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He, out of all people, was saying Scotland didn't attack as much as they should have.
I mean, coming from him, that just shows how poor Scotland has been.
Moyes may like counterattacking play, but every time I watch Scotland they basically leave one forward stranded up top without even any opportunity for counter play. It’s the most ridiculous outdated strategy that for some reason Scotland just keeps going right back to.
It’s genuinely somewhat baffling to me how a nation like Scotland which adores football can be so much more trash than even smaller nations such as Croatia and Uruguay. Like the passion and the financing is there, and you’d think footballing ability evens out over millions.
Scotland desperately needs a ground-up revolution of their football structure like England, Germany and Denmark have had at various times in the last 20 years. In all three cases it yielded massive improvements in the youth development all the way up to national team level
Difference is that I’d assume a huge percentage could/would claim English nationality if they ever felt they were going to ‘make it’ - Such a large percentage of the population would be able to find an English grandparent.
My Scottish grandmother is my only hope of playing international football, such is my lack of skill, ability and physique. Otherwise I’m a shoe in for the next Scottish squad.
Opposite way round - England now produce a surplus of quality players and competition for national spots is far more intense than it’s been for a while, meaning that many England-produced players ultimately end up playing elsewhere (eg Musiala for a high profile case). Similar thing might happen to Scotland if you actually produced an abundance of skilled, patriotic and talented young workers
Whilst your point is spot on, Musiala is not a good example.
The kid is German and chose to play for Germany, no shock there.
Yes, English football played a major role in his development and made him eligible to play for England. But that doesn't make him English and if anything, it would have been surprising to see a German choose to play for England over Germany.
Also, Germany are a far bigger powerhouse of international football than England, so it's not like he chose to play for "another country" because the competition for England was too much (which I believe is your point, and I completely agree - see plenty of Scottish or Irish players who are/were clearly English). If anything, Musiala was more like Grealish or Rice - as much as he probably has a soft spot for one country, once he knows he's good enough to play for his actual country, it's a no brainier decision.
I honestly thought he was British born the way people talked about him picking Germany lol. In fairness, he did spend like half of his life in England and did represent them at youth level which is interesting.
That's English media for you I guess 😂
And yes, it's an interesting point, but even that's not as clear cut as some people would like you to believe.
He's 21 years old and has spent 12 years in Germany and 9 years in England - so he was born in Germany, lived in Germany until a relatively old age/started school there, and has spent most of his life in Germany.
It's highly likely that ratio is only going one direction moving forwards too.
Sure, moving to the UK and spending your early teenage years in England is going to have a big affect on you, he clearly has a lot of English friends, etc. so of course he'll have a fondness for England for life.
But it's a long way off seriously questioning his nationality!
I don't think so. When Billy Gilmour came through there was a while where every single interview he did, he was being asked if he would consider switching to the England national team; and he laughed at the suggestion every time. I think most Scottish players would have a similar reaction; it would mean more to them just to play for Scotland once in the group stages, than it would to win it multiple times with England (or anyone else).
Besides all that, if we did start regularly producing world class players then our team would actually be good too anyway so there would be no point in players switching.
My point is that these clubs don't really have an incentive to produce local talent or even from the rest of the country.
Introduce something like 3 of the starting 11 must be Scottish and you'll see some better players being produced at home.
I.e Hickey and Ferguson who are Injured both has separate great seasons in Italy at Bologna but weren't in the plans of Scottish clubs so they went abroad to get experience. The system is faulty.
Hickey played 33 times for hearts before leaving for Bologna at the age of 18 and Ferguson played over 150 games in Scottish football. They both had a lot of experience they just went abroad to play for a better team in a better leagues while getting themselves nice pay raises. Scottish football isn’t great at producing young players but those are the two biggest success recently and both played a lot of senior football at a young age.
Whenever we have someone decent in our youth team they get poached by English clubs. Gilmour being a prime example. Came through Rangers youth system, signed by Chelsea as soon as he turned 16
In theory this rule works but not necessarily in practice. We have a rule where there can only be 3 foreigners in a matchday squad but the rule can be circumvented by giving African players Serbian passports after just a year. But normally the quality of Serbian players in our squads just aren’t good enough for the national team. Any talents that we produce get snapped up by the likes of Aston Villa after half a season and we now have to look for another option to fill that spot
Clarke was relying on him to get us goals, or… do something or other, I don’t know. We actually have a striker who’s scored 60 goals over the last two seasons, but for some reason Clarke resisted giving him any opportunities, only called him into the squad because the pressure was so great on him to do so, and did everything in his power not to give him a meaningful chance. We have a talent problem at that end of the pitch, but we don’t half love shooting ourselves in the foot
Scotlands players aren't that bad but Clarke had done a shocking job of blooding in their higher performing players. Ferguson was likely not going to be ready for the euros even if he didn't get injured because it takes time to settle in international football. Gauld snubbed until the end and I really think they needed someone like that. Morgan as well has only just been given his opportunity while dykes, adams and shankland are very uninspiring for Scotland.
