Kris Boyd - 'Football is now a Middle Class sport'

[Detournement]

1 hour ago, ThatBoyRonaldo said:

Read a theory once which claimed that post devolution, the national team is less important to Scottish identity than it used to be as we're not relying on a football team as one of the only institutions of 'Scottishness' available, and that as a result people are less bothered, and this filters down to performances on the pitch. Going by that logic we should all start voting Tory and lobbying for them to shut down Holyrood.

I think that so many shite managerial appointments have killed us. The entire country came to a halt for a qualifier in 2007. The SFA built on that by appointing Burley then Levein with disastrous results then appointed Strachan who was better but had a strange mentality. We are now at a point where the players just want to get the games out the way and get back to their clubs.

 

[HibeeJibee]

To illustrate my point SFA stated in 2006 that 111,000 people played formal football, and 302,000 did so informally (at school, at home or in the streets)...

Last year they claimed 148,000 play formal football (of which134,000 are boys/men), and 632,000 informal football; supposedly 41% of children play.

Yet I doubt anyone thinks those 'official figures' actually reflect reality today, or trajectory of last 12yrs.


From each P&Ber's own experience - has organised football GROWN by a third since 2006?

Has playground/street football DOUBLED?

Do 4 in 10 kids play?

Edited September 10, 2019 by HibeeJibee

[the jambo-rocker]

Coaching, or lack of it always has been an issue.

Just listening to an economist podcast on the benefits of a good coach there. The studies they report that having a really good coach difference in the 4 sports in America measure the difference in aggregate the coaching effect, isolating regression, outcome, wins points scored per game and then using randomisation inference, performing several simulations removes the coaching effect, but keep the main components that could the ability to isolate and find that coaches do matter. Looking at the outcomes in the upper echelons prove that obviously a better coach gets better results. Up to 30% of the variation of the teams can be ascribed to coaches. Now you'd argue that the coaches role in football is arguably in the higher range of embedding the difference that they make.

So when I move onto the point where educating more coaches from the grassroots up to the top, it makes me wonder why the f**k the SFA decided to make the courses and badges for football so inexplicably expensive that it puts us at a criminal disadvantage against most other countries that have a higher proportion of licensed and educated coaches at all levels. Iceland get a lot of plaudits for having a high amount of coaches licensed up to B. Even England is still some distance behind the mainland European countries. Do you know how much it costs to get licensed as a B coach in Scotland?

1.1 £60

1.2 £60

1.3 £60

So that's £180 to get to a basic level. Now for C which is £330.

But for the B level coach? Well that's a just a paltry £1525 and another £620 for the assessment if you pass. So I make that on your first go, £2655 to be B licensed coach with no guarantee of employment once you come out of it, which I'm sure can be found down the back of my sofa.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/the-agony-and-the-ecstasy/2016/sep/07/england-grassroots-football-iceland-germany-coaching

This was the measurement of how much it costs three years ago, and granted might not be the same. Scotland roughly was 25% more expensive to get to A license in England. Germany's A license coaching badge was only £800. If the proportion of all these coaches are the same in Italy, Spain and France, then I'm willing to bet these prices are all roughly the same.

TL;DR It won't solve all the problems, but stop making coaching such a financial black hole that that anyone who wants in by the SFA (which furthermore on top of their extortionate ticket prices must ask questions of where all this funding goes in the first place) and get fund more affordable licensed and educated coaches into the trenches at all levels for a fucking start.

Edited September 10, 2019 by the jambo-rocker

[Skinheed]

Does the middle class thing  apply to rugby? Apparently we're in the world top ten and would scud Belgium, Germany and Brazil in that! 

[Gaz]

3 minutes ago, Skinheed said:

Does the middle class thing  apply to rugby? Apparently we're in the world top ten and would scud Belgium, Germany and Brazil in that! 

No-one cares because rugby is shite

[Trackdaybob]

1 hour ago, Kuro said:

He's hitting the best few years of his career, he should be away to Leicester or Bordeaux or fiorentina or sporting Lisbon or ajax or real betis etc, instead he'll stay at Celtic beating Motherwell four times a season and thinking he's a player.

It's called 'McStaying' it. 

[EH75]

7 minutes ago, Skinheed said:

Does the middle class thing  apply to rugby? Apparently we're in the world top ten and would scud Belgium, Germany and Brazil in that! 

There's only about 10 teams in the world that take rugby seriously. If it was as popular as football we'd probably be in the same state. 

[Gaz]

I haven't read all of this thread but the sheer irony of Kris "Fat" Boyd complaining about the standard of the Scottish national team when he was content to stay fat at his boyhood club banging in thirty goals a season against St Johnstone and Kilmarnock hasn't been lost on me.

