What is to be done?

 

What is to be done?

Watching the two Edinburgh clubs advance in Europe this week should have pleased all who follow Scottish football. I must confess to a quiet, ‘yes!’ when Hearts hit a late winner, partly because it meant extra time was unlikely on a work night and partly because it added to Scotland’s co-efficient. The SPFL is currently ranked 9^th among Europe’s 55 leagues and it is this ranking which helped Celtic into the Champions League this season without the need for perilous qualifiers. Hibs did well too although they now face a daunting qualifier with Aston Villa. Whatever happens, they’ll make a few quid and hopefully put up a decent fight.

One thing I noticed about the Hearts match was the fact that the home sections of the stadium were sold out for the game. Indeed, it is said that Hearts have several thousand fans on the waiting list for season tickets although the lack of room for expanding Tynecastle means they may have a long wait. Hibs are averaging around 17,000 at home matches and Aberdeen had a big home support for the visit of Celtic last week and that was encouraging to see.

These three clubs could and should be making the big two work harder in the SPFL. We are now approaching 40 years since a side out-with the Glasgow duopoly won the title here (Aberdeen in 1985) and with each passing season it looks less and less likely that will emulate them. 

It is said that unfettered capitalism leads to power and wealth falling into the hands of fewer and fewer people. We are seeing this at every level of football. In the champions league, the same faces pop up in the last 8 every season and as technically brilliant as some of the teams are, it is getting boring. Now we see clubs from Saudi Arabia spending hundreds of millions of pounds to recruit talent from even the wealthier leagues of Europe. Rumours abound that they will be asking UEFA to admit their teams to competitions like the champions league and given the amount of money they have to spend, who is to say it won’t ever happen?

There is no little irony in English fans bleating about cheque book Saudi clubs when they have plundered the world’s footballing talent using their TV billions for decades. Currently around 64% of the players in the EPL are foreigners, lured there by the big paycheques. The current TV deal for the English Premiership is £1,632,000,000 (£1.632b)  per season. Scottish football will earn £30m for live matches shown in the 2023-24 season. The BBC pays the SPFL £2.8m to show highlights on Sportscene. The same BBC pays the EPL £68m per year to show highlights on match of the day. Indeed, Gary Lineker earns £1.35m for presenting the show. Thus, the vicious circle of the rich getting richer and the poor falling further behind goes on.

Fans out-with the big two in Scotland will say with some truth that the same thing is happening here, albeit on a smaller scale. They troop along to matches each season with no realistic hope of winning the title and only the prospect of a cup run to give them a glimmer of silver. Celtic has won 5 trebles in the past 7 seasons and much as I’ve enjoyed that success, I really do want to see our league return to the days when four or five clubs started the season with hopes of giving winning the title a real go.

It’s no fluke that our clubs did best in Europe when our league was more competitive. In the 25 years from 1960-1985 Scotland had 7 different champions (Hearts, Rangers, Dundee, Celtic, Dundee United, Aberdeen and Kilmarnock) and our clubs regularly did well in Europe. In the past 25 years we have had 2 champions, (though some argue 3 following Rangers’ demise & the new club arriving) with Celtic winning 18 of those titles. Despite a couple of creditable runs in the UEFA cup, Scottish clubs have failed to make any real impression in the Champions League for years now. Indeed, last season, Rangers were officially the worst UCL side of all time.

Of course, football has changed hugely since Scottish clubs were feared in Europe. Clubs no longer split gate receipts 50-50 as was the case back then. The Bosman ruling in 1995 meant that players could run down their contracts and leave a club. In days past clubs like Dundee United and Aberdeen could retain players for years and build a decent side. Those days are gone forever, as are the times when it was said there was a good footballer up every close in Glasgow.

So, what is to be done to make Scottish football more competitive? I have heard suggestions such as splitting TV money evenly among all the clubs in the top division. Some even suggest pooling all money paid by UEFA to Scottish clubs each season and sharing it evenly among all top flight clubs for the good of the game. Reducing the senior game to two leagues of around 16 clubs and depositing the rest in the pyramid system below this has been mooted. All of this is highly unlikely to happen as the member clubs would need to vote for it and Turkeys do not vote for Christmas. The single biggest thing which might bring true competition back to the Scottish Premiership is for Celtic and Rangers to leave.

The Champions League is evolving into a more recognisable league format in the years ahead and it remains possible that a European League may emerge with several divisions within it. That seems to be the most likely scenario in the next couple of decades. The rumblings about a breakaway league some years back, has spurred UEFA to act. At the end of the day, they want to keep control on this money-making machine.

In leagues all over Europe the wealth is accruing in the hands of a few big clubs and competition is suffering. The ‘Scottish disease’ of the big boys monopolising the trophies is spreading. We see Bayern Munich on ten in a row in Germany, Juventus did nine in a row in Italy, Manchester City have won five of the last 6 EPL titles and the Barca/Madrid duopoly in Spain have won 19 of the past 23 titles. Although football can be an unpredictable and passionate game, the reality is that the gap between the haves and have nots has never been wider. Unless there is some form of redistribution of wealth, this gap will only grow.

Just as Scottish football’s smaller sides look to the league cup draw this coming week and hope to avoid the big two, so too our two biggest clubs will (should Rangers make it) await the Champions league draw with some trepidation. At both national and international level, football’s food chain is marked and obvious. The big fish come from the leagues with the huge TV deals. Money is the deciding factor in the modern game.

I love Scottish football. It has a rawness that many money bloated leagues have lost. I wish I had the answer to making it more competitive, but the honest truth is I don’t. It’s now 39 years since Alex Ferguson led Aberdeen to the title. It could be another 39 till they do it again if nothing changes.

I’m open to suggestions.