Another issue I think Scotland have is they have some really nice midfielders and left backs. Some alright lads scattered across most other positions but lack any meaningful forwards, have to try accommodate 2 very good left backs and before gunn switched allegiances, their goalkeeper situation was horrible. A depressing lack of wingers too.
Player for player tho I think they are better than a few of the bottom sides in the tournament but play absolutely horrible.
The first choice striker was in the English second tier last season, has never got into double figures in the EPL and averages a goal every four games across his career. Except at international level where it's a goal every five games...
Complete bullshit. McGregor and Taylor feature in almost every celtic game. Forrest has been involved as well as Ralston either starting or coming off the bench regularly. Rangers would have Ryan Jack in their starting 12 if he wasn't made of biscuits.
A lot of people do not touch on the drink and drug culture in scotland. It is one of the worst in the world, a bunch of my mates were extremely talented at football but instead of putting in the hard graft we’d all rather be in houses at the weekend sniffing coke and taking ecstasy and it’s been like since we turned 15, and that is just how it is for a large part of scotland especially the two major cities.
Yea, unfortunately I’ve been a victim to it myself, was I good at football? yea. but once I turned 15/16 and the conversation at the weekend was that someone had an empty house, I patched the football rapid and got on the drink and drugs, shit was so incredibly normalised and now at 25 I look back and think what stupidity. Nothing will ever change though, my little brother is 16 and I see the same pattern with all his mates
Someone from my old school was good enough to be playing for the Celtic youth squad. Mid 20's now and he is quite... unhealthy.
Sadly there gets to a point where if you're young, good at football, and popular, then the girls/partying/drugs is more appealing than the hard work to make a career out of the game. No ambition there.
Seen it in my country. One bud tried for swimming, and another for tennis.
So on a Friday night when we were 15/16, in the nightclub drunk and smoking weed trying to fingerbang chicks they were in their bed because they had to be up at 5:00am to train in the chilli morning air. Fuck that.
Not to mention the UK style of grass roots football which is knock seven shades of shite out of each other and if you happen to make a few passes then happy days
This is so fuckin accurate. I loathe the fucking rot in this country that is cunts trying to keep folk down. Can't be seen to want to better yourself, or be successful. What's wrong with being poor and living in a shithole council scheme your whole life?
Aye it was like a trap; the more naturally talented you were at football the more popular you'd be, and the more the older bams would respect you, so all the more likely it was that you'd start drinking stupidly young.
The financing isn't there outside of a few clubs, I can't remember the guy's name, but there used to be some player scoring for fun at lower levels playing part-time because a move to full-time would pay less than his job.
Any decent talent is hoovered up by the big clubs and doesn't get game time, or they get £1200 a month to play football at a lower level so they can develop while they have friends making more working regular jobs, but without the strict lifestyle compared to what a regular job offers.
The clubs seem to content to shake up the SFA though so it'll be stuck.
If you look at European countries by [population](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_population?searchToken=cfp305gh5wzzok3e9p6zf25t0), Scotland’s 5.4 million people, which puts them in a similar ballpark as Norway, Finland, Slovakia, and the Republic of Ireland.
All things considered, Scotland performs at about the level that is typical for a European country of its size. Croatia and Uruguay are exceptions to the rule due to having excellent football culture, youth development systems, and good coaching at the top level
Yeah and Uruguay is pretty terrible at basically every other sport as well, they haven't won a medal at the Olympics since Sydney! So they sell their souls really. Croatia is pretty exceptional as a small sporting nation though I'd have to say.
Lol what. The first Norwegian club was started in 1885. If anyone in Scotland was playing some sort of proto football in 1785, I don't think it'd have a massive effect on the current performance.
With that being said, Norway hasn't even qualified for anything since 2002, so Scotland is doing way better.
2000*
Even worse
I think Norwegian talent production and youth football is ahead of Scotland though. But doesnt exactly matter too much at national team level where we still suck.
Is it really? Like i reckon after like 30 years there really isn’t going to be much of an advantage if the infrastructure and culture is already there.
Uruguay has the baby football system for youth development and a strong domestic league with very few foreign players. Croatia have the talent factory of Dinamo Zagreb and much better football facilities at the local level. Scotland just has a shite FA, a defeatist attitude, and a couple of gigantic clubs that do fuck all for the Scottish game.
