STOP THE WORLD - WE WANT TO GET BACK ON

THE World Cup Final will be played in South Africa tomorrow night and naturally a lot of Scottish football fans will be watching. We will decide which team to support before hand, because in Scottish eyes, watching a game without some emotional involvement is a wee bit like kissing your sister (ok in Auchinleck or Cardenden, frowned upon elsewhere).

But, we ought to be more-interested in tonight's Third Place Play-Off, between Germany and Uruguay. This is the classic Scottish match: a wee nation with a proud football heritage but emerging from years in the shadows, taking on a genuine big football power. It's Scotland v England, a team in blue against a team in white, only this white-shirted "England" can play a bit.

How come Uruguay - a nation even smaller than Scotland, can reach the last four in the world, while we couldn't even get second place in a qualifying group of diddy teams?

I wish I knew the answer, not that it would do me much good; the SFA has never taken kindly to people with the answers; perhaps they heighten the "blazers" deeply-hidden fear of being found-out.

What I do know is, Scotland's sense of football self-worth has never, not even in the aftermath of Argentina '78 been so low. Craig Levein offers hope, but we're still in a Scottish state which has existed since Burns watched Queen of the South every week: "Forward tho we canna see, we guess and fear".

Motherwell, with an early call to European arms will play Ayr United this afternoon. Hibs too are in the process of warming-up for their Europa League trials, while Rangers, still unable to even shop in football's equivalent of Poundstretcher, and Celtic, resolutely refusing to promote young players if they can buy over-rated or over-the-hill players from outwith Scotland, are also flexing their muscles prior to costly and probably pointless foreign trips as their pre-season preparations.

I fear for our future. The Big Two - indeed the Top 12, the SPL clubs, don't seem willing to embrace that auld Scots trait: the Presbyterian work ethic. Scottish players, unable to trap a bag of cement, have marvelled at the touch and control of the Spanish and Dutch midfielders. They've maybe noticed how Xavi, Iniesta, Robben and Van Persie can thread a pass through the eye of a needle - while the average Scots player who can play the ball to the feet of a team mate five yards away is guaranteed a burst of applause from his audience, stunned at the skill shown -oh my Baxter and my Murdoch long ago!

Does our 2010 Scottish Superstar ever think: If I practiced I could do that?

Probably not; he's been told since primary that he was a star. He's got the 10 hours per week, well-paid 'job' - kicking a ball around. Why should he put the work in? The saps on the terraces will queue up to buy him drinks; ra burds will fall down before him; he's a big man - until some smooth, tanned, 17-year-old Spaniard comes along to humiliate him - whereupon our Scot can always resort to that ultimate Scottish tranquiliser of the more-talented European: "the Souness" a crunching, knee-high challenge, which leaves the opponent prostrate and screaming.

Did Andy Murray, once he had mastered getting a tennis ball over the net regularly, hang around Dunblane posing? No he went off to Spain, to work eight hours per day, seven days a week, in order to become a world-class star.

Did David Coulthard settle for shunting his father's trucks round the yard in Twynholm? No, he spent every spare minute learning to drive karts, then worked his way up through the various motor racing formulae until, today, he's got the apartment in Monaco, the millionaire life-style. And fine driver though he was, he was never quite top drawer.

Chris Hoy could have settle for being one of many Watsonians to be found in law or finance in Edinburgh; he might even have graduated to a job in the City of London. But, he got on his bike, moved to Manchester and developed a work ethic which has made him a World and Olympic Champion and a household name.

Where are our footballers of that class and with that determination? Where are the successors to Baxter, Law, Dalglish, Johnstone, Souness and Co? It's 24 years since King Kenny abdicated, long past time for another Great Scot to arise.

Where will be come from? The system isn't there to help him develop. Scottish football is going backwards at a rate of knots. In my life time Scotland has gone from being the eighth-best team in Europe, prior to the 1950 World Cup, to the 27th-best prior to 2010.

How much further will we sink before we get our act together and get back to being good. Uruguay have done it - why cannot Scotland.