SFA and failure...The End? Part 6

Earl of Leven

Well-Known Member
Official Ticketer
Please, please, please let me get what I want

So where does this leave us? What are the ideas?

We have touched on so much....pricing, coaching, standard of play, quality of pitches, terracing, stewarding, lack of leadership, lack of competition. And they are all threads – there is no one solution, no ‘magic bullet’.

Every year someone makes a claim as regards recovery: a club challenges the Old Firm, a young player emerges, an U17 Scotland team wins a game or two, but the recovery is fleeting. The only solution is to spend time, money and effort looking at these areas and finding solutions.

Here are our solutions:

Invest in coaches, especially at youth level. This was England but we will be even worse off:

New UEFA data shows that there are only 2,769 English coaches holding the B, A and Pro badges, its top qualifications. Spain has produced 23,995, Italy 29,420, Germany 34,970 and France 17,588.

Between them those four nations have provided eight of the 12 finalists at all the World Cups and European Championships since 1998. England, meanwhile, have not appeared in a tournament final in 44 years.

There are 2.25 million players in England and only one UEFA-qualified coach for every 812 people playing the game. Spain, the World Cup favourites, have 408,134 players, giving a ratio of 1:17. In Italy, the world champions, the ratio is 1:48, in France it is 1:96, Germany 1:150 and even Greece, the Euro 2004 winners, have only 180,000 registered players for their 1,100 coaches, a ratio of 1:135.


Scrap XI a side games on gravel pitches for kids.....switch all resources to short-games, touch, technique and touches of the ball. We are not BORN less talented, we simply produce less talented footballers.

Bring back a sense of ‘matchday experience’......think about bringing fans back to the game by asking them what would entice them back. Pricing, sensible kick off times, terracing etc.

Consider kids...SPL roadshows, coaching roadshows, highlights on a Sat evening (terrestrial TV) as there always was.

Consider increasing competition. Pooling resources perhaps, or sharing youth funding at national level and introducing a US style ‘draft pick’ system perhaps? A cap on debt to turnover? We cannot have teams thrashed every week by Old Firm – more people will drift off than have already done so.

But the answer really lies with a first move....from someone, anyone. SFA, SPL, our own club....someone has to invite the other stakeholders to a meeting and get the ball rolling. Forget £500m for now – it won’t materialise – and let go of petty fiefdoms and fights. Until we have a group meeting to discuss this it won’t happen, nothing will happen, and our game will continue its decline. It needs us all to write to SPL and SFA...demand change and demand that we as fans are the driving force of that change. No-one will do it for you.

The End?
 
Please, please, please let me get what I want

So where does this leave us? What are the ideas?

We have touched on so much....pricing, coaching, standard of play, quality of pitches, terracing, stewarding, lack of leadership, lack of competition. And they are all threads – there is no one solution, no ‘magic bullet’.

Every year someone makes a claim as regards recovery: a club challenges the Old Firm, a young player emerges, an U17 Scotland team wins a game or two, but the recovery is fleeting. The only solution is to spend time, money and effort looking at these areas and finding solutions.

Here are our solutions:

Invest in coaches, especially at youth level. This was England but we will be even worse off:

New UEFA data shows that there are only 2,769 English coaches holding the B, A and Pro badges, its top qualifications. Spain has produced 23,995, Italy 29,420, Germany 34,970 and France 17,588.

Between them those four nations have provided eight of the 12 finalists at all the World Cups and European Championships since 1998. England, meanwhile, have not appeared in a tournament final in 44 years.

There are 2.25 million players in England and only one UEFA-qualified coach for every 812 people playing the game. Spain, the World Cup favourites, have 408,134 players, giving a ratio of 1:17. In Italy, the world champions, the ratio is 1:48, in France it is 1:96, Germany 1:150 and even Greece, the Euro 2004 winners, have only 180,000 registered players for their 1,100 coaches, a ratio of 1:135.


Scrap XI a side games on gravel pitches for kids.....switch all resources to short-games, touch, technique and touches of the ball. We are not BORN less talented, we simply produce less talented footballers.

Bring back a sense of ‘matchday experience’......think about bringing fans back to the game by asking them what would entice them back. Pricing, sensible kick off times, terracing etc.

Consider kids...SPL roadshows, coaching roadshows, highlights on a Sat evening (terrestrial TV) as there always was.

Consider increasing competition. Pooling resources perhaps, or sharing youth funding at national level and introducing a US style ‘draft pick’ system perhaps? A cap on debt to turnover? We cannot have teams thrashed every week by Old Firm – more people will drift off than have already done so.

