Belgium are ranked number 1 in the world. Why are Scotland so far behind??

Belgium have a population of around 11 million, we have a population of about half of that. They have a team littered with world class players, we have one player that could possibly be classed in that bracket in Robertson. Why the difference? What are they doing right that we aren’t? Is it down to drink and drugs culture? Poverty? Lack of facilities?

No GEODGC not at all,
'drink and drugs' I mean wtf dude, nor poverty nor that of facilities (?) !

When all 'The Greats' of Scottish football ... were all doing real well and beating most KNOWN European sides and beyond, there were NO 'FACILITIES' as we have these days.
Today unlike yesteryear kids used to, for the most part be playing football after school time unlike now, today's kids are all hooked upon video games.
Today, like it or lump it, our children have it ALL TOO EASY.

Other countries not so and as a RESULT have today, far more HUNGRY kids all wanting to be THE BEST!

...... and yet tonight we had four very Ordinary defenders, crap really if the Truth was to be Told, Two FB's from killie alongside Mulgrew and the young OAF that is mckenna, only lost the Three Goals to The Bestest Team In The World............ WOW !

The Scots manager has only even been working WITH this lot of players for what then......... ten days or so. AMAZING !
 
See all the folk blaming PS4's and XBox's... you do realise they have them in Belgium, England, Italy & Holland too right? Absolutely nothing to do with it.

Perhaps but I’d be interested to see s survey for number of hours kids in those country’s play consoles compared to number in Scotland. And then compare to number of hours they play football and see if comparisons can be made.
 
Scottish football has hated itself to death we hate them they all hate us also when you dance to the bheasts tune it usually ends up rotten too the very core for a country that lives for football we are mile miles behind another example of this can be found in Bulgaria where corruption at club level has destroyed a once good footballing national team
 
See all the folk blaming PS4's and XBox's... you do realise they have them in Belgium, England, Italy & Holland too right? Absolutely nothing to do with it.

Total Rubbish!
Today in this UK kiddies are NOT out there trying to bust a gut to be able to Make it into whatever club side, not a chance. Most kids including my own love computer type games and have no real interest in as said, busting their gut to be able to make their way in football, the HUNGER is not there, unlike in other countries ?
Such as is today's society I am afraid.
 
Look at our governing body, our refereeing standard, our top league and the shite within it it, and the coaching staff outwith Rangers.

That’ll answer your question.

Beale is easily the most intelligent footballing brain in Scotland, yet, he will never be asked to assist or support with anything outwith Rangers due to the 19th Century Terroristism that has ruined Scotland.
 
No GEODGC not at all,
'drink and drugs' I mean wtf dude, nor poverty nor that of facilities (?) !

When all 'The Greats' of Scottish football ... were all doing real well and beating most KNOWN European sides and beyond, there were NO 'FACILITIES' as we have these days.
Today unlike yesteryear kids used to, for the most part be playing football after school time unlike now, today's kids are all hooked upon video games.
Today, like it or lump it, our children have it ALL TOO EASY.

Other countries not so and as a RESULT have today, far more HUNGRY kids all wanting to be THE BEST!

...... and yet tonight we had four very Ordinary defenders, crap really if the Truth was to be Told, Two FB's from killie alongside Mulgrew and the young OAF that is mckenna, only lost the Three Goals to The Bestest Team In The World............ WOW !

The Scots manager has only even been working WITH this lot of players for what then......... ten days or so. AMAZING !


I’m only putting forward potential reasons why we are falling behind. You quote a lot of stuff and capitalise a lot. You also shoot down a lot of suggestions as to why our game is so poor. Interesting enough, you don’t offer many solutions.
 
Probably got a fair bit to do with the SFA/tranny army "ach well, we're only Scotland, let's just go and get pished anyway" attitude.

As opposed to ‘let’s throw plastic seats and fight with the police cause we ain’t happy’?

If football fans are spending hundreds of pounds to watch their team they’re entitled to have a good time win, lose or draw IMO.
 
