Andy's Sting in the Tale (10/07/26) "Good Enough, Just Not ‘Good Enough' "

We were there.

But Scotland are now well and truly home.

My own Tartan Army adventurers are awaiting nervously their Miami-induced, credit card bills, Ryan Christie was seen playing golf at The Renaissance and we’re all getting on with life again.

And, in case you didn’t know senior football starts again tomorrow in what my pal in the pub calls the ‘Amazon Firestick Trophy’.

Anyway

The hype was manic, and fun while it lasted but the reality is that the collective hangover hangs over.

It’s not just us, ardent fans, the whole nation is dealing with disappointment, again.

And it’s apparent in a host of ways, like two weeks ago I was in a busy Silverburn, we’d just beaten Haiti, and the shoppers were a sea of blue and salmon/pink/orange with wee stripes.

People were smiling despite the rain.

But just two days ago in Livingston Shopping Centre I saw just a few young kids wearing Scotland tops and no adults. It was very obvious that the retail outlets are still overstocked and displaying piles of non-official football stuff they will struggle to sell in the next 28 years.

(Reminded me of the pile of BBQs in Willie Lows in our very poor, sunless summer of 1986).

Meanwhile the World Cup has become a real football tournament.

After the glacially slow group stages and despite all the Fifa induced outrages, football, our game, our unifier, shows it is bigger than the power-thirsty mafia who have hijacked the steering wheel pretending to their world that they are the important ones.

We, the fan community, are just Infantino’s key financial prey species.

And boy are Jahnnie’s crews giving it ‘Laldy’, like there is no tomorrow.

We are just ‘the sardines’ being harvested Jahnnie’s omnipresent financial nets in Fifa’s ‘Cannery Row-esque’, man-made ‘boom time’.

It got me thinking and I vaguely remembered John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row and easily found an old quote that was/is incredibly insightful about power and how it works about, for and at Fifa.

“It has always seemed strange to me...The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system.

And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success.”

― John Steinbeck, Cannery Row

Like in Monterey back in the boom years, the wrong values now dominate football.

A world of sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism, self-interest and I would add they are all exacerbated by short-termism.

Sadly today, Scotland were ‘Just Not Good Enough’ for the world stage

And without change we won’t be good enough to ever be anything other than occasional, Big-Event, Centrally Cast, Kilted, Goodtime-Charlies, part of the warm up, but, in reality home before the real gig starts.

Things to Think About

1. Uefa Hold More Power Than They Seem to Know

2. VAR’s Biggest Failure

3. On the Ball with the Craigs

4. Who Said These Things

5. Uefa to Address Russia Plan

6. Bloody Hydration Breaks

1 Follow the Money

Infantino has already proclaimed that he will re-run to hold on to power in 2027. The facts are he already has the full support of all South American, African, and Asian countries, (Because he gives them money).

He is a shoe in.

They are not the world power base in football terms.

In the last 3 World Cups Europe has had 6, 5 and 6 teams in the last eight.

(And Morrocco has more European born players than Moroccan born).

Imagine a World Cup without, France, Belgium, Sweden, England, Croatia, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Switzerland etc. etc.

And imagine if a new Uefa competition became a reality and countries were invited to take part.

It would take the wind out of one man’s sails, and destroy his financial scheming.

I would be shocked if Sandy Severin hadn’t considered that his nations might be better off outside the current status quo where we have many tails wagging one dog.

2. A Real VAR Task

I would prefer if refs were just allowed to ref and earn their big bucks.

But I can’t help thinking why the VAR Munchkins don’t intervene in the carnage that is happening at every corner.

That is a real job that needs done but it seems is beyond ifab and Fifa.

I’d support that.

Maybe one of the refs who read this will tell me why.

3. Two Craig’s

Last week Craig Levein, ex captain and Manager, was asked some good questions during the BBC Radio Scotland Saturday afternoon ‘time-filler’.

