'Scottish National Team' thread

[Big Physical Acey]

[Winston Churchill]

Jockland fc

[BoJack Horseman]

The man with no surname

[Shteve]

Progressive, what's progressive?

[Jeff Resnick]

John Hughes applies for the Scotland job:

http://www.deadlinenews.co.uk/2018/02/05...tland-boss



Seems Steve Clarke is definitely on the shortlist.

[The Comedian]

Can't wit until the Kilmarnock manager knocks back the Scotland job.

[Sarkozabal]

Walter Smith or Yogi Hughes

[Mr A]

Supporting the national team is grim at the best of times but supporting a team that is managed by a man who chases his players around the dressing room whipping their buttocks with wet towels

[Del-icious]

I wonder if there's a reluctance to approah foreign managers or we're just so much of a shit show no one is interested in managing us?

[Jeff Resnick]

I wonder if there's a reluctance to approah foreign managers or we're just so much of a shit show no one is interested in managing us?

Probably a bit of both. They wont stump up the cash for a half decent manager and the Hamish McWeeBaws, in the support, would give them a great deal of earache for it. I cant see too many foreign bosses jumping at the job when they cant decide on where to play games, don't have a CEO and have a media ready and willing to stick the knife in.

[The Comedian]

I wonder if there's a reluctance to approah foreign managers or we're just so much of a shit show no one is interested in managing us?

[Herman Boyce]

Absolutely shocked to hear the blazers that run the SFA won't look at a foreign manager because Vogts wasn't a huge success 16 years ago


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[The Comedian]

Absolutely shocked to hear the blazers that run the SFA won't look at a foreign manager because Vogts wasn't a huge success 16 years ago


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Bertie got to a playoff, something the Jocks haven't managed since.

[Half Time Guest]

Vogts also did it with what could easily be argued was a much worse Scotland side than the players at disposal these days.

Checking the line up from the Holland play off game in 2004 our team had Rab Douglas, Jackie McNamara, Snakey, Lee Wilkie and Paul Dickov.  Quite incredible what Vogts achieved really.

[Array]

For all the problems of Vogts reign, he gave everyone who'd ever eaten a haggis supper a game. (He had to, the existing players couldn't play on the days they went to collect their pensions). And it meant that his successors inherited some young players who had up to 20+ caps worth of international experience.

[Roger H. Sterling]

Can't wit until the Kilmarnock manager knocks back the Scotland job.

Isn't the only reason Clarke is at Kilmarnock because it's his boyhood team? Can see why he'd want to stay there and keep doing well for a bit longer.

I wonder if there's a reluctance to approah foreign managers or we're just so much of a shit show no one is interested in managing us?

I don't really agree with foreign managers managing the national side tbh. Happy we're looking at gid oanest scots.

[shaun.lawson]

I don't really agree with foreign managers managing the national side tbh. Happy we're looking at gid oanest scots.

When Capello declared his interest in managing England - which he'd mentioned previously too - i8hibsh demanded to know why. Why would this highly successful manager who'd won everything in the club game want to manage England? The only answer could be money.

And the thing is, i8hibsh was right. Capello, like Eriksson, was a mercenary. And when a mercenary manages a national team... how do they galvanise their players in times of difficulty? How do they feel it? They can't - and the players notice. The worst thing that can happen to the manager is they swan off to another lucrative gig and get a massive pay-off, leaving the players to get it in the neck from press and public. It's not a recipe for unity or success.

Of course, it's true that Guus Hiddink succeeded with Korea and Australia, Ernst Happel with Holland, Sepp Piontek with Denmark, Jack Charlton with Ireland and most of all, Otto Rehhagel with Greece... but the pattern here (Happel excepted) is it generally only works when football has no real popular roots in the country before the manager comes in. That's not the case in Scotland. Even in the US, where football's still only the fifth biggest team sport, the sporting public never really took to Klinsmann: fair enough too, given he only seemed to want the job because of the lifestyle it offered.

[Array]

Isn't 'the manager is mercenary and the players know it' true at club level too? Managers move around an manage teams that pay them, they don't have a list of 'soft spot' clubs that they'll consider. Guardiola at Man City, Merinho at Man U, Klopp at Liverpool - they're not boyhood clubs yet they're achieving to expectation or beyond. Why do you see that as different?

[shaun.lawson]

Isn't 'the manager is mercenary and the players know it' true at club level too?  Managers move around an manage teams that pay them, they don't have a list of 'soft spot' clubs that they'll consider.  Guardiola at Man City, Merinho at Man U, Klopp at Liverpool - they're not boyhood clubs yet they're achieving to expectation or beyond. Why do you see that as different?

Because it is. I've seen plenty of club sides - where many players are mercenaries too, of course - win things despite all sorts of cliques, egos etc. At international level, if a squad doesn't subvert its egos in the name of the collective, it almost always goes very wrong.

Hence Holland, for example, collapsing in a heap at Euro 96 despite having almost the entire Ajax side. Or France descending into absolute chaos in South Africa. There's a much greater media focus on national sides during major tournaments than any club sides at any point. The tiniest issue will be pounced on and blown up by most national media.

Conversely: remember Ronaldo exhorting his teammates from the touchline during the Euro 2016 final, practically to the point of becoming joint manager? It's different. Passion, unity, "dying for your country" all become a lot more important.  

Or to put it another way, as Gareth Southgate memorably put it about Eriksson at half time against Brazil in 2002: "We needed Winston Churchill. We got Iain Duncan Smith".

[Sarkozabal]

Isn't 'the manager is mercenary and the players know it' true at club level too? Managers move around an manage teams that pay them, they don't have a list of 'soft spot' clubs that they'll consider. Guardiola at Man City, Merinho at Man U, Klopp at Liverpool - they're not boyhood clubs yet they're achieving to expectation or beyond. Why do you see that as different?

Not sure if I fully agree with Lawson, but presumably the difference would be that at club level they're all mercenaries whereas at international level only the manager is there because he's paid to be?