Might the ills of Scottish football only be cured by a fundamental change in the way Uefa runs the club game? And should Alex Salmond get involved in the future direction of football?
More than a few prominent figures in Scottish football, on the back of a season of SPL upheaval, have cast their eyes again towards places like Moscow, Kiev, Prague, Bratislava and - not least - the headquarters of Uefa by the shore of Lac Leman at Nyon.
League change might have proved acrimonious in Scotland, but not so, if we are to believe some of the big power-players of football, elsewhere across Europe. Our big clubs might all want to keep an eye on this shifting scene.
The prospect of joint or "binational leagues" involving two consenting countries is building in momentum, especially in eastern Europe. The Russian and Ukraine leagues hope to be merged and up and running by 2014-15. The Czech and Slovak leagues have also made a joint proposal.
Serbia and Bosnia, some believe, will explore the concept, while the Scandinavian countries have already held talks and considered a prototype.
All of this, of course, will be dependent on Uefa and Fifa giving their assent to the idea of merged national leagues, a concept they have so far resisted. But Uefa president, Michel Platini, according to those who have met him, such as Miroslav Pelta, the president of the Czech FA, is said to be supportive of the idea.
"We [Czechs and Slovaks] want to merge, and we see it in terms of months away, not years," said Pelta, who claims to have discussed the idea positively with Platini and other Uefa officials.
This shifting tide of football opinion is pertinent to Scotland given the obvious problems our game is facing. The Russia/Ukraine and Czech/Slovak proposals have caught the eye of Celtic, Rangers and others because of one brute fact: in any binational league set-up Scotland's natural partner would be England.
Nor is it lost on those who are starting to agitate for wider borders for Scottish football, such as the Celtic CEO Peter Lawwell, that two Welsh clubs will next season play in the Barclays Premier League in England.
The Welsh FA remains totally autonomous and unaffected, and yet Cardiff City, newly promoted under Malky Mackay, are about to join Swansea City in the English top flight.
Everybody understands the historic quirks by which Welsh clubs have played in England. But the point remains that Cardiff and Swansea offer a stark reminder of the way national borders need not apply.
If Uefa does give its consent to merged leagues then, from a Scottish point of view, it won't just be Rangers and Celtic who could play in a British set-up.
Imagine a scenario whereby Aberdeen or Hibs or Hearts, in the current climate, were playing Nottingham Forest or Leeds United. For a club like Aberdeen, currently dormant with depressed sponsors and supporters, it could be a shot in the arm. Such a new lease of football life would seem exactly what that north-east city needs right now.
The current fate of Russian league football offers a hint of how all this might come about. Russia, like Scotland, is a prime example of a once-proud football nation which these days has little to boast about, save for empty stadiums and an unstable product.
Russian football officials could not fix this decline by themselves. They needed outside help. Enter Gazprom, one of the world's largest extractors of natural gas, whose CEO, Alexei Miller, also happens to love football.
Gazprom, based in Moscow, emerged from the last days of the old Soviet empire and today accounts for nearly 20% of the world's gas production. The company sponsors Zenit St Petersburg and Schalke 04 and, more tellingly in this context, is a principal sponsor of the Uefa Champions League.
Between them Gazprom and Miller are pushing for a merged Russia/Ukraine league. They have enlisted Valery Gazzaev, the veteran manager, and Sergei Pryadkin, currently head of the Russian Premier League, to put the plan together.
In part, there is nostalgia at work. "I would like to see all 16 Russian Premier League teams take part in this new league," says Pryadkin. "It would be like the rebirth of the old USSR championship."
Miller, whose Gazprom standing appears to have sway within Uefa, claims to see no obstacle in his path for the merged league. "We think it is realistic to start the [merged] championship from the autumn of 2014," he recently told R-Sport in Moscow.
Michel Platini, admittedly, appears to be in two minds over merged leagues. Three years ago he urged that the Dutch and Belgian leagues be merged, and also said he felt a unified Balkan league would work. More recently, despite the Czechs' claims that he supports them, Platini has sounded less sure, and has even dismissed the idea that an old Soviet-style club championship should be reborn.
There is an obvious cynicism towards all this. Why not just get everyone merging: the Austrians and the Hungarians, the Baltic countries, Kazakhstan and the Caucasus, etc? The whole of European football could become happily - or unhappily - wedded. It could get pretty complicated for Uefa.
Nonetheless, in Scotland, such a new football environment could be exciting: for fans, for the media, for sponsors. Down the line it might become a question of political pressure making it happen.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article