Craig stated that our best players screamingly need ‘experience’ of playing early with seasoned pros in the real game and that this was the old way with kids being sent through junior sides, and our reserve league

I well remember playing against a prolific centre forward called Willie Miller, a powerful left winger called Doug Rougvie and a shy young keeper Jim Leighton who had never seen himself on tv, and came to the Uni to watch the highlights.

That was back in a different century.

Craig missed a sitter and I was shouting at the radio because while the reality is everything needs to be examined if we want to really improve, the one thing this world cup has shown is we as a team are not comfortable enough on the ball.

Steve turned us into a unit and we have hearts and steel, but our basic skill levels are lower than every other team who qualified.

I think that should be at the top of the ‘to do’ list for the recently appointed Craig Mullholland at the SFA.

I liked his predecessor Andy but know Craig’s success or failure will all come down to whether he is allowed to ‘do’ stuff.

And if he gets real resource and support to rethink, reshape and implement.

It is certain he’ll have to fight every step of the way in our impecunious land where the SFA give something like a measly 35 pence to every registered kid, and also see aspiring coaches as a way to make money rather than build a better game.

Craig, please prioritise and have a look at Norway, and Morocco and what they are doing that we’re not.

And advice is always patronising, but Fun Boy Three and Bananarama summed up the task.

It was their take on the excellent ditty by James Trummy Young and Sy Oliver “Tain’t what you do but the way that you do it”.

In modern parlance from this Andy, “Ticking boxes is certainly easier and cheaper, but won’t achieve what you need to be, and do.

4. The ‘Who Said?’ Quiz

i) “I didn’t think it was a foul”.

ii)“The decision undermined the integrity of the game and the World Cup’. When the certainty of rules is no longer guaranteed by its guardians, the integrity of the game is at stake and the credibility of a competition is undermined. Equally, such decision creates a precedent in the ongoing tournament, where similar situations will now require an equal treatment, to the detriment of the competition.

We express our disbelief at such an unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable decision.”

iii) “This is our sport, not theirs”.

iv) "Unprecedented, incomprehensible, and unjustifiable."

v) "My support and the support of the whole football community to help you make peace, and the whole world prosper”.

King Donald, Uefa, Jurgen Klopp, Uefa, Jahnnie.

5. Uefa Rumblings About Russian Return

This week I read some stuff about a potential active split between Infantino’s Fifa desire to readmit Russia to the juvenile World Cup and some resolute Uefa members, who spiked his last attempt to allow Russia access to all Fifa competitions because Jahnnie is still allegedly big pals with Vladimir Putin.

This won’t go away and isn’t about football.

And I noticed one article about it was quickly and mysteriously ‘removed’.

6. The ‘Very Lucrative’ Hydration Breaks

Yes in some of the stadia heat is an issue.

The reality is it was always about ad-breaks for the Americans, and an estimate is it will deliver $250 M in broadcast revenues.

But the breaks destroy the games rhythm and the coaching circus makes it a nonsense.

TV will want to keep it, this fan thinks football should allow rehydration when needed, but properly controlled, and what eejit asks players to play in 36 plus degrees heat with peak humidity anyway.

Sting is:

A weekly fans thoughts.

This week I can’t even scratch the surface.

Infantino is there and getting away with it because complicit Football Associations like all 4 home nations are as complicit as the rest.

Why?

Money.

Feel free to contact me on anything.

https://www.thesfu.co.uk/

Andy’s Album of the Week

I started with Scotland’s nearest thing to a Norwegian band in my collection.

Fiddlers’ Bid from Shetland released Hamnataing about 20 years ago and is pure northern isles with age old Shetland music updated.

Have a listen.

But I’ve also gone further north to Oslo and the amazing Hayde Bluegrass Orchestra because I love this unusual Norwegian group.

They have stolen and invented ‘Northern Lights Bluegrass’.

The Broken Circle Sessions, album is pure a bit Nashville meets New Orleans meets the Fjords.