Andy’s Sting In The Tale (29/11/24) “Finland Are No Mugs”
Date: 29th November 2024
(Photo:@Homesoffootball)
That’s what Erin said before the match and she was right.
Our women’s team are ranked 23 and our Finnish opponents come in at 26 and they’ve hurt us before.
They were well coached, disciplined and we had no space with their immediate high press.
It’s all on the second leg now and we have won there as recently as last summer but we have to start as underdogs, just.
The prize of a place in next year’s Euros is huge for both camps.
And well done the SFA for making the game free for all kids.
What a thrill for them all.
This week the
Round Table, that’s actually Rectangular and lots of wee tables, meets again.
It is Scottish Football’s initial move in response to our 2-year review and paper, and MSP Ben MacPherson’s very intense and passionate debate about the imminent Football Regulator for Football in England, where the Premier League clearly thinks it exists in isolation and is above stuff like that.
There is now an expanding gulf between the top and the rest of their pyramid and the sad fact is the top clubs don’t care.
I
’m allright Jack and all that. We should get Carole Baxter from Beechgrove to tell the clubs who think they are better than their erstwhile equals about the importance of roots in any plant or tree that you want to bear fruit long term.
I find it disturbing that the clubs who came from below and have clung on to their new status soon go native and forget where they came from.
Anyway the Scottish Football round table chaired by Sports Minister Maree Todd had a good first meeting and I think can evolve into a good -faith ‘Think Tank’ for the good of any aspect of the game.
Off course that depends on the attendees and whether they want to make it work or not.
At the last meeting I said that we have to think long-term, see way beyond, and ditch the cancer of self-interest and short termism that seeps in and totally dominates football. Furthermore I said if we don’t collaborate for change then we’ll be judged very badly.
I also said I wish this kind of initiative had been initiated 40 years ago by Willie Allan or Ernie Walker, we’d be toasting their thinking today.
Our game would never have let grass roots fall away the way it has, we wouldn’t accept the socio-religious nonsense that currently dominates one particular local rivalry but spills out to all grounds, and Scotland would still be a hotbed of emerging talent.
Also a hard fact that never really gets talked about is we’re just not producing enough youngsters and certainly not enough at the very top end suggesting that what we’re doing is not fit for purpose.
Pedro and Steve are both doing great jobs with our national teams and have some great players but we all know we need more and better now and into the future.
Believe it or not that starts at local parks, and Schools with parents volunteering.
All football and all footballers start at the very bottom.
Andy’s Sting in the Tale
1. The Transparency Illusion
2. Coefficient Rating
3. The Heat Will be On
4. Outrage Growing About Infantino
5. Norn Irn Dropped by Westminster
6. Conor Bradley’s Tackle
7. Do Callum or James Have the Balls?
1. Football Fans Want Transparency
Of course we do.
But what would it/does transparency actually mean?
There is no such thing as full transparency anywhere.
I guess what people want is trust and ‘without fear or favour’ decision making. And that those in power tell us openly what they are doing, why they are doing it and don’t allow self-interest to go off the scale in a club run structure.
Trust is accompanied by three more words. Honesty, integrity and openness.
If pushed, Scottish football fans want these 4 words throughout the game and some big picture thinking and then to move on and leave it to them (whoever them are) to get on with only an occasional interaction usually when there is a problem caused by bad judgement or communication.
Most fans are simply concerned about who their club is about to sign, or sell, or like me who the new owners might be.
I’d have preferred my club ICT to consider fan ownership, (fan owned not fan run) but that won’t happen and they didn’t ask me anyway. Most fans are aware also of our peculiar voting structure where the reality is only 2 votes count. A fundamental stranglehold that exists when votes about anything important are called in our top league.
I’m buggered if I know how what we currently have, with 2 votes being more equal than the rest, fits in with honesty, integrity, openness and trust? To me it simply says it’s self-interest, hiding in plain sight behind quasi democracy that fools nobody.
2. Wonderful, Good and So Near
The good results in Europe from all three clubs have lifted our coefficient from 17 up to 13.
Rangers deserve real credit for an amazing result in France against a team currently 5th in a better league that ours.
A week ago they were baying for Clements departure and now he has bought time.
I have been told the key issue is his copper-bottomed contract.
Anyway a wonderful result.
Celtic gave away the daftest own goal I’ve ever seen but came back well against a very good team and if Hearts hadn’t skied their penalty at 1-0 down then they’d have come with a point.
I think all 3 will progress and that can do no harm to lifting our coefficient further.
