Chance or Design Scotland's Game

It's unbelievable in Bratislava.

The soul of Scottish football still hangs in the balance,

torn between the passion of the fans and commercial pressures,

unsure which way to turn and lacking in confidence.

I think, to perform at the highest level in any sport,

you've got to have an incredible amount of self-belief.

Maybe right now we are a wee bit short of that in the football world.

If you looked at the cold, harsh reality of the quality fare

that's being served up, I think you would go and jump in the Clyde.

Success lies in the past...

..as experts are always quick to point out.

There was a time, if the Scottish squad walked down Piccadilly Circus,

everyone would have known who they were.

If the current Scottish squad walked down Sauchiehall Street,

I'm not sure most of them would be instantly recognisable.

But one thing is clear...

We need to change. We need to do things differently.

..everyone has an opinion.

It's almost inevitable that a country of 5.3 million people

is going to suffer amongst the giants.

It's a minnow in terms of competitive capacity.

Blueprints, reports, commissions set up.

You don't need a blueprint. Go to Georgia and beat them.

The same questions have been raised over and over again -

maybe it's time for some new ones...

..and to face up to the possibility that, for Scotland,

the game may well be up.

The fans are the lifeblood of the game and the sooner that the people

in football realise this, the better it will be for each individual club.

Jock Stein, one of the greatest football managers of all time,

understood what the game meant to supporters.

His comments, made 50 years ago, are just as relevant today.

Football without fans is nothing.

It can be the greatest game in the world -

if there are no people there to watch it, it becomes nothing.

Fans support their teams from cradle to grave,

often unquestioningly,

but with an intense devotion.

HE SHOUTS

THEY CHANT

I think, with football, there's a kind of risk-benefit equation

in that, emotionally,

you have to invest in it to get something out of it,

and so people can become too emotionally invested in it.

At the same time, if you don't invest in it emotionally,

you don't feel anything when your team wins,

you don't feel anything when your team loses.

The thing about the fan, I suppose is, if I'm a fan,

I don't necessarily change my team.

There's a way in which, over the years,

I think Scottish football probably has exploited that.

They have taken them, to some extent, for granted,

but they also realise that the fan has an intensity

and an emotional engagement,

which you can transfer financially, into a financial engagement,

but you need to understand that relationship with them.

It's a relationship that relies on long-term loyalty,

but the game is in decline.

While committed fans will hang on,

clubs often struggle to find new fans in the same numbers...

HE SCREAMS

..with the same level of commitment.

HE SCREAMS

As money and media become more and more important to the game,

Scottish football is struggling to find its place

and draw a big enough audience in a globalised market,

where there is already endless choice.

Not so long ago, it was a much simpler world.

Highlight of recent wartime sport

was the international at Hampden Park.

133,000 people watched and certainly got their money's worth.

The communities that provided those crowds have gone,

but football still draws loyal fans.

Scotland proportionately still has more people going to football

matches week in, week out, than any other nation in Europe.

Whether it still means what it meant in the 1930s, the 1940s,

I seriously doubt, because society has changed,

the workplace has changed,

the patterns of how we receive and gain entertainment has changed,

and the loyalty that people felt to a single community,

that they would turn up every Saturday supporting the community,

has changed as well.

Fans do still turn up to the big occasions,

but the more mundane routine of Scottish club football

has, in many cases, seen crowds decline...

..just as the commercial pressures have increased.

Football has always been a battleground.

First of all, it's actually a business, but also it has a kind of

profile, so you have television,

you have club owners, who are in this very strange position

where they rely on everybody because they play in a league,

but they're also in tense rivalry with those people in the league,

so, you know, there are kind of alliances that are put together,

but actually they quite often fall apart very quickly.

And then, in addition to that, you have the fans,

who don't always speak with one voice,

you have sponsors, you have a whole range of stakeholders...

I suppose, and we wouldn't have used that word in 1985,

but that would be how we would describe them now.

And the problem, quite often,

is that the agendas are often in conflict

in terms of trying to pull those groups together.

CHEERING

Everyone agrees on one thing...

..when the game is good...

..it's truly beautiful.

COMMENTATOR: That's Lorimer.

Oh! What a shot that way.

Law... And a goal!

There's Kenny Dalglish in there.

What a goal! Oh, yes!

Scotland had a constant supply of great players in the '60s,

'70s, '80s, but, with one or two exceptions,

that era is long gone.

Since the inception of the Champions League in 1993,

over 400 players have been awarded winners medals -

only two of them were Scots.

Darren Fletcher for Manchester United

and Paul Lambert with Borussia Dortmund.

In 1996, Lambert attended trials in Germany,

where he was signed by the club.

There he discovered just what made German teams so successful.

It was that era where the Germans were really prominent in

European football -

Schalke had won the UEFA Cup,

Germany had won the Euro '96.

Dortmund were Champions League winners.

So, German football at that time was powerful.

I was under no illusions how hard this was going to be.

Coming from Scotland, you have to have a mind-set of -

you have to change.

You have to adapt to the Germans, not them adapting to me.

I had to adapt to them.

It becomes a job.

You very rarely get a day off.

You're always training.

I fell into a right good side.

