REVOLUTION rarely brings out the best in people. Easter Road on Wednesday night was not exactly Paris at the height of the guillotine, but it had that same sense of futile lust for blood.
The howling mob outside the main stand thought they had picked up the scent of David Taylor after the 4-1 friendly defeat by Sweden. However, the Scottish Football Association’s Public Enemy No 1 was slipping furtively out of a side door, no doubt with the members of the international board behind him, like a group of petrified 18th Century French aristocrats.
How many more victims do the supporters — calling them the Tartan Army was stretching it a bit since most were well below the enlistment age — want? Berti Vogts has already gone. The SFA establishment might not be full of professional insight, but unless there is a collection of eminent Scottish football people waiting to fill a power vacuum — and there’s not, because people like Sir Alex Ferguson or Kenny Dalglish are too busy and don’t do freebies — the call to “sack the board” is about as useful as a chocolate fireguard.
Ditto, the pursuit of Taylor. The chief executive does not appoint the national coach, he merely finds prospective candidates and the 11-man board vote on it. The misinformed tabloid debate that getting rid of this bunch of bureaucrats will radically alter Scotland’s situation before the World Cup qualifying tie with Italy in March is laughable. It may whip up a bit of anger but — as in all revolutions — some people have to get on with thinking about the future while others indulge in baying.
In that respect, the disloyalty shown to Tommy Burns by a section of the Easter Road crowd, who chanted Gordon Strachan’s name, was equally without merit. They may think they were influencing the SFA, but Strachan’s public support is already known about — even if the newspapers the majority of the fans buy are canvassing for Walter Smith — and the whole affair resembled the final of Pop Idol rather than a friendly international overseen by a man who was prepared to see his reputation kicked about (unlike Strachan or Smith) in the name of progress.
Calling a 4-1 home defeat “progress” may seem like an invitation for an extended stay in an asylum, but there was no doubt that the performance Burns inspired from his collection of inexperienced players in the first half far outshone any of the final performances under Vogts. Don’t take my word for it. Willie Miller, who earned 65 caps for Scotland, told BBC Radio listeners that the first period was a breath of fresh air.
It made a mockery of the fact that there were ten changes in the side that faced Sweden to the one that drew so dismally in Moldova last month. It is impossible to absorb that amount of tampering to a team pattern and expect it to function. Sadly, that fact emerged in the second half when the second-string Scots were undone by their own rawness in defence.
Prompted by the eyecatching Christian Wilhelmsson, the Swedes cut through Burns’s defence like a knife through butter. Marcus Allbäck was allowed to add to his first-half goal and then Johan Elmander and Fredrik Berglund struck within a minute of each other as Scotland lost their shape, a fact not unconnected to the meagre collection of 28 international appearances gathered by David Marshall, the teenage goalkeeper, and his back four, while the Swedes could boast more than 200 for their rearguard. When Steven Hammell made his debut in replacing the injured Andy Webster, the cap collection shrank to 15.
All of that has to be placed in context when dissecting Scotland’s performance, as must the absence of perhaps seven first-pick players. The fact that it was a Sweden led by Allbäck and not Henrik Larsson is equally relevant: there may have been Swedish fringe players on view, but the fact that Allbäck has 23 international goals to his name, yet can barely get a game, while James McFadden, whose late penalty hoisted his total to six goals, is considered as the first name on the team sheet, simply illustrates why the Swedes are ranked 22nd in the world, while Scotland are 77th.
“There were a number of our guys without much experience of international football,” Russell Anderson, the Aberdeen defender, admitted. “We passed the ball quite well at times but the result was disappointing. I think their spell in the second half showed what a good team we were playing against. We just switched off for a minute and they punished us.
“There were more than half-a-dozen senior players absent against Sweden. This was a second-string line-up but if it gives guys some experience of international football, then that’s what we have to do.
“We need to get experience. A fair proportion of us have not played all that much in Europe for our clubs, so that’s another part of the problem. I can understand the theory in taking hard games. You want to play better teams to improve and learn from your mistakes. I don’t see any point in playing teams that you are going to beat and then in World Cup qualifying you are playing Italy and find you are not ready.”
Burns was equally frank, even if he knew that his honesty — coupled with the result — hardly added up to the best job application. “I was worried about getting a real hiding,” the caretaker coach said. “The good thing, for me, is that 90 per cent of the team were from the Scottish Premierleague. Sweden are one of the best teams in the world and even if they were without their big-hitters, their Euro 2004 core was here.
“I was proud to manage my country. I won’t die if I don’t get the job, but I did not think I would be given it even if we’d beaten Sweden. But I got a glimpse of how much of a step up it is to be in international management. I spent all last week making up plans of how I wanted to play and then I lost ten players, but you still get judged on the result.
“But there are signs of hope there. There are a lot of young players who have come into the national team from the Premierleague, but at international level, you meet a far different type of opponent from what you do in the domestic game. It will take a long time, but the country cannot keep hammering the players for failure.”
Burns started the night with eight Premierleague players — of which Stephen Pearson and Barry Nicholson were the pick — and ten were on the pitch at the end, while all but two of the Swedes earned their living abroad. Some may feel that says it all about the state of Scottish domestic football, but it is only repeated exposure to international football that will promote improvement. A decade ago, Latvia were regarded as whipping boys, but they kept taking it on the chin — allowing the same group of players to amass 60 to 70 caps — and eventually reached Euro 2004.
Whoever takes the Scotland job, these are the only resources available. “There’s no transfer market in international football,” Andy Roxburgh, who guided Scotland to two leading finals, once said. The present group of players pledged their loyalty to Burns. “We would be 100 per cent behind Tommy if he was to go for the job,” Anderson declared.