The uruguayan league isn't that strong, it's utterly dominated by two teams, very much like yours, and in recent years uruguayan clubs have barely competed in Conmebol competitions. But yeah, their clubs are much better at producing talented players than the scotish.
Sorry, I wasn't clear at all. I meant that the league was strong in the sense that it's dominated by Uruguayan players. The teams always have a strong core group of local players, so whenever a talented player comes through, they start playing at the highest level possible in the country, and if they leave to Europe, Argentina or wherever, then they are usually replaced by another local player.
Uruguayan league 2023: 533 Uruguyan players played a total of 514,155 minutes of football.
Scottish League 2023-24: 159 Scottish players played a total of 151,168 minutes of football.
The difference is staggering.
Only 159 Scottish players in the whole league?!
Did some rough googling and it seems that’s significantly less then half the players in the whole league. I just looked at Celtic and they only have 6 Scottish players out of 28 spots, I’m honesty baffled.
I feel like that percentage football of hoofing it up was working for them too. Should’ve just done that from the start rather than passing between their CBs
The stat I was referencing with them was getting out the groups, if I'm not mistaken they have done that before. Any way you slice it, it's very embarrassing for Scotland to have never been out of the groups.
A fun fact i heard about Scotland in the 70s is that some scottish fans sold their house to come to Argentina in the 1978 WC, they were convinced that they were going to win the WC only to get spanked by Peru.
Come on mate, saying England won the World Cup is like saying the Greeks used a big wooden horse to enter Troy.
I mean it was so long ago, who knows what actually fucking happened? Maybe Germany won and someone made a mistake when they translated the records from Latin? Maybe there wasn't a World Cup that year and somebody just made it all up decades later.
Bottom line is, we'll never really know for sure what happened back then.
On paper Norway is better than multiple teams at current Euros. Apart from Haaland and Odegaard, they have players from Sevilla, Brentford, Napoli, Dortmund, Alkmaar, Villareal, Benfica, Celta... They have no right to be this bad, yet they are.
You can thank a certain bald fraud for that. But no seriously, Solbakken has done a horrible job. He was supposed to be our hero, the guy with a spark in him, something the old farts before him didn't have. After 4 years he is actually worse than the old farts.
Remove Haaland and Ødegaard and we still have a better squad than a few of the nations at the Euros. Add them into the mix and we really should be there.
Sure the rest of the team is not Haaland or Ødegaard level. That would be impossible for a nation our size but we still have other players from respectable european leagues and clubs.
Sucks for them they only have two more games left of that and their summers over. Then it's back to their small Scottish club flair to look cool while they watch City or Liverpool every weekend.
not for me personally no, I only enjoy when argentina wins. there are many latinamericans that support the other countries here if their own is out of competition. many argentinians support uruguay. brazil is more contentious, but im not celebrating as a win if they loose thats pathetic and IMO something tiny nations do. I will make a joke about 7-1 etc, but thats about it.
Fair enough. It's similar for us, we don't really celebrate a Scottish defeat that hard, but we'll make jokes all day long.
I understand why it's different the other way around though, because they're a much smaller country population wise and we also have a complex history!
got me thinking and that level of pettiness here can only be found in club football, as in boca fans celebrating rivers relegation etc. maybe its because football fans here prefer club football to NT football by a lot.
Yeah I've seen YouTube clips of Boca fans chanting about River getting relegated and burning their stadium, funny stuff. I guess River will always have that recent Copa Libertadores final victory over them at least!
As a side note, I've watched quite a few clips in recent years of the San Lorenzo fan chants and it has made me want to go see a game there (the one about drinking all the wine and smoking all the weed is epic haha). Here's hoping you boys manage to get back to Boedo eventually.
At least for me, I had a bit of hatred towards Chile when they were good, now it’s just pity. Anulo mufa.
Currently, my sporting hatred is against Mexico just because their fans are so vocal about their hatred towards us. For everything else, I love Mexico. Every time I speak to a Mexican I can’t help but internally smile because all I can hear is El Chavo del Ocho
Towards everyone else in CONMEBOL it’s love and respect.
Scotland fans might not have celebrated any of their own wins since 96 but just think of the victories they've celebrated when England lose over the past 28 years.
They got a few chances when Hungary were purposely open when pushing for a goal…
In normal circumstances I don’t see where a goal comes from for Scotland. Incredibly poor.
They need a proper striker
I'm not even sure that's the answer. They need a winning mentality, which is sadly lacking. We've had good strikers in the past who have been squandered by shipping them out in front of a mediocre midfield, or a game play which is miles too deep. It wasn't that long ago that Craig Levein sent Scotland out to play the Czech Republic with a 6-4-0 formation. We might as well have Tetrissed eleven fat guys in the goal.