The Dortmund lads, every one of them were...

were excellent with me, so...

You've got to want to do it

and you've got to have a bit of luck on your side to get it.

The Dortmund team was full of established and rising stars,

including experienced goalkeeper Stefan Klaas.

So I was on the back of the bus and you could hear a pin drop.

Stefan Klaus said to me, "How are you feeling?"

I went, "Pff, I'm all right." I said, "What about you?"

And I could see his leg...

kind of tapping, you know?

I went, "Are you all right?"

He went, "Yeah, I'm all right, but look at everybody else."

And that is guys that had won the World Cup

and European Championships,

and Bundesliga titles and Serie A titles.

And I was like, "Oof, we have to win.

"We have to win."

One of the biggest names and most talented players in the

history of football was on the opposing team that night -

Zinedine Zidane.

My job was, more or less, to nullify Zidane on that front.

Lambert's dedication and fitness,

honed by a punishing German training regime, paid dividends.

Karl Riedle scored two great goals.

Lars Ricken scored one of the best goals, I think,

in Champions League football with his first touch of the ball.

As soon as that goal went in, I knew it was finished.

And then, after the game, it was just mayhem.

CHANTING: Paul Lambert!

Brilliant occasion, that. I mean, to win the Champions League is...

You don't realise how big that is until you actually win it.

There's no two ways about it.

You became...super-confident.

You thought you were unbeatable...

And... And that's what it taught you.

And people would say, "What's the German attack like?"

That's exactly what it's like. "We'll win."

Anybody I played against after that, it didn't faze me one bit.

He brought that confidence back to Scotland when

he returned to play for Celtic,

helping them reach the 2003 UEFA Cup final in Seville,

where they played Porto.

CHANTING

70-odd-thousand Celtic fans descended upon Seville,

not all were able to get tickets for the game,

but it was a sight to behold.

You could have played in any stadium in the world that night...

and I will guarantee it would have been 80% full of Celtic fans.

Nothing can take away from the fact that we lost the game,

we lost the match in extra time to a very, very poor goal, and...

And that was a massive disappointment.

I think probably the biggest regret I've got in football is not

winning that trophy that year.

It would have been great to sit here with two winner European medals.

That's... That's a disappointment.

They may have lost that match,

but Paul Lambert had demonstrated the ability to play consistently

at the highest level, a rare trait in the Scottish game.

One man willing to embrace techniques,

who also came with a reputation for physical fitness,

was former Scotland international John Collins.

Collins had played in the French league for Monaco.

I look back now and it was probably the best move of my life...

not just in football, but in seeing things from a different perspective.

From a football and a training point of view,

it was the hardest two years of my career.

Morning, afternoon, double sessions regularly, training camps...

It was seven days a week.

Strict diets, body fats...

But, when you want to get to the top and stay at the top,

that's why they produce champions - they do it right.

They train properly.

In 2006, John Collins was appointed Hibs manager.

His ambition was to bring the work rate of the players up to the

level he had experienced in France.

Early the next year, his team reached the league cup final.

In the weeks before the match,

he was keen to push the players to an even higher level of fitness.

I went to the board and said, "Look, can I get a training camp?"

For me, it was the perfect five days preparing.

But some of the players weren't happy.

They thought they were going on a stag night.

They thought.... They wanted nights out.

But Scottish training camp and a French training camp is

worlds apart...

And there was only one way I was going to do it,

and that was the way I did it as a player.

The training camp was a huge success.

What do you want from a training camp? No injuries,

come back ready to go,

and that's exactly what we got. No injuries.

Came back for the cup final

and they put on the performance of their lives.

CHEERING

I was proved it was the right way to do it. We played terrific.

COMMENTATOR: And Steven Fletcher nets the fifth goal.

Very rarely you win a cup final with five goals...

and a terrific performance.

It was a special moment,

maybe the most special moment of my career, I've got to say...certainly.

# My tears are crying

# My tears are crying... #

Hampden, Hibs fans singing Sunshine On Leith at the end of it.

I'd lost my father a couple of months before,

so it was a sad time, but I was on the park thinking

he would have loved to have been there singing and hearing that.

That would have been special.

For me, that was... It was a great feeling.

Despite that success,

Collins found himself in the middle of a player rebellion.

They had complained to the club chairman about the training regime.

Talk of unrest in the Hibs dressing room persists tonight,

despite manager John Collins'

attempt to calm the waters.

There was a few complaints...

They didn't get their own way.

There... There's two ways of looking at it, of course.

You've got to try and keep players happy,

but I think it's more important

that the players keep the coach and staff happy.

But...trust me...

The way I did it was what I thought was right...

for them, as individual players, to make them better young players.

He had taken the team to their first trophy for 16 years,

but the damage was done.

Collins departed Hibernian,

saying he had achieved all he could.

For the game to survive at the top level,

there needs to be a continual supply of good young players ready

to move into the elite game.

If that flow stops then that failure will soon become apparent.

COMMENTATOR: Oh, it's a great goal...!

It has now been almost two decades since Scotland

have competed at a World Cup or European Championship.

Even as far back as 1982, when the international team had

qualified to play at the World Cup in Spain

and the youth teams were winning at international level,

the warnings were already there.

