JIMMY, one of my readers who comes on here regularly to assure me I'm talking shite, yesterday cast doubts on the concept of "entertainment" in Scottish football. I can see where he's coming from; one of the reasons behind the SFA's hands off approach to Olympic Games football is this - the Olympian ethos of "the glory is not in winning but in having taken part" is outwith the reasoning of any Scot.
We don't play to take part, we play to win. And this Caledonian attitude might well mitigate against making Scottish football entertaining.
Maybe it's a throwback to the age of the clans, but Scottish football gets its energy from winning local derbies. Be it Scotland v England, Rangers v Celtic, Hearts v Hibs, Auchinleck Talbot v Cumnock, The Red Lion v The Black Horse in the local pub league. Football in Scotland is not Kiplingesque - it matters one hell of a lot whether you won or lost - how you played the game isn't so important.
By common consent, Celtic played what little football there was on show at Celtic Park last Wednesday. But, just supposing Rangers had made their solitary chance count, then held on through half an hour of extra time to win on penalties - would many Rangers fans have turned round and said: "Fucking hell, we got out of jail there; jammy or what"?
No way, they'd have been giving it: "Get it right up youse": LARGE.
We all accept that it's nice to win with flair, style and panache, but, a win by any means is still a win.
Back in 1967 Denis Law wanted to thump the World Champions England at Wembley by as many goals as possible - Jim Baxter wouldn't have it: "Naw, we'll humiliate them 1-0 ken," was his approach, which, given he was a Fifer and had spent longer in his native country, was a much-more Scottish assessment of what to do than that being offered by the more-Anglicised Aberdonian.
Baxter then went out and earned immortality - but, if you were a neutral and had seen, as I have, the English highlights edit, you would think that Scotland had been one jammy lot that never to be forgotten day.
So, how do we encourage entertaining, winning football?
Well we could start by encouraging attacking football. How about doing away with draws? Play every game to a finish, and have declining bonus points according to how well you win. E.g. offer say seven points for a win inside 90 minutes; if the game is all-square play one 15 minute period of extra time under the "silver goal" rule, so if a 2-2 at 90 minutes has become a 3-2 one after 105, the winning team gets say five points, the losers one point.
Still all-square, play a second 15 minute extra time period, but under the "golden goal", rule, or as we called it in the school playground: next goal's the winner. Perhaps a 4-1 points division this time.
Still level, penalty kicks, winning team gets three points, losers two.
We might take a notion from rugby and award bonus points for scoring three or more goals, and losing bonus points for a one goal defeat. It might take a wee while to break through the years of conservative coaches thinking, but, if we made goals count for more, maybe teams would be prepared to go out and go for them.
You never know, it might work.
No comments:
Post a Comment