Over the last couple of days I have been reading about the demise of Scottish football as a European player. After Hearts getting mauled 5-0 at home, Rangers losing away to another minnow, mildly amusing, and our own disappointing result against FC Sion, most fans on the football forums seem to agree that this is as good as it will get for Scottish football. No more big European nights against the best of the elite leagues. Is it all doom and gloom though?
Let us start with Hearts. Very hard to justify a 5-0 home defeat, but a lot of this has to fall on Mad Vladimir Romanov. Jim Jefferies had Hearts ticking along nicely, good season last year, strengthened in the summer and started this year with a draw at Rangers and a score draw away from home in Europe.
Things were too comfy for Mad Vlad though, time to rock the boat, fire the coach and appoint someone that has no idea about Scottish football. I feel a Paul le Guen mark II. Now no one really thought they would beat Spurs but no one expected a 5-0 destruction neither. Is it a shock result though?
Celtic beat Hearts at Tynecastle 3-0 in May and hammered them 4-0 at home in January. We finished 29 points ahead of them. Also consider the fact that we got beat 5-1 on aggregate by Arsenal only two years ago. We all know the Premierships top teams are far stronger than our top teams and 95% of every other European league. Bad result? Yes, not entirely surprising though.
Lets have a wee look at Rangers. Maribor 2-1 Rangers. This hot on the heels of being knocked out of the Champions League by Malmo. Not exactly their finest hour, but they are in a similar position to where Celtic were last year. They have a rookie manager who has never coached a professional football team before and worse does not look like he has the know how to steady the ship. Could be a Paul le Guen Mark III.
I am sure not many of you have heard of Maribor before, but only last season they hammered Hibs 6-2 before losing to Palermo 5-3. They then won their league and won a Champions league qualifying game before losing 3-2 to Maccabi Haifa at the same stage Malmo beat Rangers. On this evidence it would be hard to ascertain who the better team in the tie would be. I still have a feeling Rangers will take advantage of their away goal and win 1-0 in the return league.
Now on to Celtic. We controlled the game but were toothless in the final third. Kris Commons should not be played on the right ever again and Georgios Samaras should not start ever again. Lady luck is against us as well, we lost arguably our four best players in four weeks to injury. Manchester United might get away with losing it’s four best players because they can replace them with top players.
We don’t have a Dimitar Berbatov or Paul Scholes sitting on the bench. It is more noticeable to us when our best players are out. Top this of with the fact that Neil Lennon admitted showing FC Sion too much respect. He got his tactics wrong and by the time he realised we could take them it was too late.
This is also a big game for Celtic. We need to get into the Europa League group stages to appease the fans and Lennon knows it, his job might even depend on it. This was a bad result, an off night, but nothing more than that. It looks like we will have Biram Kayal, Kelvin Wilson and Gary Hooper back next week, this will make the difference and we will get the result needed.
Now what has changed with Scottish football in Europe? Nothing. Fans expecting the big two to stroll to easy victories should remember, Artmedia Bratislava, FC Utrecht, FC Zurich, FK Kaunas and Unirea Urziceni. All have beaten us in the last decade.
Outwith the two Glasgow clubs what have Scottish teams done? Last year they fell to Maribor, AEK Athens and Odense. Five years ago Gretna fell to Derry City and Hearts lost to Sparta Prague. Ten years ago Hibs lost to AEK Athens and Kilmarnock were defeated by FK Viking. In this same decade though, both Celtic and Rangers made the Uefa Cup final and qualified for the last 16 in the Champions League twice with scalps of elite clubs like Man Utd and AC Milan.
Rangers only lost 1-0 on aggregate to PSV Eindhoven in the last 16 of the Europa League last year. Would you say that Scottish clubs were more successful in this decade than the nineties? Yet this is the same decade that money has been poured into the Premiership and we can no longer match them for wages.
I agree things need to change in Scottish football to make it more competitive. There is a gulf between the top two and the rest of the league. There has to be changes to improve the standard of the league. Stronger opposition week in week out will only improve us, but we will save that discussion for another day.
Do you think this is the end of Scottish teams performing in Europe?
CLICK HERE for Sion star taunts Fraser Forster
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