I think a lot of it is to do with the culture of accepting glorious failure because we're Scotland and its what we do. The Scotland support and the SFA do not place any expectation or demand on the team, so failure has become accepted. The best recent example of this was away to Gibraltar in the Euro 2016 campaign where the team were given a standing ovation after finishing 4th in the group. The show of support motivated Strachan to stay and give it another go when truthfully, he had failed, should have been bagged and the SFA should have went and got someone like Lars Lagerback.

I think a lot of it goes back to Rangers supporters being generally unwelcome at Scotland games and marginalised in the Scotland support. Rangers supporters naturally place demands on their team to achieve results and do not accept failure. Rangers supporters used to make up a decent percentage of the Scotland support but as we all know, their is a fair amount of apathy among the Rangers support to the national team, and I think the team has suffered as a result. The support is now made up of the 'oh well %^*& the result, lets get pished' brigade.
 
I’m only putting forward potential reasons why we are falling behind. You quote a lot of stuff and capitalise a lot. You also shoot down a lot of suggestions as to why our game is so poor. Interesting enough, you don’t offer many solutions.

I have NO solutions buddy tbh, none.
 
I think a lot of it is to do with the culture of accepting glorious failure because we're Scotland and its what we do. The Scotland support and the SFA do not place any expectation or demand on the team, so failure has become accepted. The best recent example of this was away to Gibraltar in the Euro 2016 campaign where the team were given a standing ovation after finishing 4th in the group. The show of support motivated Strachan to stay and give it another go when truthfully, he had failed, should have been bagged and the SFA should have went and got someone like Lars Lagerback.

I think a lot of it goes back to Rangers supporters being generally unwelcome at Scotland games and marginalised in the Scotland support. Rangers supporters naturally place demands on their team to achieve results and do not accept failure. Rangers supporters used to make up a decent percentage of the Scotland support but as we all know, their is a fair amount of apathy among the Rangers support to the national team, and I think the team has suffered as a result. The support is now made up of the 'oh well %^*& the result, lets get pished' brigade.

Most Agreed
'Tartan Trannies'
 
When a country is pish for a while they rip everything up and start again from the bottom

France did it in the 90s
Belgium did it in 2000 or so
Germany around 2000 as well
England in 2008

And they all appear to have reaped rewards.

Probably more examples of countries doing it some on a smaller scale than above.

Scotland appear to be content with keeping the old guard and old methods and its put the country about 20 years behind pretty much every developed nation in Europe. Even when we win we are never convincing unless it’s against countries with the same population as Falkirk

Always remember that THEY Countries which you mentioned are picking from mega thousands MORE then we can.
 
Selling off all the football fields , the clique that appears at every turn .There could be a world class footballer somewhere but won't get noticed because the manager don't know the footballers parents The SFA are not fit for purpose.
 
Selling off all the football fields , the clique that appears at every turn .There could be a world class footballer somewhere but won't get noticed because the manager don't know the footballers parents The SFA are not fit for purpose.

Always keep in mind this........... LOADS of 'managers' had NO IDEA as to how Great a player young Robertson could become, LOADS.
 
Plenty of solutions have been named in this thread but none will ever happen because Scottish football is ruled by self interest. From the sfa to the refs to the clubs that won’t change there views. No united front so nothing will get changed. Hatred has killed our game
 
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It is more About 'Scouting players that can/cou;d cost just buttons' than it is about signing 120 Million Pound players and HOPE that they fit-in.
Fact.
 
I'd discount drink, drugs and poverty as I'm sure Belgium have their own complex social issues.
Hammer throwing thugs who cannot trap a bag of cement, but can run and harry and foul from the likes of Motherwell, Aberdeen and Kilmarnock being lauded is a good starting point.
 
Part of it is the mentality

Look at the "poster boys" of the top nations
Skilled players like Hazard, kroos, de Jong, Isco, mbappe etc etc

In Scotland "we" elevate utter shite to godhood as something to admire - we didn't use to, it used to be Cooper, baxter, Johnstone
Now its Brown, Mulgrew, S Fletcher etc
 
I'd discount drink, drugs and poverty as I'm sure Belgium have their own complex social issues.
Hammer throwing thugs who cannot trap a bag of cement, but can run and harry and foul from the likes of Motherwell, Aberdeen and Kilmarnock being lauded is a good starting point.

