What the Hell is wrong with those of a Sevco persuasion? They really do believe that if something isn’t working for them that everyone else should suffer. Can’t beat your rivals? Moan about financial disparity and how “unhealthy” it is for the game, just as people are trying to negotiate a new TV deal. Don’t like rival fans lording it up in your ground? Ditch all prior agreements and ban them from the stand they used to have. Rules not to your liking? Ignore them.
Or demand that they be changed. Which brings us to Alex McLeish.
He is demanding that FIFA change the rules on international call-offs for teams playing friendlies. Right now, national teams can try to force clubs to release players and can sanction them if they don’t, but only if they are taking part in, or about to take part in, competitive games.
McLeish thinks he should be allowed to do that for games which serve no purpose at all.
These are rules that serve other national coaches very well. These are rules that club bosses are perfectly happy with. These are rules that have served the game a long time, and were thought through long before he was embarrassingly re-selected as Scotland’s National Coach.
It’s the sense of entitlement that kills me, you know. It’s so Sevco. It’s so beating heart of Ibrox. It’s that club’s central characteristic and McLeish wears it so well.
“That’s where I would question FIFA,” he said, when asked about Mexico and Peru’s ability to force their clubs to release their players. “If every game is bona fide for sides going to the World Cup, why is it not the same for the warm-up acts – and we are essentially the warm up acts – where you can actually enforce a call up?”
And which players, and clubs, would he have forced to play ball I wonder?
““I want a relationship with the clubs, I don’t want to go down the road where we don’t have a decent level of communication,” he said.
Funny that Peter Lawwell actually criticised the SFA’s complete and utter lack of consultation and communication on this very subject. McLeish wants to talk only to those it suits him to talk to. Celtic were treated with utter disregard by the SFA on the issue of this game. No wonder we pulled out every player of note, and we shouldn’t have sent anyone.
He then makes a comparison which is either wilfully deceitful or shockingly uninformed.
““I spoke to Johnny Russell’s gaffer at Sporting Kansas City, for example, and he was absolutely tremendous. There is a brilliant relationship on going there and Johnny is desperate to play for Scotland.”
Sporting Kansas City, like all MLS clubs, are deep into their season. They have games all the way through next month and into July. Their players are not all coming off the back of a full season, which in our case means some of our players have taken part in more than 60 matches. This is disingenuous nonsense from McLeish.
This whole trip is a farce. It’s not the call-offs which are a joke, it’s that these ridiculous and meaningless matches are taking place to begin with. And the blame for that doesn’t lie with the clubs or the players who have turned them down. It lies squarely with the people who decided to schedule them, and that was McLeish’s own bosses, the people who hired him in the first place. The geniuses at the SFA who gave no thought whatsoever to how it would impact on players who were coming off of a dreadfully long campaign.
What the Hell is this all about anyway? It’s about squandering Scottish football’s money on a junket, and that’s the long and short of it. McLeish will learn exactly nothing about the bulk of his team on this trip and he was never going to. It’s about Scotland officials and coaches swanning about like we’re a team with serious business to attend to.
McLeish tried to use that as the selling point for the players.
““It is a once in a lifetime experience, even for me at the age of 59. I have travelled the whole world before, but I still love it – you have to love it. That’s what they have to do as well.”
What a joke. He wants FIFA to change the rules so he can force players to ditch their family holiday plans and their summer time off so they can … go on a jolly and make him feel better about the job he has in front of him.
And he wonders why so many of us view his appointment with such open contempt.