Why were we so shite for so long?

[Insert Amusing Pseudonym]

On 05/04/2022 at 09:36, TheScarf said:

Probably better youth coaching now than there was 10-15 years ago too.  Those performance schools or whatever they're called will be helping.  I'm from the same era as the likes of Snodgrass, Dorrans etc where as a youth it was probably all the quickest and biggest guys getting signed on pro youth contracts.  That was certainly the case when some of my mate were playing 17s and 19s for The Caley and County.  They were never going to be professional footballers but they were rapid and 6 foot.  They played against the two I mentioned above and said they were both rapid.  

Would 17/18 year old Snodgrass and Dorrans be signed as professionals now?  I'm not so sure.  Probably harsh to single out those two but they're a good example of average footballers from my era (born in 85) who my mates played against and who played for Scotland in the period where we were losing daft qualifying games to shite teams.

Struggling to think of Snodgrass ever being remotely quick.  If he was significantly faster than his peers then they'd have had zero chance in professional football

[TheScarf]

2 minutes ago, Insert Amusing Pseudonym said:

Struggling to think of Snodgrass ever being remotely quick.  If he was significantly faster than his peers then they'd have had zero chance in professional football

Apparently at youth level he was. My mate said he didn’t really stand out quality wise.

[afca32]

27 minutes ago, TheScarf said:

Apparently at youth level he was. My mate said he didn’t really stand out quality wise.

I agree with your overall point, I went to school with guys who played for Hibs, Hearts and Aberdeen and when discussing the better players at that level they'd usually mention how quick and strong they were and that was about it. Like the above poster though Snodgrass actually struck me as quite slow, especially for a winger, but was good technically. It's interesting how these things pan out.

I do think that a lot more emphasis is being placed on technique, probably gradually over the last 10 years or so. Although Hibs and Hearts seemed to go for a lot of physical specimens (only Jordan McGhee has really made any sort of career for himself from the two clubs) at my age group (1996), Dundee United had Ryan Gauld and John Souttar coming through and that felt like the start of what we're seeing more of now with Hickey, Gilmour, Ramsay etc.

[PFC2011]

Shite, over-the-hill squad. Poor managers. Lack of talent coming through. Break-up of the USSR, Yugoslavia etc brought about numerous new sides who were very competitive as well as previously mediocre nations investing in their game while we stood still. The perfect melting pot for a very dark generation.

[Virtual Insanity]

I actually think Snodgrass, Dorrans and Griffiths all coming out of Livi was around the era that things started to turn for Scottish football. They were all examples of technically gifted players coming through. The problem is at the national team level you're relying on a very small number of successes really that aren't necessarily indicative of the wider footballing culture in a country  - I think we'd probably been on a steady decline since the early to mid 90s which was masked in part by our world ranking still offering us up relatively easy qualifying groups. That probably runs into a sense of complacency that takes a while to turn around, hence in the early-mid 2000s we were producing almost nothing. The few guys left standing of decent ability like Ferguson and Lambert were surrounded by serious dross for a while.

The big thing that a lot of our current squad have is continuous development from a young age. Gordon started very young at Hearts, Robertson worked his way up from Queen's Park, Tierney broke through at Celtic pretty early on as a prodigious talent, McGinn, Dykes, Adams through the English non-leagues, all these guys were playing a lot of first team football from a young age. We now don't have too many players who stagnate at the Old Firm over the years (Brown/Ferguson arguably) - McGregor is a class act but I do think he could have been even better if he'd gone down South with Rodgers, but we also aren't relying on guys who make the move down South and don't quite make it (McFadden, Naismith) - every one of our starting 11 are pretty much nailed on starters for their clubs at pretty decent levels.

When you bring through a few top class talents - Gilmour, Tierney and Robertson for Scotland although I'd also put Gordon in that bracket, then fitting in players around that becomes a lot easier. Going back to the start, with different breaks, less injuries and a general more professional attitude guys like Snodgrass, Dorrans and Griffiths would have been completely at home in this Scotland team, they just struggled in teams that didn't have the same level of top class talent at its core (nor a top class manager).

[Captain Saintsible]

On 05/04/2022 at 09:36, TheScarf said:

 

Would 17/18 year old Snodgrass and Dorrans be signed as professionals now?  I'm not so sure.  