Plenty more drink and poverty back in the 60s and 70s and Scotland produced numerous outstanding players.
 
It's our ridiculous league structure. It doesn't allow young players to be blooded properly. When they are it's a do or die match. Teams fighting for survival or in our case fighting for trophies. It's not rocket science. You just need to look at the demise of players coming through. The last proper batch came from the period when it changed to playing 4 times. Then when they all came to the end of their playing days (around 1998ish) then look at each decades decline in quality. Sure money doesn't help us in our parochial country but the 4 times playing each other is preposterous.
 
It's our ridiculous league structure. It doesn't allow young players to be blooded properly. When they are it's a do or die match. Teams fighting for survival or in our case fighting for trophies. It's not rocket science. You just need to look at the demise of players coming through. The last proper batch came from the period when it changed to playing 4 times. Then when they all came to the end of their playing days (around 1998ish) then look at each decades decline in quality. Sure money doesn't help us in our parochial country but the 4 times playing each other is preposterous.

Belgium has an even more ridiculous league structure than us.
 
Dick Advocaat was interested in the job.

He has won the UEFA Cup, countless leagues across Europe, managed in the EPL, Bundesliga and coached Holland to the semis of the Euros, not to mention lead a few sides in the World Cup.

The SFA gave the gig to Steve Clarke.
 
Dick Advocaat was interested in the job.

He has won the UEFA Cup, countless leagues across Europe, managed in the EPL, Bundesliga and coached Holland to the semis of the Euros, not to mention lead a few sides in the World Cup.

The SFA gave the gig to Steve Clarke.

I don't see the SFA going down the foreigner route (well non UK) again because of the Berti debacle.

Personally, they should have went and got Lars Lagerback when he left Iceland after Euro 2016.
 
This country is going to end up with the Moldova's, Belarus's of this world. That's about its level.

Reap what you sow.

Every nation who's had failure changes. This one seems incapable.
I think even those counties you mentioned would gub us.
 
We used to play with tennis balls at school. There were 50 pitches at 50 pitches - now there are 2.

We used to get the bus to the other side of Glasgow and play for the school then back again to play for the boys club in the afternoon.

We used to go down the 'Pubbie' park every day after school and play 3 and in or Headies.

We used to play in the street - kerbie or cross and score on the gate.

Since my son left home I've not seen a football in this street
Same here fellow Bear. We would play with any ball we would find from a tennis ball, slightly bigger plastic effort, a winfield wind blower from woolworths, a leather bladder up to a Mitre 5. All through the summer from 8 am till getting called in at night. Never seen it happen in many a year. We also used to play a 10/21er on a Sunday on the local schoolpitch nearly 18 a-side sometimes with the age range from about 8 to 40.
 
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As young boys we were told to kick the ball and chase it. At 11 years old I was s formed by st Mirren and later went on to be scouted by Manchester Utd. . The whole setup was completely different. The ball was smaller and we were taught how to control and use skill and make the ball do the work. At 11 in the West of Scotland with a size 5 ball this was impossible. At the age of 13 I won player of the year in a certain tournament where Paul lambert and others were 2 years older than me. Looking back the setup for kids was all wrong in Scotland. We can’t blame weather or the size of our country. The problem was the whole youth setup at the time. And I think that’s why we are way behind now. On a positive note watching managers with young kids now when I come back home is really refreshing and I just wish we had some of the people coaching now back in they days.

You sound as though you had a lot of promise, what was the reason you never made it? (Maybe you did and if you did who are you :) )
 
Every country has drink/drugs yes but I just don’t see the attitude that Britain has abroad. A good example is when brits go abroad. The locals hate them for there boozy antics. I don’t see that happening when they come here. I don’t think the culture of getting steaming every weekend starting from 16 sometimes earlier exists. They drink yes but not to the level our young player people do

Same for consoles. They have them but are they as important a part of there lives as they seem to be for kids in this country

I have saw a huge sway in our attitude to alcohol. It's been a long time coming.

If you break down your own life, you will find that you only bother or bothered with folk because you drank with them but found something in common also.

Even if you look at the whole getting steaming before a flight attitude, as you say folk tend to in from the Brits abroad.
 
