merely a public training exercise, as punters toast the chance for a wee jaunt to Dublin or wherever, as chief executives count the handy few millions such tournaments offer them, their deeper significance is ignored.
The International Champions Cup or any of the other dozen roadshows rolling out through the continents show that clubs are grasping that sponsorship, international appeal and interest all remain strong if big clubs play at big venues. They will know, too, that if they add a truly competitive element to such occasions then they will be on to the sort of revenues that come from developing a drug that not only increases sexual performance but can cure a hangover and taste like ice cream.
In short, they will be on the biggest winner in sport. Now UEFA might have something to say about all of that but they are in danger of being sidelined or even ignored. There is a future for Sock Her in Scotland and for Scotland in Europe. Despite what I told that waitresss. But the old certainties are as dead as a dodo. And that comes straight from a bald-headed eagle.
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