To say that football supporters in Scotland are intrinsically pessimistic about the country’s football prospects is not entirely accurate – we have simply become fearful of optimism.
In the 20 years that have elapsed since Scotland last qualified for a major international championship, we have grabbed at any small signals that might indicate we were about to reach the Promised Land. Perhaps we are being punished for making graven images of football and its princes and for allowing it to play a disproportionately important role in our existences.
Thus, I’m fearful of the sense of hope that perhaps our two decades of wandering in the desert might be about to end. In other nations that embrace this capricious game, hope is seen as a positive force, something that sustains you during times of adversity. In Scotland, we have come to despise it because it always ends in disappointment. And yet…
In Rome last week, we witnessed Andrew Robertson, a 24-year-old Glaswegian full-back play a vital role for Liverpool in Rome as they reached the final of the Champions League for the first time since 2007. On 26 May in Kiev, he will become the first Scot to play in one of the biggest sporting events on the planet since Paul Lambert helped Borussia Dortmund to a 3-1 win against Juventus in Munich in 1997. The year after Lambert’s feat, Scotland reached the World Cup finals in France. Could Robertson’s displays 21 years later presage our return from the international wilderness? Or is this merely another wretched symptom of the madness that has taken a hold of our souls?
There have been other signs and wonders. One has been the emergence in the Manchester United midfield of Scott McTominay, who qualifies to play for Scotland by dint of having a Scottish father. This 21-year-old isn’t one of those Anglo-Scots who has grasped at the chance of international football under a flag of convenience in the knowledge that he’ll never play for England. McTominay is a thoroughbred who possesses the talents to become a future English international. Yet he chose Scotland because that’s what his heart was telling him. Is this another sign?
In Scottish club football, something else has been happening that may contain the seeds of optimism. Celtic, which won the Scottish title by defeating Rangers 5-0, had seven Scots on the park at the end of the game. Three others were either injured or on the substitutes’ bench. This is generally regarded as the best Celtic team since the era of the Lisbon Lions in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The tribulations and self-inflicted wounds that led to the liquidation of Rangers in 2012 still beset this massive club. Their capitulation to Celtic last week followed a 4-0 defeat to them in the Scottish Cup two weeks earlier. Rangers have never been weaker. Steven Gerrard, whose only experience of coaching has been a few months in charge of Liverpool’s under-18s, is expected to halt Rangers’ second slide into the abyss. He will need upwards of £20m even to be in the same room as Celtic, a sum that Rangers cannot produce under their own steam.
The downfall of Rangers has led many Scottish football pundits to express their dismay at the adverse effect this has had on the wider game. In the history of Scottish football, the statement “Scotland needs a strong Rangers” has been deployed as often as “hoof the ball up the park”. This is partly true, but not in the way its acolytes intend. Certainly, a strong Rangers is better than a weak one, in the same way that a strong Partick Thistle is better than a weak one. However, to suggest that Scottish football has been weakened by Rangers’ troubles is questionable.
In the six seasons since Rangers went into liquidation, Aberdeen, Hibs, Hearts, St Mirren, Ross County, St Johnstone and Inverness Caledonian Thistle have all lifted silverware. Several of those clubs have either improved their stadiums or are in the process of doing so. They have used their success wisely by resisting the urge to take shortcuts to unsustainable success. In the Scottish Premiership, Aberdeen, Hibs, Motherwell and Kilmarnock have managed to assemble strong teams under young and modern managers and with a scattering of talented young Scots.
Hibs were the first British club to compete in the European Cup in 1955-56 and progressed to the semi-finals. The current side, under the tutelage of Neil Lennon, is the best that Edinburgh has seen for almost 50 years. The week before Celtic annihilated Rangers they were cleanly beaten by a Hibs side in which the best players were all young Scots. They were fast, fit, skilful and better than Celtic.
The worst nightmare for Rangers supporters is Celtic achieving a landmark 10 successive league titles, thus eclipsing the current record of nine jointly held by each. Nor would this say much that is positive about Scottish football’s competitiveness (though Bayern Munich are well on the way to making it 10 Bundesligas in a row). If the Hibs board can resist the urge of previous administrations and attempt to hang on to its brightest and best for another season or two, then Neil Lennon may become the unlikely slayer of Rangers fans’ scariest demons.
Steven Gerrard may yet become the man to steer Rangers out of the doldrums but Lennon, who always flourishes in adversity, has everything they lack.
• Kevin McKenna is an Observer columnist