Andy Roxburgh won the European Under-18 Championship

and he had the Under-20 team in the final of the World Cup.

I had a team in the final, final, of the World Cup...

Under-16.

So, at that era, the end of the '80s, start of the '90s,

we were as good as any country in the world

at youth level, so what's gone wrong?

Quite a number of things, I think.

Andy Roxburgh, the director of football at the time,

and successful manager of Scotland international youth teams,

had been studying the game closely.

In the old days, we produced players almost by chance...

because they would come out of this fantastic football

environment that we had. Everybody was passionate about the game,

everybody played in the streets,

everybody played in their school teams, etc, etc.

What's happened now is that that natural environment has changed -

it's had to become artificially, if you like, created.

The question is - chance or design?

And I would say that the Scottish environment

in the past was more about chance.

The talent's appeared, but now it's got to be about design

because they're no longer in the streets any more,

it's not going to happen the way it did in the past.

Way back in 1982, I worked with Andy Roxburgh.

He asked me to read this report that he was doing

and in his report, he stated that

the standard of players coming in to the professional game

in Scotland would drop

and that the numbers that were going to come in

to the professional game would drop as well.

And it always stuck with me cos I disagreed with it,

but he was correct and I was wrong.

Grassroots youth coaches are the most important coaches

in this country, so we've got to get better on the training pitch.

What are we doing? Are we doing enough working with the ball?

And I don't mean one ball between 11 kids,

I mean one ball, one kid to start with, from a young age.

You can have all the tactics in the world, but if you've not

got the fundamental skills of top-level players,

then no coach in the world is going to win matches.

On you go, Colin, on you go! Yeah!

We've got to get back to ball mastery and, for me,

that's the secret of developing world-class players.

It's still a game at grassroots level.

If there's mass participation, that's the key.

The talents are a by-product of a good grassroots programme because

the grassroots is your future fans, referees, administrators - the lot.

And you hope that you'll spot, in the grassroots,

one or two that you can put into your elite programmes.

Now, it's the elite youth level that's the key thing here.

And in places like in Spain, in Germany,

I mean they've got them in the elite programmes

when they're six, seven, eight, nine, ten years old.

It's only about 11, 12, 13 years old

that they would go into the clubs, into the professional game.

You have to work really hard at it, of course, because you have

to work so hard in the academy getting everything right,

firstly, getting the scouting right,

so that we get the best players in at the bottom end.

We're going down the age groups far enough to get the young players

connected with the club at seven, eight, nine years of age.

Now, it seems an awful long way away from first-team football,

but it's proven that if you get them into your system early enough,

they'll generally stay through to the point

where they reach the first team.

But it's about more than the numbers

or the age that the players start at.

The only way to compete is to make sure that we're as good

as the Germans and the Spanish when it comes to youth development

and then that the players are exposed to the highest level

of club competition they can be exposed to.

We have to improve the quality of challenge.

I see some of the Rangers youth teams play. How'd they get on?

They won 8-1 and they won 10-2. There's no challenge.

I refer back to the NextGen tournament where Man City had...

They were fantastic by the way,

magnificent approach to youth development.

But they had won 8-1 on the Wednesday or the previous weekend

and they played six and lost six in Europe.

I think the following year, they played six and lost five.

But they realised that that's the level they have to get to.

The quality of challenge was appropriate,

it really did take the players out of their comfort zones and the staff

- they learned from their mistakes.

And then, I think, three years later in the FA Youth Cup final,

against Chelsea, so they learned.

We have to do the same up here in Scotland -

we have to improve the quality of challenge

for our best young players.

Our elite young players must be offered that type of opportunity

and right now, I don't see it.

I think the younger ones are kind of spoiled now,

everything's put on a plate for them.

We had to graft.

I played reserve team football at 15 against men

and, physically, you couldn't handle it

but, mentally, you grew stronger and you grew stronger quicker.

If you play underage football now, you go under-15,

under-16, under-17 and I think it's under-20 now

and you don't really play against men

until you go and play in the first team.

You're four or five years behind what we were in terms of mentality.

I'm not saying ability-wise, I'm not talking about ability-wise,

I just think it's a mentality.

And you either grew up or you got shipped out - as simple as that.

One club which has recognised

that it's about more than just coaching

and that it's also about giving young players

experience on the pitch is Hamilton...

and they have seen their policy pay off

with two of the highest achieving players of the current generation -

James McCarthy and James McArthur.

I think Hamilton have probably,

for me, got the best youth set-up in Scotland.

The reason being is the fact that they're willing

to give young players a chance, you know,

and they'll play young players,

they'll put them into the first team at a really early age

and hope that they're good enough to go and compete

and do well and not only that, but stick by them

and stick with them over that period of time.

CHEERING

The two James's that have moved on, in particular,

they're certainly the trailblazers for that

and they've set the standard for everybody else.

I remember we trained at Dalziel Park

and we got a minibus from Hamilton across to Motherwell, trained there,

and it could be mid-winter - raining, sleet -

we're all on the bus waiting to go back home for a shower.

Who are we waiting on?

James McArthur, James McCarthy.

