Watching the world cup got me thinking about our own national team and our demise since the last tournament we qualified for (France ’98) 20 years FFS!!!! . The English last night also epitomized our failures in many ways. What’s branded as the “best” league in the world, you would think that the national team representing that league would be one of the favourites to win a world cup, all 11 English players on the park last night play within England. The Scottish team seem to have a similar characteristic, 18 of our 19 man current squad all play in Britain.

Then you see a country like Croatia (or even Belgium and Portugal) very few of their players actually play in the home country, they actually span the continent. Croatia team from last night, experience from 6 different leagues represented:

1 FRA - 2 SPA 3 ENG 4 TUR 5 ITA
6 SPA 7 ITA 8 GER 9 SPA
10 ITA 11 ITA

Perhaps our downfall is due to the lack of players we have playing overseas?

Is it a laziness thing with Language and they are just comfortable with a career in England, Scotland, Wales etc.? You see many Scottish guys, they play for a few years in Scotland, go down south, fail (or make a bit of money and reach their limit), then come back up the road. What if our players opted for a change of scenery to a Girona, Espanyol, Levante kind of team, or a half-decent Dutch team, or going anywhere in Europe to gain a different culture of football? Surely this would benefit the national team in the long run and also the player as an individual. I think some of our boys are selling themselves short if the only target they have is playing in England. I see the boy Ryan Gauld is still playing in Portugal, maybe we need more players following his path rather than the English championship path.