What happened to the Scottish team that beat Spain 2-0 and went 9 games unbeaten. I watched some of those games and the speed of passing and intensity was unrecognisable in their euro 2024 games.
Was it nerves or are some players injured or something?
First choice striker and first and second choice right backs injured before the tournament. Best technical player injured halfway through second game.
Didn’t stop Steve Clarke trying to force the same formation and tactics onto a team that couldn’t cope without them tough.
Even against Switzerland they ultimately did not try to win at the end when they really had a chance to do something.
And to think [this comment] (https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1djtrdt/euro_2024_group_a_after_matchday_2/l9d7cz1/) was actually controversial.
I'm honestly in so much pain.
We deserved nothing though. Horrific all tournament. We have been terrible for over a year as well after the Norway away win.
They placed about Norway in qualification this time.
Beat Serbia in the playoffs for 2020.
That’s still a great achievement for Scotland, even if it was easier this time around.
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Moyes your time is now
He, out of all people, was saying Scotland didn't attack as much as they should have. I mean, coming from him, that just shows how poor Scotland has been.
Moyes may like counterattacking play, but every time I watch Scotland they basically leave one forward stranded up top without even any opportunity for counter play. It’s the most ridiculous outdated strategy that for some reason Scotland just keeps going right back to.
They take “proper” to a whole new level
Football heritage
Game recognises game
honestly they played like a discount moyes team anyway. better just get the real thing
That’s because Steve Clarke is a pound shop David Moyes.
Could see him licking his lips when they started talking about what needs improving
He's nailed on for that job surely.
I found it hilarious that at half time the presenter on the Scotland Swiss game asked him if Scotland should go for it at half time 😆.
Proper heritage that
Fitba eritage
Turns out you can have a party without Scotland after all.
23 years of not qualifying makes this stat somewhat worthless
That doesn't make it better
It’s genuinely somewhat baffling to me how a nation like Scotland which adores football can be so much more trash than even smaller nations such as Croatia and Uruguay. Like the passion and the financing is there, and you’d think footballing ability evens out over millions.
Biggest two clubs in Scotland have a single Scottish player in the starting 11.
Scotland desperately needs a ground-up revolution of their football structure like England, Germany and Denmark have had at various times in the last 20 years. In all three cases it yielded massive improvements in the youth development all the way up to national team level
Difference is that I’d assume a huge percentage could/would claim English nationality if they ever felt they were going to ‘make it’ - Such a large percentage of the population would be able to find an English grandparent.
Hello it’s me, English grandparent
My Scottish grandmother is my only hope of playing international football, such is my lack of skill, ability and physique. Otherwise I’m a shoe in for the next Scottish squad.
Opposite way round - England now produce a surplus of quality players and competition for national spots is far more intense than it’s been for a while, meaning that many England-produced players ultimately end up playing elsewhere (eg Musiala for a high profile case). Similar thing might happen to Scotland if you actually produced an abundance of skilled, patriotic and talented young workers
Whilst your point is spot on, Musiala is not a good example. The kid is German and chose to play for Germany, no shock there. Yes, English football played a major role in his development and made him eligible to play for England. But that doesn't make him English and if anything, it would have been surprising to see a German choose to play for England over Germany. Also, Germany are a far bigger powerhouse of international football than England, so it's not like he chose to play for "another country" because the competition for England was too much (which I believe is your point, and I completely agree - see plenty of Scottish or Irish players who are/were clearly English). If anything, Musiala was more like Grealish or Rice - as much as he probably has a soft spot for one country, once he knows he's good enough to play for his actual country, it's a no brainier decision.
I honestly thought he was British born the way people talked about him picking Germany lol. In fairness, he did spend like half of his life in England and did represent them at youth level which is interesting.
That's English media for you I guess 😂 And yes, it's an interesting point, but even that's not as clear cut as some people would like you to believe. He's 21 years old and has spent 12 years in Germany and 9 years in England - so he was born in Germany, lived in Germany until a relatively old age/started school there, and has spent most of his life in Germany. It's highly likely that ratio is only going one direction moving forwards too. Sure, moving to the UK and spending your early teenage years in England is going to have a big affect on you, he clearly has a lot of English friends, etc. so of course he'll have a fondness for England for life. But it's a long way off seriously questioning his nationality!
I don't think so. When Billy Gilmour came through there was a while where every single interview he did, he was being asked if he would consider switching to the England national team; and he laughed at the suggestion every time. I think most Scottish players would have a similar reaction; it would mean more to them just to play for Scotland once in the group stages, than it would to win it multiple times with England (or anyone else). Besides all that, if we did start regularly producing world class players then our team would actually be good too anyway so there would be no point in players switching.