They're still on the pitch, still working, still passing,

first to ask an experienced guy a question -

what are we doing here? Why are we doing this?

Young players will surprise you.

They'll surprise you in how well they adapt.

They learn quickly,

they problem-solve quickly and they get better quickly.

After they came through the youth set-up at Hamilton,

they both played for Wigan

before McCarthy moved on to Everton and McArthur to Crystal Palace -

the type of move to the English Premier League

once common for Scottish footballers that is now a rare occurrence.

My belief is if you're good enough, you're old enough,

and that means that if there's a 16-year-old good enough, he goes in.

Clubs can be a bit more brave in terms of that.

Give them a chance, throw them in -

what's the worst thing that can happen?

In France, Gerard Houllier made a rule -

no top division club in France

can sign more than 20 players

over the age of 21.

If you want more players, they've got to be under 21.

At Monaco, they got three injured, two suspended,

Tigana was the manager,

and they were employing this rule.

They brought in two 17-year-olds to the first team -

Thierry Henry and Trezeguet.

And two years later, they were in the French national team.

Gillespie's free kick. Gough is up there with him.

There's McCoist.

Now Johnston!

Yes, Scotland have scored!

In 1990, we beat France to get to the World Cup.

In 1994, France didn't qualify to go to America.

They won it in 1998.

The reason, I think, is that they had this rule.

Every club was forced to promote young players and not bring in

old ones and buy foreign ones, the way we've been doing in Scotland.

So I went to an SFA meeting,

it was called the Football Development Committee, and I said

to them, "Here's a rule, it's not original,

"Gerard Houllier introduced it in France - do that in Scotland."

And the representatives from Celtic and Rangers voted against

and the proposal was never instigated.

The Old Firm argued that the youth rule would put them

at a disadvantage in Europe.

Is there a hat-trick in this match?

There is!

A short-term approach that has not yielded success

as Scottish teams regularly exit Europe

in the early qualifying rounds every year.

It's unbelievable in Bratislava.

It's Artmedia Bratislava 5, Celtic 0.

By continuing with the same set-up,

Scottish teams still continue to fail on the international stage.

As the men's game falters, the women's team is on the rise.

I'm happy with the fact that when we do get people at our games

and when we do expose people to women's football,

they appreciate it for the spectacle and the product that it is

which is not the men's game - it's football, but it's football

in a different way and I do think that we have a lot to give.

I think we've got a tremendous amount to give to football

in this country and I think what we can offer and what we can give,

both internationally and domestically,

would make this game stronger in Scotland.

Society may have changed, but not everyone was keeping up.

In September 2013,

BBC Scotland presenter and tabloid journalist Tam Cowan

wrote a scathing article about the Scotland women's team.

I've written newspaper columns for 25 years.

I thought it'd be more sexist that, for a quarter of a century,

I had been taking the piss out of men and male footballers

and not once had I had a go at the women.

I thought that was very sexist.

And then once I tried to redress the balance, what happens?

My life gets turned upside down.

It was horrible at the time, I'll no' tell you a lie, it was horrible.

I remember, when I was stood down that day,

coming in here at the BBC and got

told what action was being taken

and then I left just before 12:00,

before we were due to go on air,

with my jacket over my shoulder and the bottom lip trembling.

The article provoked a massive outcry and Tam was suspended

by the BBC for two weeks from his presenting job on Off The Ball.

I think he misjudged the audience, he misjudged the readership,

he misjudged the reaction it was going to have

because the people that perhaps before would have said,

"Ah, it's just a bit of banter, it's just a bit of this" actually said,

"Well, hang on a second, that's too far. That's not the case."

So, quite a pivotal moment in terms of changing the way in which

people were seeing women's football and letting us know that they

were seeing it in a different way as well.

Suddenly, on the sports fields, there were women centre-forwards,

goalkeepers, right-backs, left-backs, and better halves.

Women had spotted their goals and were now all-out to get them.

The first official women's game took place in 1881 at Easter Road -

Scotland vs England.

The return leg was played in Glasgow

and was abandoned due to a riot by the predominately male spectators.

This led to the game being banned in Scotland.

But during the First World War, the women's game blossomed.

A Britain where now the women were taking the places of the men.

A Britain at last fully gearing herself for modern war.

Munitionettes were allowed to and even encouraged to play.

Official games were played to raise money for charity.

In 1918, Scotland vs England

attracted a 7,000-strong crowd at Celtic Park.

When the war ended,

the women were expected to return to their pre-war lives.

Their chance to play was short-lived.

The SFA banned women's football from men's clubs.

It wasn't until the early 1970s that that ban was effectively lifted.

I think that if you look at some women's football,

you see a number of quite significant changes that are

going on in Scottish society more generally.

Clearly, there's the kind of pre-eminence of women

within Scottish public life,

the fact that our First Minister is a woman,

the fact that across a whole range of our national bodies,

women are now pre-eminent or prominent

within the development of our culture.

You could not write the paradox and irony of that in

a Scotland that has placed so much emphasis on maleness,

on industrial working-class, it's lassies that are better.

We're now in the fascinating moment where the women,

in terms of their ability to qualify for European tournaments,

are well in advance of the men and may well actually be

the next national team to go to a major tournament.

