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Date: 4th September 2023
What does Europe even matter?
Celtic, Rangers and Aberdeen shall fly the flag for Scottish football in the European league table stakes. It’s apparently important for our co-efficient. Hearts fell short, as did Hibs, who came up against an Aston Villa side that were simply rampant. If there ever was a demonstration of the gulf between England and Scotland both legs gave us that in HD.
With more drop down menus than a complex accountancy spreadsheet, Rangers and Aberdeen dropped into the next level and got a league to take them beyond Christmas and European games under the flood lights which shall keep their faithful happy enough once they arrive.
But it was a tough week for Scottish football. Hearts are talking of their domestic form and trying to find a positive spin. Hibs have changed their manager to try and rescue their season already and the transfer window is shut.
Rangers, humbled by PSV Eindhoven, also spoke of their big domestic campaign and the next game they were to face was a Sunday midday Auld Firm.
As Michael Beale is left to pick the bones out of the events in Holland, the rest of us, with no team in the game in Europe are left wondering what it must feel like to be humbled by better and richer clubs…
But then again, if you support any club not in the top two in Scotland it can be a very familiar feeling as you try and get some respite on an occasional basis. This comes when you “play above yourselves” or your opponents “have an off day” or “play below their usual standard” against one of the “also-rans”.
With Celtic out of the League Cup, the opportunity for a Hearts or an Aberdeen to make the final to decide whether Michael Beale gets another year as Rangers boss feels almost too predictable to say out loud.
Nostalgia, being a national obsession, means we look back to the eighties to see that Aberdeen and Dundee United with Ferguson and McLean were the last to challenge the status quo. Some of us remember only too well the panic that set in, in Glasgow, that the usual rules of Scottish football were going to be usurped. Hearts even gave a good account of themselves for a few seasons and came close to challenging whilst Aberdeen flattered to deceive.
What fans of the Auld Firm suffer from in Europe, their runs towards Europa/UEFA glory aside, is what we have on a weekly basis. We sit and watch both Celtic and Rangers rule the roost because of their financial clout. Even when they have a biscuit tin mentality or are run by men of dubious financial clout, they still manage to knock out the wins, run up the league titles on their flag poles and make the rest of us envious at what they are able to achieve.
If Europe teaches them one thing, it is that their domestic clout is inferior to those in Europe who have bigger TV deals and coverage, a more competitive league and do not suffer from the lack of games around them which test them.
Now, I know that with Bayern in Germany, PSG in France, Real Madrid and Barcelona in Spain and Juventud in Italy, it could be claimed that their leagues – and a few others – Croatia for example – are all similar to the Scottish leagues – dominated by one or two teams. Even the Premier League in England appears to allow Manchester City in permanent residence at the top, but Rangers and Celtic are facing and losing to teams from other leagues.
We should be looking at how they lose and trying to replicate that in our other teams to build some competitiveness into our domestic leagues. It is through that which Europe could teach us a hell of a lot more than how to bring up our co-efficient. Having European experience for the likes of Aberdeen shall develop a decent side, they hope, capable of challenging for some form of honours – we hope. It makes our league that much more competitive, exciting to watch and, more importantly, sellable to sponsors and TV partners who are obsessed with the Celtic/Rangers rivalry.
And so, Europe is important, not just for the Excel software that works out the co-efficient, but for the development of our game. We need to study it and learn from it – and that means when head coach Frankie McAvoy says they should not dwell on their losses, he is wrong. They should make sure they sort out why it is that they have to be better, bigger and improved by it, by studying it intensely.
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