Scottish Football has been, and continues to be run like a bowling club committee with jumped up blazers who have little or no experience of the real world at the helm.

Wipe every last one of them out and employee professional administrators with zero self serving interests. Individuals who put the good of the game first as opposed to the good of one team.

Unfortunately turkeys don't vote for Christmas.

As your good self explained to me five years ago with the re-vamp of the league.. When the filth went with the winners of the league losing (and with us being banished, they were absolute shoe-ins) 240k but second place losing 680k, it was win, win, win for them at all roads.

In Scotland, because of an unnatural hatred of our club, the turkeys not only voted for Christmas, they picked their own stuffing as well.

As a support we need to have a turkey shoot, season by season.
 
Those running our game are not fit for purpose, they are geared towards hindering us and supporting them. The media promote this also, Rangers players booed playing for their Country and nothing said says it all from a media aspect.
 
I did have a lot of promise and it still breaks my dads heart to this day that I chose a different path. I ended up in trouble with the law and chose to get away as a teenager and joined the army. No regrets mate. Apart from I could be a millionaire ;)
 
The SFA are the reason. Abject amateurs from top to bottom. I have seen first hand how inept they are at almost everything. They have a real desire to emulate other associations however have a biscuit tin mentality along with jobs for the boys. It's a bowling club committee masquerading as an association.
 
Because we have no structured development plan in place.

Everyone knows that we're shite and we have these big periodic investigations into what to do about it - Ernie Walker's think tank, the McLeish report - but then nothing happens. The recommendations are not implemented and the report sits on a shelf gathering dust.

Have the SFA ever explained what steps they took on the basis of the McLesih report and how effective they've been? Have you ever seen an in-depth newspaper article holding the SFA to account on what they have or haven't done? There's been no follow up that I'm aware of.

Sadly our press are stuck in the 70s and would rather spend their day as bigotry mongers than contribute to intelligent debate.
 
1 Physicality being the most important factor of the league.
2 Drink and drugs culture. Players can be talented but 95% will rather be out with there mates chasing girls and drinking to excess rather than working hard at age 16/17
3. Mollycoddling parents not letting kids experience things. Kids being given things without earning them continues into later life and they fall out of love when they arn’t given everything at higher levels
4. Lack of facilities for kids to play on eg school parks being locked after school or weekends forcing kids to play in substandard ash pitches or random patches of grass with no ball games signs
5. Lack of leadership from the top sfa/spfl not fit for purpose
6. Govt worrying about ‘bigger issues’ like independence rather than things like this.
7. Far more distractions with ps4/Xbox. Kids would rather play Fifa than practise

Off the top of my head probs more
Top of any list must be people who care more about protecting their salary and that of their mates, before the good of the game.
 
A rotten to the core, sectarian driven governing body.

That is the difference.

I do sometimes wonder about the impact this may have. When I was a kid there was an intense rivalry that accommodated intense dislike. My sense is that the Celtic good Rangers bad political and media agenda started to emerge around the same time we stopped producing good players, say the 80's/90's. This has intensified ever since and I do wonder if it has deterred kids that may once have had ambitions to play for Rangers from taking up the game. Combine that with the loss of playing fields, tolerance of plastic pitches, emergence of digital entertainment, absence of role models and an inept governing body and you have a recipe for the continuous decline we see.
 
One rancid football club and it's army of placemen have driven the game into the ground.

As bad as things are this policy still seems to be a work in progress and shows no signs of stopping.
 
The demise of school football plays a big part.Teachers refusing to stay after school etc.Lack of coaches that can teach kids how to trap a ball with 1 touch instead of being told to kick it up the line which i was taught.The difference in on the ball technique even against dross teams like Cyprus.Most continentals just look more comfortable with the ball.It's been that way since you had diddies like Roxburgh and Brown in charge.
 
Everything is wrong with whole set up. Piss poor facilities, no kids kicking a ball around anymore. They'd rather be on the ipad or PS4, the SFA Dinosaurs, Youth football doesn't seem as prevelant as it used too.

I'm 40 and growing up you had BB football which was thriving. School football then we played with our club's too. Some weekends we played 3 games and 2 most weekends.

That's just the tip of the problem.
Belgians have PS4s too.
 
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