The Scottish international team play football at the elite level

and includes players like Kim Little,

who is one of the best female players in the world.

Yet the women's game still receives very little acclaim.

Well, unfortunately, it's not given enough space

if there's not a big glamour game ahead.

It's got a long way to go in that respect, but that's not the fault

of women's football, that's the fault of the media.

But you won't get the media exposure unless you've got the people

turning up at games, so it's a difficult one to reconcile.

You can have the best quality game ever,

you can have the most exciting, most thrilling,

some of the best skills, some of the best players...

I mean, I could have a World Cup-winning team playing,

but if we don't have any media there, if nobody's seeing it,

then, you know, it won't increase.

Football is now unashamedly big business.

Media rights and an increase in technology over the last decades

have given football a global platform

and access to a worldwide audience,

giving them a chance to increase their flow of money.

Scotland's inability to stand out or compete in this global context

means they remain locked out of the levels of money

that would help them compete.

It's a cycle - the longer they are excluded,

the harder it is to get back in.

Whenever people say it's not about money, it is.

Whether it's facilities or equipment or tours,

or whatever it may be, investment is key.

Sky are paying ?10.2 million per game

for English Premier games.

The rights fee they will pay Scottish football

is the equivalent of two English Premier games.

Promotion to the Premier League

can be worth ?100-200 million to a club.

I left Hearts in 1997,

and, at that time,

the top salary at the club was round about ?1,000 per week...

And...when I returned in 2000...

we had four players earning ?10,000 per week.

It wasn't just Hearts.

It was symptomatic of everything that was going on

in Scottish football at the time.

Dundee Utd, Aberdeen,

Dunfermline, Livingston,

Kilmarnock....

They were all spending way, way beyond their means.

There's a direct correlation between finance and success.

You look at, for example,

at the top of the pile in Scotland just now, Celtic...

Their current budget would be probably

a mid-table Championship budget in England.

The differences in funding

between football in Scotland and England

have never been more stark.

Financially we cannot compete no longer

with some of the big leagues,

so we have to produce the best young players we possibly can,

and, at this moment in time,

it doesn't appear we're doing so,

so something needs to change.

Is Scotland comparing itself to the wrong country?

Would Scotland do better comparing itself to one of a similar size?

The club system is at the heart of the whole game,

but the current set-up dates from a different era.

We have 42 clubs in our leagues for a population of five million.

By any standard, that's too many.

Two Inverness teams - Caledonian and Inverness Thistle -

had been trying to gain entry to the Scottish leagues since the 1970s.

In 1994, it was made clear that, if the clubs merged,

they would stand a much better chance of being admitted.

But many feared that this meant the loss of both clubs

and their traditions.

We knew we could progress if given the opportunity.

We made a decision at Caledonian FC, where I was playing at the time,

to involve the players, because the players wanted to do it.

We went along to meetings, got involved in the voting process,

which wasn't good. It got really nasty.

You know, the authorities, the police were involved

at a couple of the meetings.

I remember one of the players getting called Judas

as he walked in. He was a wee bit late for the meeting.

Our own fans at the time at Caley,

who were die-hard Caledonian fans in the Highland League,

were dead against the process.

Their argument was that they felt Caledonian

should have gone it alone.

I'm not interested in Inverness Thistle.

Caley Football Club are the biggest club in the north of Scotland.

It's a disgrace we've not been in the Scottish leagues before, eh?

Yes votes - apply for membership and merge with Thistle Football Club

is 55...

the No vote is 50.

Caley were a bigger club at the time with a bigger support

and a better infrastructure,

so they felt they should have gone alone.

REPORTER: Many younger supporters left the meeting in disgust.

One tore up his season ticket.

Paid for a vote. They sold me down the river.

Hundred years down the tubes.

Hundred years gone. For what?

Well, I'm not going to go and watch Caley again.

It was Caley's older members who had voted for change.

Inverness will have a good football team.

Maybe I'll not see it, but maybe my grandsons,

my grandchildren will see it.

We did see the football sense in it,

that there would be a stronger club to go forward

and hopefully develop through the leagues.

First out the hat came Caledonian...Inverness Thistle.

Second out of the hat

was Ross County.

New club Inverness Caledonian Thistle did make their way

through the leagues, and, when they were in the First Division,

they became famous after a remarkable result

in the Scottish Cup against Celtic.

Inverness Caley Thistle have made history!

The biggest upset in Scottish Football for 33 years.

CHARLIE CHRISTIE: '..which I still feel to this day

'is as significant an evening

'for the club as any other in our history,

'and that firmly put our name on the football map.

'The press coverage that we got in the aftermath of that game...

'I think everyone realised then that the potential was there

and that this club were going places.

The gamble paid off.

Inverness Caledonian Thistle made the journey

from the Highland League to the SPL,

and their story didn't end there.

And James Vincent might have won the cup for Caley Thistle!

21 years after getting into the Scottish League set-up,

they won the Scottish Cup.

Inverness's success is an argument in favour of mergers...

given the right circumstances.

Keep your predator hands off Hibernian Football Club.

CHEERING

Mergers don't work for every club.