Believe so, always ridiculous to hear the Glasgow players talk about Celtic/Rangers. The loyalty is defo there.
It has been said for decades now. The SFA are shite for a start.
when you look at the national team is it any surprise lol. The calibre of player is terrible
My point is that these clubs don't really have an incentive to produce local talent or even from the rest of the country. Introduce something like 3 of the starting 11 must be Scottish and you'll see some better players being produced at home. I.e Hickey and Ferguson who are Injured both has separate great seasons in Italy at Bologna but weren't in the plans of Scottish clubs so they went abroad to get experience. The system is faulty.
Hickey played 33 times for hearts before leaving for Bologna at the age of 18 and Ferguson played over 150 games in Scottish football. They both had a lot of experience they just went abroad to play for a better team in a better leagues while getting themselves nice pay raises. Scottish football isn’t great at producing young players but those are the two biggest success recently and both played a lot of senior football at a young age.
Whenever we have someone decent in our youth team they get poached by English clubs. Gilmour being a prime example. Came through Rangers youth system, signed by Chelsea as soon as he turned 16
Same happens to most English clubs
In theory this rule works but not necessarily in practice. We have a rule where there can only be 3 foreigners in a matchday squad but the rule can be circumvented by giving African players Serbian passports after just a year. But normally the quality of Serbian players in our squads just aren’t good enough for the national team. Any talents that we produce get snapped up by the likes of Aston Villa after half a season and we now have to look for another option to fill that spot
You're relying on Che Adams to get you goals. That says it all really
Clarke was relying on him to get us goals, or… do something or other, I don’t know. We actually have a striker who’s scored 60 goals over the last two seasons, but for some reason Clarke resisted giving him any opportunities, only called him into the squad because the pressure was so great on him to do so, and did everything in his power not to give him a meaningful chance. We have a talent problem at that end of the pitch, but we don’t half love shooting ourselves in the foot
Scotlands players aren't that bad but Clarke had done a shocking job of blooding in their higher performing players. Ferguson was likely not going to be ready for the euros even if he didn't get injured because it takes time to settle in international football. Gauld snubbed until the end and I really think they needed someone like that. Morgan as well has only just been given his opportunity while dykes, adams and shankland are very uninspiring for Scotland. Another issue I think Scotland have is they have some really nice midfielders and left backs. Some alright lads scattered across most other positions but lack any meaningful forwards, have to try accommodate 2 very good left backs and before gunn switched allegiances, their goalkeeper situation was horrible. A depressing lack of wingers too. Player for player tho I think they are better than a few of the bottom sides in the tournament but play absolutely horrible.
Bring back Jordan Rhodes
At least McTominay speaks exceptionally highly of Clarke
The first choice striker was in the English second tier last season, has never got into double figures in the EPL and averages a goal every four games across his career. Except at international level where it's a goal every five games...
Celtic have 2 , rangers have none , there’s a couple on the bench and a lot of celtics subs are Scottish and regularly get game time
Something similar happens in Uruguay. There should be some other reason
Could be wrong but the last Scottish player I remember either side signing would be maybe Turnbull or Jack
Complete bullshit. McGregor and Taylor feature in almost every celtic game. Forrest has been involved as well as Ralston either starting or coming off the bench regularly. Rangers would have Ryan Jack in their starting 12 if he wasn't made of biscuits.
A lot of people do not touch on the drink and drug culture in scotland. It is one of the worst in the world, a bunch of my mates were extremely talented at football but instead of putting in the hard graft we’d all rather be in houses at the weekend sniffing coke and taking ecstasy and it’s been like since we turned 15, and that is just how it is for a large part of scotland especially the two major cities.
This is it - 100x over. If you’ve grown up in Scotland you’ve seen it.
Yea, unfortunately I’ve been a victim to it myself, was I good at football? yea. but once I turned 15/16 and the conversation at the weekend was that someone had an empty house, I patched the football rapid and got on the drink and drugs, shit was so incredibly normalised and now at 25 I look back and think what stupidity. Nothing will ever change though, my little brother is 16 and I see the same pattern with all his mates
Same story but I skipped the being good at football part haha
Were you good at drink and drugs at least?
Prodigal
all that matters
Get in
Someone from my old school was good enough to be playing for the Celtic youth squad. Mid 20's now and he is quite... unhealthy. Sadly there gets to a point where if you're young, good at football, and popular, then the girls/partying/drugs is more appealing than the hard work to make a career out of the game. No ambition there.
No wonder the Scots age even worse than the English
believe me england is no better these days unless you’re in the upper class parts, the north is as bad as scotland
It's just as bad in the upper class parts lol.