But the answer really lies with a first move....from someone, anyone. SFA, SPL, our own club....someone has to invite the other stakeholders to a meeting and get the ball rolling. Forget £500m for now – it won’t materialise – and let go of petty fiefdoms and fights. Until we have a group meeting to discuss this it won’t happen, nothing will happen, and our game will continue its decline. It needs us all to write to SPL and SFA...demand change and demand that we as fans are the driving force of that change. No-one will do it for you.

The End?

Excellent read. Hard to argue with any of the points raised. My concern is that we are still having the same conversation we were having twenty years ago. Bottom line is if there is no clear out at the SFA then it will get worse and worse.
 
Please, please, please let me get what I want

So where does this leave us? What are the ideas?

We have touched on so much....pricing, coaching, standard of play, quality of pitches, terracing, stewarding, lack of leadership, lack of competition. And they are all threads – there is no one solution, no ‘magic bullet’.

Every year someone makes a claim as regards recovery: a club challenges the Old Firm, a young player emerges, an U17 Scotland team wins a game or two, but the recovery is fleeting. The only solution is to spend time, money and effort looking at these areas and finding solutions.

Here are our solutions:

Invest in coaches, especially at youth level. This was England but we will be even worse off:

New UEFA data shows that there are only 2,769 English coaches holding the B, A and Pro badges, its top qualifications. Spain has produced 23,995, Italy 29,420, Germany 34,970 and France 17,588.

Between them those four nations have provided eight of the 12 finalists at all the World Cups and European Championships since 1998. England, meanwhile, have not appeared in a tournament final in 44 years.

There are 2.25 million players in England and only one UEFA-qualified coach for every 812 people playing the game. Spain, the World Cup favourites, have 408,134 players, giving a ratio of 1:17. In Italy, the world champions, the ratio is 1:48, in France it is 1:96, Germany 1:150 and even Greece, the Euro 2004 winners, have only 180,000 registered players for their 1,100 coaches, a ratio of 1:135.


Scrap XI a side games on gravel pitches for kids.....switch all resources to short-games, touch, technique and touches of the ball. We are not BORN less talented, we simply produce less talented footballers.

Bring back a sense of ‘matchday experience’......think about bringing fans back to the game by asking them what would entice them back. Pricing, sensible kick off times, terracing etc.

Consider kids...SPL roadshows, coaching roadshows, highlights on a Sat evening (terrestrial TV) as there always was.

Consider increasing competition. Pooling resources perhaps, or sharing youth funding at national level and introducing a US style ‘draft pick’ system perhaps? A cap on debt to turnover? We cannot have teams thrashed every week by Old Firm – more people will drift off than have already done so.

But the answer really lies with a first move....from someone, anyone. SFA, SPL, our own club....someone has to invite the other stakeholders to a meeting and get the ball rolling. Forget £500m for now – it won’t materialise – and let go of petty fiefdoms and fights. Until we have a group meeting to discuss this it won’t happen, nothing will happen, and our game will continue its decline. It needs us all to write to SPL and SFA...demand change and demand that we as fans are the driving force of that change. No-one will do it for you.

The End?
US?.
 
Until there is serious investment in grassroots football across the board (coaching, academies, education, infrastructure) we will always lag behind at the elite level (every level?!). You can already see the differences in our own youth programme now that we're taking it seriously and hopefully we'll see proper results soon.

The SFA pay it lip service every 10 years or so, but it generally goes nowhere because it's the same dinosaurs involved. Billy Stark is the under 19s coach ffs.

Completely agree about small sided games, let the kids enjoy playing football and let them develop their technique with the ball before we start introducing cups and medals (and disappointment) into the equation.
 
A major issue with the number of coaches is that its cost prohibitive in the UK.

I remember reading an article after England lost to Bejam at the 2016 euros. From memory, UEFA A licence costs over six grand in the UK, whilst on the continent it is much cheaper to “do your badges”. The cheapest, was Spain where it costs circa 1000 euros to qualify.

I’m sure there are lots of imaginative and dedicated lovers of the game who could add value if coaching courses were more accessible.
 
My long held belief and I'll stand by it. The events of 2012 killed the Scottish National side off as any sort of force. A large core of fans came from our support and indeed a large core of players came from our squad. Then it was gone.

It died there and then. They can all rot in eternal diddyness. I hope Scotland never, ever qualify for a major tournament again and suffer humiliation after humiliation
 
Billy Stark and Scot Gemmil coaches for the under 19 and 21 teams, Malky McKay, performance director ffs.
 
Watched a kosovo side last night unafraid to take a pass or take a man on, first touch and technique miles ahead of Scotland. Granted they were naive in defending but a joy to watch.
 
Did I read somewhere that the SFA have absolutely no money and can't even afford to pay Steve Clarke as Scotland manager?

There is no chance of the SFA investing in decent talent to take our game forward if they can't even pay Clarke.
 
Back
Top