Dave's random mumblings…

There are two people I know that really care about Craig Levein’s appointment as Scotland manager – my dad and Steve from Prost-Amerika.

Coaching Scotland today is something of a thankless task, there really is no depth or arguably true quality available for selection. After the Bertie Vogts disaster and Walter Smith walking out on the national team the Scottish FA needs some stability and a little hope, Burley was unable to really provide either.

George Burleys team messed up qualifying for South Africa right at the start by loosing the first game to Macedonia, before dropping lots of points to Holland and Norway. Two wins over Iceland are hardly something to be proud of

Additionally his relationship with the players was not what it could have been. Barry Ferguson and goalkeeper Allan McGregor were banned from playing under Burley for an incident after a game against Iceland have both indicated availability for selection now Levein is in charge.

To be fair to the SFA domestic pickings were rather slim (but better than England’s choices for domestic managers recently) David Moys is not moving from Everton, Gordon Strachan committed to Middlesbrough and Walter Smith made it clear that he will be staying at Rangers. That really left Craig Levein and Graeme Souness. The very thought of Souness being involved must have given the gents in blazers flashbacks of the Bertie Vogts “experiment”.

Levein’s philosophy must be simple, win the games one at a time and qualify for Euro 2012. It’s clear that the manager will allow no interference in selection or training from the SFA, that this will be his team and if Levein wants something it had better happen.

Unfortunately with a FIFA ranking in the mid-40’s and no tournaments qualifications for 14 years now the Scotland seeding in the qualifying draw is going make it a tough draw. Should he make it hero status will be all but guaranteed, should he fail the very structure of the Scottish FA and the oft vilified “men in blazers” could go with him.

After the ratification of the Lisbon treaty by the Czech Republic Europe has taken another step towards a United States of Europe by adopting the first EU constitution.

The upshot of this is it’s time for the first so called “European President” to be appointed as the EU becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

I find it rather ironic that it’s the Czechs that were holding up the ratification of the treaty that gives more power to central government, after all it all worked so well when Chamberlin secured peace in our time in 1938 by giving precisely the same country to Germany to stop any further aggression.

The Czech president was looking for guarantees from the rest of the EU that there would be no flood of claims on Czech property from ethnic Germans who were expelled from the former Czech Republic in the aftermath of the Second World War

But I digress, the front runner to become president of this collection of squabbling states with little more than geography and a couple of world wars in common is Tony Blair.

After such impressive performances in his last two jobs as Prime Minister and then as Middle East peace envoy (who visited the Middle East once in two years) his Tonyness seems an interesting choice. The endorsement of a potential President Blair by Gordon Brown (just an incompetent PM or the most incompetent PM?) and Silvio Berlusconi (a man who has also endorsed fraud, immunity from prosecution and heavy hints at tax evasion) really only adds to the growing farce around Blair’s candidacy.

Tony promised the electorate in the UK votes on the Euro and integration, neither of which he delivered.

My favorite quote is from David Miliband who said the EU president needs “Star power” and a “candidate who can stop the traffic in Beijing and Moscow”. No, Europe needs a political leader with ethics, respect and an ability to bring people together. Star power and ego have nothing to do with it.

The Tories have of course been scoring political points like it’s going out of style, but that’s not been difficult recently with Gordon Brown unable to keep his party in line. European spokesman Paul Francois said  “The British people do not like the Lisbon treaty and if it was used to impose Tony Blair as European president without the British people having a say, it would only underline the treaty’s complete lack of democratic legitimacy,”

After the Tory government of the late 80’s and most of the 90’s it would be difficult for the UK to become less pro-European. After all Labour were pro-EU (at least compared to Thatcher), but somehow Blair and Brown have managed it through ignoring both the electorate and the rest of Europe.

In the mid 80s, English football was in deep crisis. For years those in charge of the game and the clubs themselves had invested very little into the game. At the center of all of this were the fans, and being a football fan in 1985 was similar to admitting that you spent Saturday afternoons fighting dogs, it was something to be slightly ashamed of.

Football supporters themselves had an appalling reputation. Some saw fights between home and away supporters as part of the game. Looking back this fight sub-culture had been around for at least a couple of decades, the difference was the media took notice of it and splashed it across the front pages. I recall the Daily Mirror newspaper published a tongue in cheek “English-Spanish phrase book for hooligans” prior to the World Cup in 1982.

It all changed in 1985. On May 11 a wooden stand at Bradford City caught fire and 56 died as a result because of inadequate training of stewards, crown control fencing and locked exit doors. While this tragedy had nothing to do with hooligans, it fitted into the emerging media picture of football grounds as a place of danger. I went to a game at Aldershot the following Saturday and I’ve never experienced an atmosphere quite like it.

Just a couple of weeks later Liverpool and Juventus fans clashed inside the Heisel stadium before the European Cup Final. 39 people were killed and 454 injured, most of them Juventus fans. The subsequent report put the blame primarily on the Liverpool fans, but went on to say the terrible state of the stadium and the inaction of the police had been serious contributing factors to the disaster.

These events along with the media coverage of the hooligan problem gave the government all the moral authority to act to rid the game of what the newspapers named “the English disease”

The government proposed a scheme that required anyone attending a football game would first have to acquire an identity card. This was unprecedented in a country that even today people do not routinely carry any form of picture ID. The Thatcher government assumed there would barely any opposition to their idea from a football fans themselves, a group it regarded as uneducated, apolitical and unorganized.

The game itself was in no to position to argue. Spectator numbers as well as television viewing figures had fallen dramatically during the past few years. The BBC and ITV, had reduced their football coverage and very few investors were willing to put any money at all into the sport.

