Avoiding the Drop

PART FOUR

Today we present the fourth and final installment in a multipart series of articles focused on some of the financial problems facing football leagues across the world- especially those in smaller countries. By the end of the series it will become clear that many of these financial problems are the result of a century and a half old organizational model that simply cannot cope with the realities of the modern football and the modern financial world. Having highlighted the ways in which this model has increasingly come up short when faced with the unique problems presented by the sporting and financial landscape of the twenty-first century, we will offer a number of possible solutions which will help to ensure the future stability of the game, both on and off the pitch. As always, we here at Avoiding the Drop look forward to your comments, questions, and criticisms.

Part One of the series can be found here.

Part Two of the series can be found here.

Part Three of the series can be found here.

Conclusions

This will not be your traditional “conclusion”- I think I’ve summed things up rather nicely as I’ve worked my way through the earlier installments of this series. Instead this will be the part where I touch on things that didn’t quite fit into the format of the other installments, tie up some loose ends, and of course, make some rash generalizations. Oh, and it’s the shortest installment in the series, so don’t get to comfy. Let’s get to it!

If you’ve reached this point, you’ve slogged your way through about 8000 words on the state of football in Scotland and you would be completely justified in asking, “So things are bad in Scottish football- so what?” My response is two-fold: First, things are not bad in Scotland, they are- if you’ll pardon the poor grammar- “worse.” You need only look back at the first installment to see how pervasive the financial problems are in the game. With that in mind, I stress that the problems in Scottish football are just one example of a system that is broken. It might not be as “stark” of a case, but you could certainly make just as strong a case by looking south of the border. England might be more than ten times bigger than Scotland in terms of population, but it has almost as much of a “glut” of clubs as Scotland does, and thus it shouldn’t be a surprise to see teams having major financial problems from the top (Portsmouth), right through the middle (Southend United), and all the way to the bottom (Farnsley Celtic). If you need further proof of this you need only look at our They’ve Fallen and They Can’t Get Up series from this past summer, almost every one of which contains the word “administration” at least once. Second, if the state of football in Scotland can be improved, the state of football can be improved in other small countries experiencing similar problems, financial, organizational, or otherwise. It’s worth looking at some of these other countries to see how their situations compare and contrast with that of Scotland.

To my mind, Scotland’s cohorts would be those in similar-sized countries (4-8 million inhabitants) whose top leagues are dominated by a small number of teams, and who, in my opinion, have an average to better than average footballing “pedigree.” This group would include nations such as Austria, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Slovakia, Denmark, Norway, Ireland, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. One is tempted to say that, at least on the international level, these teams run the gamut from “spoilers” to “also rans,” but the fact is that Bulgaria has gone as far as the semi-finals in a World Cup (1994), Denmark has won the European Championship (1992), made the semi-finals of the same tournament (1984), and reached the quarter-finals in France in 1998- the same year that Croatia finished in third place. All of this was achieved with an organizational and financial system that grew organically from the founding of football in these countries, not with an organizational or financial system that was built for the specific purposes of creating the strongest possible domestic league and, consequently, the strongest possible national team. That is the essence of my proposals for Scotland- to make its leagues and its national side as competitive as possible by creating a stable financial and structural foundation for Scottish football. I believe this same model- with adjustments for each country’s idiosyncrasies- can work and work well for many other nations in Europe and world wide.

Many of the countries I’ve mentioned above- along with Sweden, Portugal, Belgium, and the Netherlands- have been mentioned as potential members of a breakaway Atlantic League that has been proposed on numerous occasions in recent years for the purpose of providing better competition for the two or three strong teams in each of these nations with the intent of better preparing them for competitions like the Champions League. Such a league would probably be more trouble than it would be worth- what would happen to teams actually playing in Scotland and winning that league if Rangers and/or Celtic qualify for the Champions League through the Atlantic League?- and if my plan were to work, an Atlantic League, or anything similar, would be unnecessary. Even if the changes I have proposed created only two more clubs that could challenge for the SPL title and regularly qualify for European competitions, it would radically change the footballing landscape in not just Scotland, but in Europe as well. If you doubt that, ask yourself how many of Europe’s “big” leagues (England, Spain, Italy, Germany, etc.) have more than 4-6 different teams regularly challenging for domestic titles or qualifying for European competitions?

Finally, if your attention span is long enough, return and reread this series after the McLeish Report is published in January. It is being prepared by the Scottish Football Review Committee (which is a standing group that is part of the Scottish Football Association) under the leadership of former MP/MSP Henry McLeish- who also played professionally at East Fife F.C.. It is believed that, among the things that McLeish will review are, “…the merging the Scottish game’s three main governing bodies, league reconstruction, the introduction of a winter break, and even the viability of summer football.” Regardless of what Mr. McLeish’s report says or does not say, it is likely that he will anger at least half of Scotland’s football supporters. This is understandable, and I actually think that it is a good thing- it shows just how much the Scots treasure their game- and trust me, they believe it is their game. I hope, however, that once the initial tumult is over, people will step back and actually think about what Mr. McLeish has said- no matter what he has said. The game in Scotland cannot survive- much less prosper- unless it is changed.

Finally, I’d like to thank a few people. First, my fellow writers here at Avoiding The Drop for indulging me and allowing me to drone on and on about this subject, and frankly, for putting up with all of Scottish football boosterism on a regular basis. Second, I would like to thank those who have taken the time to comment on this series and to be so positive about it. I worked on this on and off for months and one of the reasons I was hesitant to actually “print” it was that I knew I’d be crushed if the general tone of the comments was, “Nobody cares, you obsessed jackass!”

Further Readings

I’ve sprinkled some links throughout the various installments in this series, but if you’d like to read what other- far smarter- people have to say on this subject click on the links below:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/sport2/hi/football/8187373.stm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/jimspence/2009/10/scots_football_bodies_should_h.html#more