In 1990, a proposed Hearts/Hibs merger

was always seen more as a takeover,

while the Dundee and Dundee Utd one

was called off at the last minute.

There are so many factors involved -

the size of the fanbases,

historic relationship between the clubs,

location,

and the risks versus the potential rewards.

It makes total sense for the Angus clubs, for example.

You know, I look at the clubs... I've played there...

I've been to these clubs.

No disrespect, but they must find it really difficult

to make ends meet and to survive.

The Arbroaths, the Brechins, the Forfars...

There's so many clubs in the same area.

And they produce good players and always have done.

But to progress through the leagues...

I don't think any of these clubs in my time in the last two decades

have been full-time clubs.

You imagine the strength they might have if they did merge.

20 teams could have taken the game forward with common standards,

common ideas and a way to address

the fundamental issues that the game faced.

I think the fanbase of these clubs would grow.

You'd lose some, without a doubt.

There would be the die-hards who wouldn't be interested -

same as we lost some fans at Inverness, disappointingly -

but I'm quite sure you'd replace them with new fans.

Fans might not want to be involved in every aspect of their clubs,

but they definitely want to have their say.

In the late 1980s, fans became increasingly frustrated

with how the mainstream media was covering the game

and not representing their views.

Supporters decided to produce an alternative story,

and so the Scottish football fanzine was born.

Well, the fanzines at the time... Things like The Absolute Game,

Not The View, The Final Hurdle at Tannadice...

What they did was they democratised football.

They gave the ordinary football fan a voice.

Previously, if a football fan wanted to have a say,

he could maybe write into the local newspaper

or something like that, you know?

We loved those fanzines. We loved writing them,

we loved reading each other's fanzines,

because we were seeing the way fans really viewed the game

and how they talked about it,

but, most importantly, how they joked about it.

It was a chance to sit down and write fairly lengthy articles

in a fanzine which addressed a lot of things which

mainstream media were perhaps not addressing, so it...

It was the first starting of breaking that almost sacred mould

between the mainstream media guys, the journalists, and the clubs.

There was a crack in the door there

and the fanzine movement pushed that door ajar.

Obviously, you require a lot of self-deprecatory humour

if you're the supporter of an unsuccessful team

and a frequently unsuccessful country...

in football terms.

It broke down the barriers between clubs and fans.

It was no longer the case of...

"Turn up, pay your money and shut up.

"We'll tell you what's good for you."

You finally had the fans saying, "You know what? We've got a say."

I mean, the Final Hurdle regularly outsold the official programme.

Football coverage was always really po-faced.

If something untoward happened,

we'd always talk about 'bringing the game into disrepute'.

You know, if there's some big bust-up,

we've got to talk about it in the most sombre terms in the media,

as if it was some national disgrace,

whereas the fans love it, and they love making jokes about it.

You're tuned to Off The Ball,

the most petty and ill-informed sports programme on radio.

Another product of the fanzine movement

was BBC Radio Scotland's Off The Ball -

an iconic programme dealing with football,

politics and popular culture.

Refs versus the fans,

Periscope - how I saw the game,

and what does Dundee Utd mean to you?

I'm Stuart Cosgrove, he's Tam Cowan...

'Our slogan is

"the most petty and ill-informed sports programme on radio",

and we did that almost as a kind of antidote

to something that you see all the time in the media,

which is journalists claiming that they're informed.

How many times have you heard people turning round and saying,

"My sources tell me that..."

"Don't worry - he'll be the manager by tomorrow.

"I can assure you. I have close sources at the club."

And they try to convey to the reader

that they're more informed than anybody.

We wanted to go in a different direction and say,

"We don't know anything. We're ill-informed.

"We actually get everything wrong.

"We're football fans and therefore we are hypocrites.

"We see wrong in every other club in Scotland

"and only our club is right."

So football fans are hypocrites.

The show reflects that hypocrisy.

We've always tried to have the spirit of the show as such that

it would hopefully sound like guys in the pub, talking about fitbaw.

He held his phone up behind the goals

to film it on his phone...

And this wasnae some old crackly image. No, no.

It didnae look awful. No, it was a very decent image.

And 25,000 Rangers fans tuned into it.

The innovation this time was not that it was being recorded,

but that it was being live streamed.

No, the guy said that his arm was ag... I mean, what an effort.

I've noticed in the last few years -

I mean, certainly in the period of time

that we've been doing Off The Ball -

that supporting some of the smaller teams

has been almost a kind of counter culture

in Scottish football.

We get tremendous support from the fans of the kind of 'other' teams,

as it were.

And often when the show is at its most popular

is when it's having digs at the hypocrisies and delusions

of the bigger teams.

I like the Periscope innovation,

and it allows people who are not at the game to see it,

but I'm still a great believer that,

if you're a football fan and you can reach the game

and you've got the money and you can get there,

go to the game. It's always better.

The arrival of social media gave fans even more ways

to have their voices heard,

changing forever the way the game is reported, consumed and shared.

One of the biggest differences between the fanzine movement was...

You know, it took a bit of time to sit down, type the fanzine out,

get it off to the printers and all the rest of it...

Then it would hit the streets a week after it was printed.

I mean, nowadays, and even into the message board days,

everything was then instantaneous, you know?