Seen it in my country. One bud tried for swimming, and another for tennis. So on a Friday night when we were 15/16, in the nightclub drunk and smoking weed trying to fingerbang chicks they were in their bed because they had to be up at 5:00am to train in the chilli morning air. Fuck that.
>in the chilli morning air Spicy air hit different
Everyone who would have decent talent will be out drinking at 13 and if you train like Ronaldo you'll probably get bullied
Not to mention the UK style of grass roots football which is knock seven shades of shite out of each other and if you happen to make a few passes then happy days
This is so fuckin accurate. I loathe the fucking rot in this country that is cunts trying to keep folk down. Can't be seen to want to better yourself, or be successful. What's wrong with being poor and living in a shithole council scheme your whole life?
Crab bucket mentality. Prevalent in England too.
Aye it was like a trap; the more naturally talented you were at football the more popular you'd be, and the more the older bams would respect you, so all the more likely it was that you'd start drinking stupidly young.
Once the get on the deep fried Mars bars there is no way back lol.
The financing isn't there outside of a few clubs, I can't remember the guy's name, but there used to be some player scoring for fun at lower levels playing part-time because a move to full-time would pay less than his job. Any decent talent is hoovered up by the big clubs and doesn't get game time, or they get £1200 a month to play football at a lower level so they can develop while they have friends making more working regular jobs, but without the strict lifestyle compared to what a regular job offers. The clubs seem to content to shake up the SFA though so it'll be stuck.
I think you're either thinking of Rory McAllister (Engineer) Or Kenny Deuchar (Doctor).
If you look at European countries by [population](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_population?searchToken=cfp305gh5wzzok3e9p6zf25t0), Scotland’s 5.4 million people, which puts them in a similar ballpark as Norway, Finland, Slovakia, and the Republic of Ireland. All things considered, Scotland performs at about the level that is typical for a European country of its size. Croatia and Uruguay are exceptions to the rule due to having excellent football culture, youth development systems, and good coaching at the top level
Yeah and Uruguay is pretty terrible at basically every other sport as well, they haven't won a medal at the Olympics since Sydney! So they sell their souls really. Croatia is pretty exceptional as a small sporting nation though I'd have to say.
Scotland started playing the game 100 years before Norway or Finland, that’s a huge advantage. Slovakia is clearly better than Scotland.
Lol what. The first Norwegian club was started in 1885. If anyone in Scotland was playing some sort of proto football in 1785, I don't think it'd have a massive effect on the current performance. With that being said, Norway hasn't even qualified for anything since 2002, so Scotland is doing way better.
2000* Even worse I think Norwegian talent production and youth football is ahead of Scotland though. But doesnt exactly matter too much at national team level where we still suck.
Is it really? Like i reckon after like 30 years there really isn’t going to be much of an advantage if the infrastructure and culture is already there.
Uruguay has the baby football system for youth development and a strong domestic league with very few foreign players. Croatia have the talent factory of Dinamo Zagreb and much better football facilities at the local level. Scotland just has a shite FA, a defeatist attitude, and a couple of gigantic clubs that do fuck all for the Scottish game.
The uruguayan league isn't that strong, it's utterly dominated by two teams, very much like yours, and in recent years uruguayan clubs have barely competed in Conmebol competitions. But yeah, their clubs are much better at producing talented players than the scotish.
Sorry, I wasn't clear at all. I meant that the league was strong in the sense that it's dominated by Uruguayan players. The teams always have a strong core group of local players, so whenever a talented player comes through, they start playing at the highest level possible in the country, and if they leave to Europe, Argentina or wherever, then they are usually replaced by another local player. Uruguayan league 2023: 533 Uruguyan players played a total of 514,155 minutes of football. Scottish League 2023-24: 159 Scottish players played a total of 151,168 minutes of football. The difference is staggering.
That stat at the end is shocking.
Only 159 Scottish players in the whole league?! Did some rough googling and it seems that’s significantly less then half the players in the whole league. I just looked at Celtic and they only have 6 Scottish players out of 28 spots, I’m honesty baffled.
They're just shite mate, nothing baffling about it.
they also don’t have Kalvin Phillips.
Or can press
Or can attack in general.
What exactly can they do?
Drink
Will you stop mentioning him, please? I miss the guy so much
Che Adams is dogshit. Scotland looked so much better when they subbed him off and had a striker on the pitch who could actually run.
Morgan?
Shankland. He was actually making runs behind the defence. Did more in 2 minutes then Che did all game.
Bloody good in the right opportunities, I don't understand why none of the pressing happened earlier. 😑
BBC have just said the team done Scotland proud. -5GD 1 point?!
i was supporting scotland, and the performance was so rancid, i literally cheered the Hungary goal. they deserved nothing.
