This is what a lack of competitiveness and a slow degradation of our national game brings. Old Firm, hang your heads in shame. Can we now make the required changes?
What do you mean?!! We're going through by default... Once Sepp gives up on his favourite club. Now that's impressive!
Well, it seems there's a lot of stagnation in Scottish football lately (despite Celtic & Rangers managing to reach an UEFA Cup/EuroLeague final during the last 10 years). What's the true reason for this problem (just the lack of money & competitivness concerning the SPL) and how can it be solved? I mean, the Swiss and Slovenian leagues surely aren't stronger than the SPL...
It's naive to think that the decline of Scottish football is down to the Old Firm. It doesn't matter how competitive the SPL is, I doubt any Scottish club would do any better than Rangers and Celtic have in recent years. I think that making the SPL more competitive should be a priority, but it's not the reason for our inevitable decline in the co-efficient rankings. The coaching, infrastructure (having three governing bodies for a country with circa five million people is ludicrous) and the size of the SPL is what needs to change. The problems with Scottish football go far deeper than competitiveness. These days La Liga isn't much, if any better than the SPL in that respect, yet look at the standard of player they produce on a regular basis. Far too many Scottish players 'abilities' are limited to running about a lot and putting in crunching tackles. This is not Rangers or Celtic's fault.
your post does bring up a legitimate issue, however to say this is why you've lost to maribor is ridiculous. it isn't like slovenia are producing great football talents of the world either...
Bigger league Summer football Invest money in youth coaching Make one governing body Build good facilities Educate people that talent is not enough anymore
We Lost to Maribor because we could not put the ball in the back of the net. If we'd taken a third of our chances last night we would have hammered them. I called it after 30 mins that we were going to struggle to score.
Put simply our best young talent stagnates up North due to the state of the league and/or get snapped up on the cheap and simply disappear into Old Firm/English reserve teams. Until we sort our game out this will continue to happen to the detriment of the national side. We need more competition in our domestic game and we need to enable teams to build on their success instead of fighting a constant battle for financial survival. The model we need to aim for involves clubs developing their own youth and selling them on to bigger clubs for a healthy profit. This profit is used to develop the infrastructure of the club and keep things moving forward. It is how every other smaller league survives. At the moment players are being sold for a pittance and far too early in their development simply to keep the wolf from the door. It helps no-one. Thankfully, though not from a Scottish perspective, it is now seriously hurting the bigot brothers as well. Perhaps if they cared slightly more about the domestic game instead of belittling it and constantly trying to whore themselves to chairmen in England the situation might have been different. What else did they expect when they constantly steal the biggest threats from the rest of the league and then simply toss them aside?
So yet again, almost the entire blame rests with the two main Glasgow clubs. Do the Glasgow clubs alone vote to remain a 12 team league or do the smaller clubs grab onto the 4 (possible) away games they can get and the advantage of ramping up prices when playing the two evil sentients that ruin our national league? Did the Glasgow clubs alone vote to ditch Sky and almost end up with next to nothing by way of a TV deal...? I suppose the answer will be yes to that as well. Also, for your information, Celtic signed 2 players from SPL clubs last season - Charlie Mulgrew and Anthony Stokes. Neither could be considered as disappearing into the reserve team. Speaking of which, where is the reserve league...? Oh right. That'll be the our fault as well then... Over the last 5 seasons or so any player Celtic has signed from an SPL side has more often than not, played an integral part in the season. As well as the 2 afore mentioned players there has also been Scott MacDonald, Barry Robson and Scott Brown. The Chris Killens are the exception rather than the rule nowadays. But don't let those facts blind you from having another pop at one of the Glasgow teams. And you're leading the lesson on why Scottish football is failing...
it seems to me like this is already the model in place. if you want to succeed in europe nowadays, you must be bought by oil barons. failing that, sacking your useless managers. celtic and rangers can blame the rest of the league for not being good competition, however i just don't see why it should matter too much to them. they were seen as "diddy teams" before hand. whether or not rangers can beat some shit from slovenia won't change this perception.