The media's no longer the "inside track"

which it once would claim to be

so if I wanted to know what was happening,

I needed to read a particular journalist

or hear a particular broadcaster

who I know had good access.

Those days don't exist, those days are gone now so the media

has become more complicated and more layered.

Everything is so immediate, you know.

Whereas before you used to have to wait for your morning paper

to find out what happened, now all of the information is there,

almost sometimes before the players have left the field.

It's kind of like supping with the devil, isn't it?

You need a long spoon. It's...

Areas that were once the haunt of the madman

and the highly articulate and sometimes they both converge.

Somebody described, for example, social media,

Twitter to me as a bit like entering a pub at times

when everybody's on their ninth pint, you know,

and everybody's got an opinion

and so we have this kind of age of a rush to judgment.

It's a way that football supporters interact with clubs,

they interact with players, they interact with management

and it kind of roots us closer to them as well

so I'm a strong advocate of it.

If it's used correctly and it's used in a productive way,

I think it's a good thing.

You could put boards of directors in football clubs

under much more pressure with arguments

than even you could in the fanzine days,

so there was great change going on and there was a radical element.

I mean, we've seen it with Foundation of Hearts,

we've seen it with some of the Rangers fan groups

and you see it at clubs, usually when clubs are in trouble.

Social media allows fans to have their say,

but fans still often feel that their voices are either drowned out

or ignored by clubs and the authorities.

There is no question that people feel that there is

a disconnect between the structures and the ownership structures

of football and the fans that go to games.

If you looked at a club like Celtic, Celtic are managed as a PLC.

They are under a legal requirement to make announcements

to the City of London before they even tell their own fans

what it is they're doing,

so there clearly is there a commercial disconnect.

Hearts, Hibs, St Mirren and Motherwell are all attempting

to address this by exploring different models of fan ownership.

I think we have to get a real understanding of what we mean

by supporters' ownership for the people who are advocating it,

so I don't think it's going to be easy.

I certainly don't think there is one right answer for all clubs.

Personally, I don't think we should have wall-to-wall supporter groups

all wanting a say in running the football club.

I think it has to be channelled,

individual supporters have got to identify who do they trust

to look after their interests

and they're the people that have to work with the club.

There's a bit of education got to go on

about exactly what we mean by supporters' ownership.

At this moment in time,

we are going towards the position where supporters can take

a majority ownership of the shares of the football club.

We're actively and have actively been promoting that.

These are additional elements that football supporters are doing

above and beyond the norm, above and beyond season tickets

and they're doing it

because they don't want to stand outside and demonstrate.

I think it's a win-win situation for us as a club.

These experiments are still at an early stage in Scotland,

but there are successful examples in Europe.

In the German Bundesliga,

members and fans must own at least 51% of the shares in their clubs.

It's a model that seems to work.

Bundesliga teams have won three Champions League titles

in the last ten years and the German international team

won the World Cup in 2014.

Working it in... Chance for Gotze!

Mario Gotze has scored for Germany!

The fans are essential to the game,

but the fans themselves have changed.

Once almost uniformly male and flat-capped, the terraces offered

one of the few forms of escapism from hard industrial labour.

The clubs now have to find new ways to entice fans into their grounds,

especially considering the high ticket prices.

In an age of on-demand entertainment

and endless competition for our disposable income,

fans want more than just a game when they walk through the gates.

In the late 19th to early 20th century,

there were very few alternatives to recreation.

Now there are and recreation is no longer the monopoly of one sex

as it was for those people who went to football matches

in the 1890s and down to the period after the Second World War

so there's huge competition for people.

Don't forget, we're talking about a society

where eating out was rare as recently as the 1970s.

The game could work much harder to broaden its appeal,

opening it up to a wider audience.

I think it's massively important to a football club

that you encourage families, because they are your lifeline.

Without fans, we don't have a football club.

It's as simple as that. You've got to encourage them to come in.

You've got to encourage the mums and the dads to bring the kids

because they're our fans of the future.

However, it all comes down to money and that's the problem

and there's just not enough money in the game any more in Scotland.

I personally feel it's on the decline at the moment.

Clubs are watching their pennies.

They have to be very careful about how they spend their money.

A lot of the things that clubs could be doing

for the fans' experience does cost money.

I personally think that a lot more could be done

to improve fans' experience.

You only have to go over to the States

to see how amazing the fans' experience is.

Fans come for the excitement of live football.

What they often experience, though, are crowds, but here,

technology helps fans handle those hassles

at one of the most wired arenas in the US.

BEEPING

Getting into the game is easier. Food can be ordered online.

WiFi hotspots keep everyone connected

and give information on the quickest way to seats or to exit the stadium.

These initiatives make the club money

and the fan experience more enjoyable.

That particular expression of "But this is football,

"it's different" or, "But that's how it's done in football,"

it's used too often without thinking.

It's used too often without saying,

"Hang on a wee minute,

"maybe that's the way it's normally done in football,

"or maybe that's the way it's always been done here,

"but can we just stand back a wee minute and say, is it right?"

And, again, to me, it just comes back to this questioning.

You know, let's not just drift along, doing things the same-old,

same-old way, but say, "Hang on a minute,

"the world is moving on, so many things are changing round about us.