 

[TheScarf]

Just now, Captain Saintsible said:

 

I’m glad you agree. 

[Captain Saintsible]

Just now, TheScarf said:

I’m glad you agree. 

 

[General dissaray]

On 02/04/2022 at 00:24, YassinMoutaouakil said:

Like most folk my age who are too young to remember 98, this is the first genuinely good Scotland team I've ever experienced, apart from brief and fleeting moments under McLeish and Strachan.  Aside from that, for the two decades I've been aware of the Scottish national football team, they've generally been shite.

How did this happen? How did we manage to completely drop off a cliff from 1998 onwards from being perennial qualifiers before? Was it just a regression to the mean after a few decades of overachievment? Did we just stop producing good players randomly? Were we gradually getting worse but nobody noticed until it was too late? I've read a few Soccernomics-y explanations about the fall of Communism introducing about a dozen more countries that we had to compete with for qualification spaces,  which makes at least partial sense to me, but you'd think there must be more to it than that.

I think what happened is we put all our eggs in one basket and spent a lot off money producing managers at Largs instead off players

Also around that time your traditional teams in England that always took our players dropped down leagues or just declined Liverpool Aston Villa Nottingham Forrest Leeds United who always played in Europe 

So allthough we had tge three foreigner rule in Scotland around 92 and Rangers did well in Champions league the teams we sent players to in England weren't very successful and teams lije Chelsea and Man City started to get money and try and challenge with foreign exports finally allowed to be back in Europe after eighties 

[DA Baracus]

The way we played/our style of play stood still for too long. It was massively outdated and other nations adapted and moved with the times, the result being we watched them pass us by.

There was also a very negative mentality too often, especially in away games.

Was this because of the players we had? Was it because of the managers we had? Or both?

 

[General dissaray]

On 14/05/2022 at 18:13, DA Baracus said:

The way we played/our style of play stood still for too long. It was massively outdated and other nations adapted and moved with the times, the result being we watched them pass us by.

There was also a very negative mentality too often, especially in away games.

Was this because of the players we had? Was it because of the managers we had? Or both?

 

We play 352 we went to the Euroes with it the same system we used the last time we qualfied back in nineties and same system NI used getting to the Euroes

[KingRocketman II]

10 minutes ago, General dissaray said:

We play 352 we went to the Euroes with it the same system we used the last time we qualfied back in nineties and same system NI used getting to the Euroes

Liechtenstein often play with a 3-5-2 but I don't think they have qualified for many tournaments using that formation. 

[Lurkst]

On 04/04/2022 at 01:26, git-intae-thum said:

Any street or vacant bit of grass in Scotland up until the early 90's:

Since then:

That's the real reason.

I was walking past the KGV playing fields in Renfrew yesterday. Perfect Sunday afternoon for fitba, six immaculate full size grass pitches, and the only people using them were three guys painting the white lines 

 

Edited May 16, 2022 by Lurkst

[General dissaray]

23 hours ago, KingRocketman II said:

Liechtenstein often play with a 3-5-2 but I don't think they have qualified for many tournaments using that formation. 

We aren't Liechtenstein though we are Scotland so don't see why you would arrive at the comparison we got a much bigger population and sucsess with our club sides in Europe regardless of what happens tomorrow night 

[Albus Bulbasaur]

Interesting read. 

[Donathan]

The three countries who have all outclassed us on our own turf in the past twelve months didn’t exist before the 90s.

 

Bring back the USSR, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia imo 

[Albus Bulbasaur]

Mind that time. 

[Clown Job]

Our World Cup record is pretty horrific when you consider the number of “World Class” players we apparently had back in the day 

Source

 

[Lex]

The two countries that qualified ahead of us - Denmark in our group path and Wales in our playoff path - were two of the worst teams at the World Cup. Not a win between them.

Sobering.

[HalfCutNinja]

8 minutes ago, Lex said:

The two countries that qualified ahead of us - Denmark in our group path and Wales in our playoff path - were two of the worst teams at the World Cup. Not a win between them.

Sobering.

No they weren't. Australia were the worst team at the WC, and got out of their group with a Scottish league select. Scotland are quite decent these days, it's just incredibly difficult to qualify from UEFA. 

Iran were, bizarrely, ranked 20th in the world going into the tournament. Scotland are better than them.