[Skinheed]

6 minutes ago, Gaz said:

No-one cares because rugby is shite

52,000 cared for a friendly on Friday.

 

Hampden needed two important matches to get that.

[ewan14]

10 minutes ago, Trackdaybob said:

It's called 'McStaying' it. 

I am fairly sure McStay regretted staying in Scotland

[ewan14]

7 minutes ago, Gaz said:

I haven't read all of this thread but the sheer irony of Kris "Fat" Boyd complaining about the standard of the Scottish national team when he was content to stay fat at his boyhood club banging in thirty goals a season against St Johnstone and Kilmarnock hasn't been lost on me.

Spot on

[Trackdaybob]

1 minute ago, ewan14 said:

I am fairly sure McStay regretted staying in Scotland

Excellent point. Well made. 

[ewan14]

5 minutes ago, Trackdaybob said:

Excellent point. Well made. 

What can I say ?

[ewan14]

Sportsound devoted one of their programmes , with G. Speirs as a guest IIRC , to working class kids being priced out of playing football. I do not know if there was a follow up

[SilverWolfe]

To illustrate my point SFA stated in 2006 that 111,000 people played formal football, and 302,000 did so informally (at school, at home or in the streets)...

Last year they claimed 148,000 play formal football (of which134,000 are boys/men), and 632,000 informal football; supposedly 41% of children play.

Yet I doubt anyone thinks those 'official figures' actually reflect reality today, or trajectory of last 12yrs.


From each P&Ber's own experience - has organised football GROWN by a third since 2006?

Has playground/street football DOUBLED?

Do 4 in 10 kids play?

Definitely no chance that’s true.

My son, who is 5 years old was part of a football club earlier in the year. Saturday mornings at the local community club in Clydebank. We were told if he wanted to continue with them they were moving it to Johnstone (Paisley) so they can be part of a competitive league. Something mental like 2 training sessions and a game every week. 5 years old and for him to play I’d need to find a way to get him to Johnstone 3 times a week. I find the idea of competitive football at 5 years old mental. Get them passing and controlling the ball first, then some 2 or 3 aside.

[HibeeJibee]

16 minutes ago, Skinheed said:

52,000 cared for a friendly on Friday.

 

Hampden needed two important matches to get that.

Yet only a few thousand watch either pro-team... few hundred each top club team... and far fewer participate at 'grassroots' than football.

[Arch Stanton]

Couldn't find an U21 thread so will post this here. Highlights of the U21s away win tonight v Croatia.

Not sure how many of these young guys are "middle class".

 

[ICTChris]

We need to have every player give a detailed socio-economic profile so we know if Scottish football is becoming too middle class.

[craigkillie]

I haven't read all of this thread but the sheer irony of Kris "Fat" Boyd complaining about the standard of the Scottish national team when he was content to stay fat at his boyhood club banging in thirty goals a season against St Johnstone and Kilmarnock hasn't been lost on me.

Except he didn't, did he? He moved to England and abroad and tested himself in three different leagues at four different clubs to varying degrees of success before returning to Scotland to see out his career.

[Diamonds are Forever]

2 hours ago, Kuro said:

Boyd himself is the perfect example of why we are shit, there's a guy with a talent who.was given an opportunity to become a top player.  A combination of laziness and lack of professionalism saw him.never realise his potential, did nothing whatsoever at the top level and spent his career scoring against utter jobbers like St Johnstone.

There is no doubt whatsoever that guys like Boyd and Derek Riordan had the talent to play for a team like Liverpool or Sevilla.  We produce them, the problem is why do they end up at Hibs instead.  It's a mindset thing.

 

There is absolutely doubt that those guys could have played for those clubs, but anyway, your overall point is nonsense if taken as a reason why we aren't any good at football.

Scots are no different from any other country in that you will have players who aren't as professional and some players who are. For every Boyd and Riordan there is a Darren Fletcher and Andy Robertson - guys who squeezed every last bit out of their potential by working their arse off and being professional.

You think other countries don't have players who weren't as professional as they should have been? George Best? Le Tissier? Any number of the latest 'wonderkids' from around the world who end up nowhere? I, and I'm sure you, could literally list hundreds of non-Scots who wasted their potential.

Or to reverse the point, when we were relatively decent in the 60/70/80s and had world class players, you think they were all professional and led a great lifestyle? Players regularly drank 2-3 times a week back then. So if our lack of professionalism is the reason we are rubbish then we should see an increasing trend in unprofessionalism as we have got worse. What we've seen is the opposite, players are far more professional now yet we are worse.

Laziness and lack of professionalism are undoubtedly reasons why certain individuals don't make it to the level they should, but that is not country specific, those traits exist everywhere, there is no evidence that it exists more in Scotland than anywhere else. Just giving a few Scots as named examples doesn't make it a Scottish problem.