Last night, Scotland played in a bewildering, low-impact, shocker against Canada at Easter Road, the sort of game that puts fans off going to games on cold Wednesday nights for life. There was no merit to that match taking place; nearly every player in the Scotland squad is fit enough to have gone right in to the competitive match at the weekend, and not one doesn’t know already how Gordon Strachan likes to line up his teams.
Nothing was gained from last night. Nothing whatsoever was learned, except that this “second string” outfit are just as capable of heaping dishonour on the famous blue shirt as those members of the first eleven who are past their best or were never up to it in the first place.
If this really is the best overall group of players that the country has to offer the national team is in more trouble than we ever thought possible.
Chris Martin has seen a lot of the ire directed at him; his inclusion is ridiculous, especially coming ahead of Leigh Griffiths who is being kept out of the Celtic team only because Dembele has proved so effective in this campaign. Griffiths is not a bad player by virtue of that fact. Strachan’s failure to start him instead of a player very much his inferior is only one of the reasons the Scotland fans are frustrated to the point of rebellion.
I can’t say I understand Strachan’s decision on him, any more than I can understand his decision not to start Stuart Armstrong, but those decisions can be argued with all day and night, mostly because Griffiths isn’t playing every week and Armstrong is a relative newbie in the national team.
Excuses, and poor ones, but an argument could be fashioned out of them.
But Lee Wallace’s inclusion is another matter entirely, a screw-up on a much greater order of magnitude, and one that insults every player in a similar position, and who can claim as much as a Scottish auntie three times removed. It’s a joke that this guy is in the team, a joke of the unfunniest sort.
There can be no defence for it at all. Wallace is never an international footballer in his life; his place in this squad is a symptom of Strachan’s pandering to the Sevconite media who called for it. There is no other reason to find him in the team.
He is a concession to the “Old Firm” promoters who seem to insist that any player based in Glasgow should be automatically considered. If the squad was strong, that would hardly raise eyebrows; it’s been going on a long time, as scandalous as it is.
But Strachan’s team is incredibly weak and incredibly poor.
Chucking this guy in as a sop to Sevco is to risk his job and our national credibility. Strachan may be willing to play with his own future to accommodate that, but he has no business subjecting the rest of us to this humiliating plummet of standards and pride in its name.
If fans were polled on his future right now he’d be in deadly peril.
If this were in defference to Strachan’s own stubborn streak – this is guy who will not admit he’s wrong until way past the point where the damage has been done – that would be one thing; but even he knows that this is a ridiculous move. He resisted media pressure for months before he gave Wallace a national call-up. The player has featured in almost every squad since, with no justification whatsoever except that he captains the Ibrox club.
I don’t believe Wallace was ever that great a footballer. Sevco fans know he’s not. Their frequent criticisms of him are well established matters of record. But their anger towards him is tempered by one thing that blinds them to his many flaws; he was one of the few who, as they see it, “stuck with them” on their journey through the leagues. When the chance came to leave Ibrox with the liquidation of Rangers he stayed and signed for Sevco.
If you were being generous to him you could say this was a show of impressive loyalty to the concept and to the fans. If you were being honest, you’d look at the limited options open to him and conclude that he was never likely to get as good a deal anywhere else, and stayed out of expediency and financial self-interest. It was a calculated move, because as club captain and Mr Dependable he was able to command a salary far in excess of his talent.
Wallace may have started out a player with some promise, but that long ago ceased to matter because of that decision he made. He spent four years playing in the lower leagues of Scotland, at a time when his development as a player depended on a better standard of opposition.
It is ludicrous to pretend he didn’t go backwards during that time; Lionel Messi himself would have stagnated in such conditions.
Wallace’s best is miles behind him.
His continued selection – ahead of guys like Tierney, Robertson, Shinnie and others – has become a defining feature of Strachan’s tenure, like a long running joke.
If it were merely at his own expense that might even be funny.
But increasingly, Scottish fans feel like it’s a joke at ours as well.
This is no longer a laughing matter.