The renaissance of the sport came from two rather unlikely sources. First the supporters, for possibly the first time there was something that required them to come together to defend the sport. This change was huge and millions of supporters spoke with a single voice.

This single voice was aided by the growing number of football fanzines, Fan produced magazines that could be irreverent, critical about underperforming players, gave real interviews and told it how it is. Realistically maybe a couple of thousand people who spent their Saturdays in the shed end really cared how defender Glen Burvil was still being picked week-in-week out for Aldershot Town (speculation at the time was that he had pictures of manager Len Walker with a couple of sheep), but there was photocopied fanzine for us to disagree with.

Today fanzines have largely gone from the game with one notable exception, When Saturday Comes. WSC still has some of the edgy, irreverent coverage of the game, but it also has consistently good writing and a great understanding of the world game at all levels. For fans of the game it’s well worth the money for a subscription (www.wsc.co.uk).

The second (and even more unlikely place) was Rupert Murdoch and his fledgling satellite broadcasting company, Sky. Rupert Murdoch was one of the three or four media tycoons that controlled the newspapers in the UK and one of his papers, The Sun, were probably the most vocal critic of the fan and supported the introduction of ID cards.

Murdoch satellite channels needed something that would get people to buy dishes and subscribe to premium channels. Sky successfully went after football and signed lucrative deals to show live games on Friday night and Sunday afternoon. Sky put money into the game, a lot of money. The premier league was formed and 15 years later it was by far the richest league in the world.

In ’95 the European Court of Justice ruled that Standard Liege, the Belgium FA and UEFA had broken all sorts of EU employment rules when they refused to allow jouneyman player Jean-Marc Bosman to move to French club Dunkerque after his contract has expired.

However Liege did not like the transfer fee Dunkerque offered and said no to the move. At this time (1990) players out of contract that took a transferred to another federation the clubs involved had to agree a fee.

Bosman was forced to rejoin Liege, however he was no longer a first team player and took a significant salary cut. Bozman filed his case, and the rest is history.

The Bosman ruling created a single marker place for European footballers. It meant that any player that was a citizen of a European Union country could move to any other club in the EU with no compensation owed to the club that lost the player.

In some countries (notably England, Scotland Germany, Portugal and Holland) transfers of out of contract players was restricted. In the UK there was an independent transfer tribunal that would decide how much compensation a club should receive for loosing out of contract player.

The doomsayers said that this was the end of he smaller clubs that rely on transfer fees generated by their selling promising players to the bigger clubs to stay in business.

A second effect was ending quotas set by leagues for a certain number of home players to start games. In European competition for example only three foreign players were allowed to play. After Bosman the rule was changed to three non-EU players and the big clubs took full advantage of this.

In the 2003-2004 season Chelsea fielded a team with not a single British born player in it.

The economics of the game has shifted, a few clubs have gone under and many more have altered their structure to live with in their means, but the wholesale carnage never happened.

Today the FIFA and UEFA are trying to get a quota of a sort set up, requiring six players eligible to play for the national side of the home country. They want this (known as 6+5) to apply to all clubs worldwide, not just within UEFA.

Fairness, reducing cost, developing youth players and national identity are all given as reasons this needs to happen. The EU has said it’s illegal and violates the Bosman ruling, other NGOs have said maybe it can be implemented.

Chelsea and Real Madrid have both made it clear they are willing to take it to the European Courts if needed to keep any type of quota system from happening.

Football (the round ball version) seems to have a couple of major hurdles left to overcome to really become a mainstream sport in the US.

First, attract the top level athletes early and have them stick with the game.

From limited my experience the US youth development system seems to be aimed at preparing players for college. By the time a player has a couple of years of college it’s too late, very few clubs will invest the effort to develop 20 year old players.

There are a few good players that come out the college system, but generally they look unprepared for the professional leagues. I think the key is to create a real academy system tied to the club sides, identify the really talented players at 14 to 16 years old and give them the intense quality training that only a professional setup can.

The US has a few potentially world class players, Howard, Adu, Altidore and Johnson come to mind. I believe Altidore, who is only 19, may have the potential to be the best player yet to come through the US youth system.

Howard was spectacular against Spain the Confederation Cup semi, probably the best performance in a team that overall had a great game. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the four players I names all play in Europe, and maybe more importantly most moved there early in their professional career.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, promote the game and create more of a demand for the game from the public.
While there are some MLS success stories (Sounders rather spectacularly leading the way, Toronto FC, LA and one or two others), there are some other teams playing some good football but drawing less than 7 or 8,000.

A win in the Confederation cup could have helped in really establishing the beautiful game in the minds of US sports fans. A win over one of the strongest football nations (and probably the biggest “name” in the game) would have increased the momentum from the stunning win over Spain.

Don Garber (MLS commissioner) Said “We’ve always believed we deserved more respect than we receive, in sports you’ve got to earn respect, you can’t just ask for it, and the US (and by extension the MLS) earned some respect this past week.

Europe has always looked down a little on US football, despite being 14th in the current FIFA ranking and consistent qualification for the World Cup (something my England can’t always claim) drawing the US is always thought of as a relatively easy game by European fans. I think the win over Spain and taking the game to Brazil will cause more people to take the US national team, and by association the MLS a little more seriously in the future.

Garber followed up by adding “Today we proved that we can compete at the highest level, for 45 minutes, we had one of the best teams in the world shocked and on their heels.”

That’s true, but the question to Mr Garber needs to be what are you going to do with that success and growing respect to make a difference to the game in the US?