"How on earth are we actually going to cope with some of these changes

"and, by the way, could we use some of these changes

"to make our jobs either easier or improve things or whatever?"

Ann Budge, chief executive of Heart of Midlothian Football Club,

has a reputation for asking the right questions.

She's brought integrity back to Hearts, I think she's brought

a real sense of ownership. She's a strong leader, she's a strong woman.

She'll buck convention. Just because it's always happened, doesn't mean

it has to happen that way again, let's look at something different.

You need people like Ann Budge on the committees,

asking the questions - "Can we change it, why not?"

New perspectives and voices are emerging in some places.

Perhaps evidence that the old system

is beginning to adapt to the 21st century?

Go! Let's go, come on!

30 years ago, a female coach of a team playing in the Scottish

lower leagues would have been unthinkable.

Win the battles, first and second balls, that'll be important for us.

In 2013, Shelley Kerr was appointed the first female coach

of Lowland League side Stirling University.

It was the following day, I was in to meet the players at 7:30am.

And then, by five o'clock that evening,

it was just incredible - the TV, radio, newspapers -

it was just crazy.

It was a distraction, I have to say.

And I tried to, as best as possible,

keep that distraction away from the players.

Because all I wanted to do was try and get off to a good start.

Provide that little bit of balance on the edge of the box

for anything coming back out, OK?

'I have to say the players were magnificent

'in terms of their reaction.'

Get it out! Good timing!

'There was an instant respect of my knowledge of football.'

Keep the tempo high when you're playing the ball.

It wasn't a problem at all, they were great.

Now we go! Early, early!

Unfortunately, I'm the only female right now that's working in the

men's game, especially in Scotland.

We need more females, but only if they're interested in doing that.

I've got ambitions of working within a professional environment.

If you're asking me will it happen, I think

we're a wee bit away from that appointment happening right now.

Go on, Lewis! Good, Callum!

You're competing with so many good coaches - it's not just

a gender issue here, it's about the competition you're facing.

I think I'm qualified, I think I've got the attributes,

but I think it would be still deemed as being a risk

by some club owners and chief executives of clubs.

And that's down to probably the pressure from supporters.

I've got the skill set,

but I still think it would maybe be seen as a risk.

Well done. Stuart, all the best. All the best.

It is, if not the, but one of the biggest games in this country.

It's something that runs throughout most families.

It's in our DNA, it's in our culture, it's in our blood.

And it's something that's not in a great place at this moment.

It's sad to see that.

I want to see football - men's, women's, boys', girls' - whatever,

I want to see football doing well.

So to be part of the women's renaissance, if you want,

this growth is fantastic.

But if we can do it together with the guys,

I think that would be fantastic for Scotland.

The future of football in global terms is not in doubt.

Big money, huge media profile,

ever-increasing transfer fees and wages.

Relentless media coverage and worldwide fame and recognition

for the big stars of the game.

However, in Scotland -

a country which not so long ago competed on level terms with

so many of the countries now boasting the big, glamour leagues -

the future is a lot less certain.

You look at our teams' performances in Europe, the Celtics of

this world, our teams are going out at the qualifying stages.

And when these teams go out, we have a postmortem of a month where we

talk about, we're playing, we're not starting the league early enough,

we have to bring the start date forward so our players are ready.

Nonsense, it's nothing to do with that.

It's that we're not producing good enough players,

and our league's not good enough.

And until we actually face up to that

and actually start doing something about it,

we're going to continue to have that same conversation every

August/September of every year.

In a country of five million people,

is our current system really working?

Countries of similar size, like Ireland, Denmark and Norway,

have relatively low-profile leagues,

but do produce players that play in the big ones.

Jock Stein said, 50 years ago,

that football is nothing without the fans.

But with crowds in decline at many clubs,

is the current structure the best that it could be?

Something that's so important to such a big part of the population

has got to be taken seriously and taken notice of.

A fairer distribution of the money that's in football

could be good for the game overall.

Not just a matter of, I want to get a wee bit more,

or you should get a wee bit less, that's not the point to me.

It's the right distribution to enable the growth of the game

and to enable more clubs to compete

and, actually, in some cases, survive.

There is nothing better than a sold-out sign

to make people want to come in.

Let's get the game right here,

let's get people in through the gates

and let's generate an atmosphere and get some good football played.

And the rest will take care of itself.

The way forward may be painful, but it can also be enjoyable,

reshaping and reforming the game in a way that suits our country,

our ambitions, and our aspirations.

Sometimes we're scared of change.

We think, what's the point, why change?

Whereas it should be the exact opposite - we need to change.

We need to do things differently.

But people don't like change in general.

It takes them outside their comfort zone.

People don't like being outside their comfort zone, generally.

It's time to step back and reflect on the last 30 years.

Will Scottish football hit the tipping point

and have no other choice but to embrace radical change?

How long will clubs be driven by self-interest

at the expense of the overall good of the game?

The future of our football is up for grabs.

Maybe, just maybe, in the years ahead,

it will once again be a successful,

compelling spectacle that all of Scotland can be proud of.

THEME PLAYS: The Apprentice