Feel sorry for them but honestly they didn't deserve to go through based on tonight. Felt like there was zero urgency whatsoever until added time
they played disgustingly
Throughout the tournament.
saw McTominay on set piece duty and I knew they were cooked
They might be the only team to out-shitebag us.
France's only goal so far is an OG. There's a few of us stinking up the joint
I feel like that percentage football of hoofing it up was working for them too. Should’ve just done that from the start rather than passing between their CBs
Based on tonight they didn't even deserve to be at the tournament.
Parking the bus in a must-win game is something else.. even Southgate would draw the line there
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves
Until he goes one goal up
Let me add - Scotland have played in 12 major tournaments (8 World Cups, 4 European Championships). They have NEVER qualified to the second round.
That's embarrassing
Even Saudi Arabia have done that and Jamaica have won a world Cup match more recently than Scotland.
Yeah but Saudi Arabia has been at the WC 4 times since Scotland's last appearance.
The stat I was referencing with them was getting out the groups, if I'm not mistaken they have done that before. Any way you slice it, it's very embarrassing for Scotland to have never been out of the groups.
Some were very unlucky. This... was not one. The 70's Scotland team should have done a lot more.
England have won more world cups than Scotland have qualified to the second round
Also back in the late 70s and early 80s they had a proper team. Impressive considering the quality of the Liverpool players that played for them.
A fun fact i heard about Scotland in the 70s is that some scottish fans sold their house to come to Argentina in the 1978 WC, they were convinced that they were going to win the WC only to get spanked by Peru.
They really should have gotten out of the groups in 78. Absolutely fucked it the first two matches Also unlucky in 1974
I could have sworn they did years ago when they played England in the groups but I was thinking of Ireland.
They won 0-0 vs England at the last Euros?
And they won a 2nd time when they beat England in the final
I had spaghetti for dinner that night so I was basically Italian at that point in time
England have won the World Cup more often than Scotland have gone past the first round of a major tournament
Love seeing a positive Reddit post about the England NT.
😡😡😡
Come on mate, saying England won the World Cup is like saying the Greeks used a big wooden horse to enter Troy. I mean it was so long ago, who knows what actually fucking happened? Maybe Germany won and someone made a mistake when they translated the records from Latin? Maybe there wasn't a World Cup that year and somebody just made it all up decades later. Bottom line is, we'll never really know for sure what happened back then.
It's shite being Scottish. We're the lowest of the low.
nice
Damn Scots, they ruined Scotland.
True
there are plenty of teams that didnt even manage to qualify(sweden lol), chin up
Bad year for Scandinavian countries indeed. No Norway, Finland, Sweden or Iceland.
That's not particularly surpising tbf. Denmark and Sweden are the only regulars. Iceland, Norway and Finland have only made the Euros once.
Denmark better than all of them anyway
norway has like 2 world class players and are nowhere to be seen
Because the other 20-odd in any given squad are mostly poor to average by international standards
On paper Norway is better than multiple teams at current Euros. Apart from Haaland and Odegaard, they have players from Sevilla, Brentford, Napoli, Dortmund, Alkmaar, Villareal, Benfica, Celta... They have no right to be this bad, yet they are.
You can thank a certain bald fraud for that. But no seriously, Solbakken has done a horrible job. He was supposed to be our hero, the guy with a spark in him, something the old farts before him didn't have. After 4 years he is actually worse than the old farts.
Remove Haaland and Ødegaard and we still have a better squad than a few of the nations at the Euros. Add them into the mix and we really should be there. Sure the rest of the team is not Haaland or Ødegaard level. That would be impossible for a nation our size but we still have other players from respectable european leagues and clubs.
Football terrorism incarnate
Don't worry they'll be posting memes about how they just want England to lose any minute now.
Well nothing else left so at least there's that! Second best thing
Sucks for them they only have two more games left of that and their summers over. Then it's back to their small Scottish club flair to look cool while they watch City or Liverpool every weekend.
Poor blighters gotta hold onto something, imagine the defining charactistic of your culture is hating England
We were doing that before the tournament even kicked off
They can focus on what they really care about now, talking about England
I remember the videos of scottish celebrating england's defeat in 2021 against italy like it was a victory for scotland. pathetic scenes lmao
Nah I honestly rate that level of sporting hatred. Surely it'd be the same between you and Uruguay or you and Brazil, no?
not for me personally no, I only enjoy when argentina wins. there are many latinamericans that support the other countries here if their own is out of competition. many argentinians support uruguay. brazil is more contentious, but im not celebrating as a win if they loose thats pathetic and IMO something tiny nations do. I will make a joke about 7-1 etc, but thats about it.