3. Playing football in 49 Degree Heat
There are already warnings about extreme June heat in the USA/Canada/ Mexico World Cup with Dallas, Houston and Monterrey in Mexico listed as the riskiest venues.
One report suggested that the temps might rise to 49C .
My son lives in Monterrey and when we’ve been there in the summer it is just too hot and clammy to do anything outside. Sometimes Fifa make really dumb decisions about venues and don’t think about the players or the fans.
4. What Do We Know About Infantino?
When Gazprom get dropped because of Putin’s land grab and war in Ukraine he got Aramco the Saudi state-owned oil company to step in.
He likes to get his way and obviously likes to trade like his golfing buddy, The Donald.
And he duly delivered a World Cup to his bestest pals at the time, Russia, then to his new bestest pals, Qatar who gave him a house, allegedly, and is about to give his new sponsorship leads and bestest pals Saudi, their very own World Cup.
Sports washing at the highest level that exists.
Fifa is inherently corrupt and all that matters is money.
But this week there has been some political pushback from both sides of the Atlantic.
Two Danish MSPs angered by Infantino’s Machiavellian plan to declare Saudi hosts for 2034, with no open vote, suggest that the European countries combine and boycott everything to do with Fifa.
Three US senators are also asking why there is not an open vote?
And Amnesty International are stating “no confidence that the run up and building phase will be any different to the appalling creation of the stadia for Qatar”.
This week Fifa also announced, with pride, a £50M Qatar Legacy Fund.
Amnesty reacted and said “It is shameful that Fifa and Qatar have launched their long awaited Legacy Fund without any recognition of their clear responsibility to the migrant workers who were exploited and in some cases ended in death to make the world cup in Qatar possible”.
5. Casement Park Refurb Dropped
I was sad to read that Westminster having agreed to a package to help the Northern Ireland FA to upgrade Casement Park into an international stadium to be proud of.
Anyway they have walked away because of escalating costs and I guess lack of genuine commitment to the province.
It means Northern Ireland are no longer joint hosts and will have no back-door route into Euros finals.
6. The Disrespect of Youth
Conor Bradley the young Liverpool right back was a star the other night.
I particularly loved the full-length slide tackle winning the ball and sending football ‘royalty’ Killian Mbappé flying.
No wonder the Kop went wild.
7. When Will the Players Wake Up and Rise Up?
I find it incredible that decent guys run around with logos on their shirt for products that damage their fans.
Even worse our leagues are now sponsored by a betting firm because they offered the most money.
These companies are a world away from the bookies I remember as a boy.
Today they are sophisticated, algorithm-driven monsters who use football to recruit new users and to quasi legitimise their industry.
Money is all they understand and they make the tobacco-lobby deniers from the 50s to the 90s look like amateurs.
When will Callum, James, the PFA and other decent folks not say enough is enough and refuse to wear the tawdry logos on their shirts.
None of our top footballers want to harm their fans but they are part of an equation that does.
That’s it for another week.
Feedback and wee stories always welcome.
Andy’s Album of the week
I first came across the concept of Neil Young, I guess, in 1970 when the Woodstock film was released and I went with my sister to our local Playhouse.
The band was announced by Charlie or Chuck the MC as Crosby Stills Nash and Young, but there was no Young on stage.
He seemingly felt the filming and the heavy-handed recording process would get in the way of the ‘authenticity’ of the band’s performance.
He did relent a little and perform two songs later as a duet with Stephen Stills and was announced as ‘The Buffalo Springfield’ which was a previous band they had been part of but it never made the album or film.
Talking about the film with one of my pal’s grown-up big brothers, he didn’t know about the Neil Young story but told me he had a Neil Young Album,‘Everyone Knows This is Nowhere’ backed by his band called Crazy Horse.
We agreed a week-long trade with me supplying ‘Deep Purple’.
I got the better of the deal. I loved it. And when his next album, ‘After the Goldrush’ came out later in 1970 and got rave reviews in the NME I washed half a dozen cars and headed for the Record Rendezvous that Saturday afternoon and still remember the excitement of the first play on my Fidelity stereo.
I still play it today, the album, not the stereo.
I now have quite a few of his albums but Neil’s natural ‘High Tenor’ voice works beautifully on the stripped back acoustic set that is ‘Unplugged’.
In many ways it is a sampler of the man and his output from 1970 to 1990.
Stand out tracks are Pocahontas, Like a Hurricane, Helpless, Harvest Moon, From Hank to Hendrix and the pick of them all, Long May You Run.
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