while taking care of some other matters i was thinking about this whole issue, and really, i don't quite believe all the doomsday talk about the spl. losing to malmo, maribor, and sion are terrible results, however i don't think this shows that the spl has gotten worse as a league at all. i honestly don't believe that the scottish game could have fallen off that badly over the course of a few years. celtic had some excellent champions league seasons under their last decent manager, and i think these could have created false expectations, especially now that they don't have a decent manager. then rangers made the uefa cup final. perhaps rangers european fails are down to karma after the whole manchester incidents. some of the otherclubs have had some bad european ties, like hibs vs maribor, hearts' first leg thrashing vs dinamo, and most memorably, aberdeen's home leg vs sigma or whatever they're called. not to forget aberdeen's impressive run when they went out to bayern a few years ago. bit unlucky at times too. dundee united have gotten probably the hardest draws possible each of the last two seasons, motherwell drew french opposition, and i don't think anyone could even expect celtic or rangers to advance vs spurs. stay positive fans of big clubs!
http://sport.stv.tv/football/scotti...d-in-europa-league-as-uefa-rule-against-sion/ Celtic have been reinstated in the 2011/12 Europa League after FC Sion were made to forfeit their two play-off round ties. The Swiss side have been adjudged by UEFA to have included five ineligible players in their squad for the two fixtures, with Pascal Feindouno, Gabri, Mario Mutsch, Jose Goncalves and Billy Ketkeophomphone all taking to the field against Neil Lennon’s side. FC Sion recorded a 0-0 draw in Glasgow and then ran out 3-1 winners at home last Thursday. But under UEFA’s Europa League regulations, Celtic have been awarded both games 3-0 by means of forfeit. As a result, the Scottish Premier League side will now inherit Sion’s place in Group I of the Europa League and will face Atletico Madrid, Udinese and Rennes.
I'm going to enjoy Sion's legal challenge to this ridiculous decision that FIFA has strong-armed through.
Ridiculous? Are you seriously suggesting that Sion did nothing wrong? They fielded inellgible players, one of whom scored twice. We can debate the extent of how pish Celtic were over the two legs but the fact of the matter is Sion clearly broke the rules and have been correctly punished for doing so. I fail to see how even you could not see the logic, for once by UEFA, in their decision.
Well for starters the initial El-Hadary decision was frankly a disgrace. The transfer was agreed upon and ratified by FIFA and the local associations only for Al-Ahly to attempt to back out and complain after intense fan pressure. The transfer ban ruling itself was delayed and ambiguous. That aside the players in question were officially registered and accepted by both the Swiss FA and UEFA. That is the fundamental point here. The player were deemed eligible. It is FIFA who is trying to strong-arm a decision through in a bid to retain its autonomous jurisdiction despite the fact that it opposes civil law. In short it is a big ********ing mess that FIFA have created for themselves and Sion are the scapegoat. I would also wager that had there been any other club involved bar Celtic then things would be different. Celtic and their conspiracy hungry owners, lawyers and fans are pretty much the worst situation for FIFA who would rather this was dealt with quietly and in their favour. This is a situation that has been brewing for quite a while with regard to autonomous jurisdiction versus civil law. It is also not a battle FIFA can win. Considering UEFA deemed the players eligible originally I fail to see how a Sion appeal can fail if UEFA are objective. Regardless this situation is far from over which is exactly what FIFA do not want.
Sion had a 2 window transfer ban slapped on them which means they weren't eligible to sign any players until after February 1st 2012. A Swiss court ruled that the embargo was an infringement on civil rights. Can you please link me to the post you have where FIFA, world footballs governing body, agreed with this. The Swiss court does not rule over World football as far as I am aware. Perhaps you know different. (you usually think you do...) As for this, well, it's a giggle. It's also a bit of a snoozefest as well. Worth a yawn. Maybe we could call it a yiggle. Or in other words, complete bunkum (thank you James Sanderson, I haven't used that word for so long).
Ouch! As for the decision to reinstate Celtic, I don't disagree with it in principle, but surely UEFA should have been aware that these players were ineligible prior to the tie taking place?
I agree. It should never have been allowed to get this far. But UEFA went for the easy option (or so they thought) of looking for Celtic to knock Sion out over two legs. More fool them...
has FUFU perhaps done scottish football a perverse disservice by shortcircuiting the brutal but perhaps salutary electroshock of being humbled by those eternal football powerhouses sloverland and switzenia? nah... carry on!
Ostensibly, they've done us a favour. But the reality is that Celtic will be very, very lucky to finish third in that group, so yes, it could be argued that this will only serve to perpetuate Scotland's continual plummet down the co-efficient rankings. And yes, I realise Rangers would do no better in that group.