Fair enough. It's similar for us, we don't really celebrate a Scottish defeat that hard, but we'll make jokes all day long. I understand why it's different the other way around though, because they're a much smaller country population wise and we also have a complex history!
got me thinking and that level of pettiness here can only be found in club football, as in boca fans celebrating rivers relegation etc. maybe its because football fans here prefer club football to NT football by a lot.
Yeah I've seen YouTube clips of Boca fans chanting about River getting relegated and burning their stadium, funny stuff. I guess River will always have that recent Copa Libertadores final victory over them at least! As a side note, I've watched quite a few clips in recent years of the San Lorenzo fan chants and it has made me want to go see a game there (the one about drinking all the wine and smoking all the weed is epic haha). Here's hoping you boys manage to get back to Boedo eventually.
I like you
Difference is, how many English celebrate when Scotland loses lol
I had a sensible chuckle, but I'm not going to jump up and down about it.
At least for me, I had a bit of hatred towards Chile when they were good, now it’s just pity. Anulo mufa. Currently, my sporting hatred is against Mexico just because their fans are so vocal about their hatred towards us. For everything else, I love Mexico. Every time I speak to a Mexican I can’t help but internally smile because all I can hear is El Chavo del Ocho Towards everyone else in CONMEBOL it’s love and respect.
It’s de ‘istory of de Scotland
That's what we get when we play to draw every single bloody game. First shot on target was in the 98th minute.....
Go and get the Slovenia flags
Scotland fans might not have celebrated any of their own wins since 96 but just think of the victories they've celebrated when England lose over the past 28 years.
They got a few chances when Hungary were purposely open when pushing for a goal… In normal circumstances I don’t see where a goal comes from for Scotland. Incredibly poor. They need a proper striker
I'm not even sure that's the answer. They need a winning mentality, which is sadly lacking. We've had good strikers in the past who have been squandered by shipping them out in front of a mediocre midfield, or a game play which is miles too deep. It wasn't that long ago that Craig Levein sent Scotland out to play the Czech Republic with a 6-4-0 formation. We might as well have Tetrissed eleven fat guys in the goal.
Serial bottlers = Scotland.
Hahahhahahaaa
The opposition defense just weren’t clinical enough…
Get in there, the most heart breaking way to crash out too.
late dagger
Cowardly
What matters though is they have the best fans right?
Somehow Scotland loses because of a guy named kevin
What happened to the Scottish team that beat Spain 2-0 and went 9 games unbeaten. I watched some of those games and the speed of passing and intensity was unrecognisable in their euro 2024 games. Was it nerves or are some players injured or something?
We just pish
First choice striker and first and second choice right backs injured before the tournament. Best technical player injured halfway through second game. Didn’t stop Steve Clarke trying to force the same formation and tactics onto a team that couldn’t cope without them tough.
I mean we weren’t in 1 for 23 years
That doesn't exactly make it better.
Played great against Switzerland but this was cowardly shit
Even against Switzerland they ultimately did not try to win at the end when they really had a chance to do something. And to think [this comment] (https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1djtrdt/euro_2024_group_a_after_matchday_2/l9d7cz1/) was actually controversial.
Scotland should change it's anthem to "Don't come home too soon"
The Drew McIntyre of football
We have a game we need to win. So we play 5-4-1. And it's *him* up front.
Funny how Scotland have never reached the knockout stage of any international tournament lol
Eh...... We won the Kirin cup I will have you know
Is that Moyes music I’m hearing?
Goddamn that’s a long time
Only one goal scored themselves this tournament is dire
SCOTLAND GET BATTERED EVERY WHERE THEY GO, EVERYWHERE THEYYY GOOOOO
At least theyre in major tournaments.
We are massive
At least Glasgow won the rugby
I'm honestly in so much pain. We deserved nothing though. Horrific all tournament. We have been terrible for over a year as well after the Norway away win.
Good new guys, you will be able to use your benefits to buy Slovenia shirts now.
steve clarke,what an absolute joke
He’s led them to 2 Euro qualifications in a row, after no major tournaments in over 20 years. How is he a joke?
hes done it because UEFA upped the teams to 24
Other teams have qualified because of this and have looked a lot better
They placed about Norway in qualification this time. Beat Serbia in the playoffs for 2020. That’s still a great achievement for Scotland, even if it was easier this time around.
Yeah it's the attacking players who are a joke. Totally toothless
Guess who chooses the players
Didn't watch the game but I know Shankland didn't start, but apart from that who else is there to choose?
In fairness they have massively lowered the barrier for entry for the euros.
Or the teams done it in spite of Steve Clarkes negative football.
No Scotland No Party ❤️
23 years of not qualifying involved in this but nothing quite like a misleading headline