THE latest humiliation at the hands of perceived minnows Kazakhstan should initiate an honest and fundamental examination of the reasons for our descent into oblivion in world football (“It’s all gone to Eck”, Herald Sport, March 22).

Following England’s World Cup triumph in 1966, we blindly followed Alf Ramsey’s example and dispensed with orthodox wingers, in the process not only ending a tradition of brilliant ball-playing wide men, from Alan Morton to Jimmy Johnstone, but also rendering redundant the flair and vision of gifted wing-halves and inside-forwards, their supply line down the generations.

Celtic won the European Cup in 1967 with a 4-2-4 formation that utilised the talents of every player to the full, exemplifying that our finest players were attack-minded, a fact unthinkingly ignored in favour of various increasingly defensive formations, the corollary of embracing negativity being a steady decline in the standard of individual and collective defending consequent on the demise of man-marking, an outcome all too evident in the former Astana.

That Scottish football has surrendered sovereignty to the television companies can only worsen a deeply depressing state of affairs. For as long as a 12-team top league exists, Celtic and Rangers will dominate ad infinitum, the pressure on the rest to achieve respectability or avoid failure will grow season on season and the scope for skilled, attacking play will diminish proportionately.

For as long as our footballing history is ignored, the outlook for our participation in international competitions at club and country level will remain unremittingly bleak.

Duncan Macintyre,

2 Fort Matilda Terrace,

Greenock.

AH well, at least one good thing has come out of the calamity in Kazakhstan. It has helped to crystallise for me the aching in my heart that has afflicted me for the past 15 years. I have, as of full time in Nursultan, come to the sudden realisation, that I have an unrequited longing for a return to the halcyon days and sunlit uplands of the Berti Vogts era.

Alastair Patrick,

3 Pentland Crescent,

Paisley.

Flaws in exam league tables

I AGREE with the analysis by Andrew Denholm that the annual league table of school exams is still a contentious issue (“Herald’s exam league tables dominated by west of Scotland secondary schools”, The Herald, March 20). They remain of limited value and confirm an obsession in society with false concepts of winning in life.

Predictably, East Renfrewshire and East Dunbartonshire seem cemented into the perceived top echelons. We have to consider the psychological damage to young people who learn that they are not grouped with “the best” when so many subliminal messages in our exam-driven education culture suggest that being superior is somehow the aim in life.

The hard work by teachers in adding value to the lives of pupils at schools not on the list must be recognised in other ways. Not all pupils are scholastically inclined and can often feel so overwhelmed by expectations that they give up at an early stage. It is hardly fair to make an evaluation of a school that teaches willing and motivated learners compared to one where many pupils have abandoned aspirations to search for academic excellence. It is not surprising that many teachers feel they have to devote much class time to instilling the guile of how to pass exams.

Sir John Major left school at 15 with three “O” levels and will probably go down in history as a better prime minister than old Etonian David Cameron.

Bill Brown,

46 Breadie Drive,

Milngavie.