Andy's Sting In The Tale (14/11/25) "The Mornings After the Night Before"
- Andy Smith
- Nov 14
- 9 min read
Four days of uncertainty for all of us.
On Sunday morning we’ll have a few clues but It will be Wednesday in the cold light of day that Scotland will either be in the perennial play offs or heading across the Atlantic next summer and shouting Yee Haa!
We’re in the land of ‘ifs’, till Tuesday night and the fan positivity and desire to be stateside bound is already overwhelming.
As usual.
I remember the days when qualification for the World Cup was our norm and indeed the rampant optimism and expectation when I proudly presented Craig’s squad with their special ‘Opening Game Kilts in McEwan’s Tartan ahead of the opener in France against Brazil.
With 2025 Hindsight the reason for our lean times since is obvious.
We simply stopped producing the conveyor belt of quality youngsters that fed Celtic in ‘67, Rangers in ’72, Aberdeen in ’83, Dundee United in ’84 and all the top clubs in England too.
What is amazing looking back is that nobody at Park Gardens, or latterly at Hampden seemed to notice.
Or what’s worse, if they did, they did nothing about it.
The real story is our whole grass roots structure and production line needs thought and investment and Steve Clarke’s valiant if a little dour ‘shots at glory’ have been constrained by decisions made 40 years ago by dead people.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it over and over.
“Kid’s Football is Everyone’s Business”.
It needs proper long term thinking from inside and outside football, and resource.
The hard fact is whatever happens in the next 4 days, what we have done since 1984 hasn’t done our kids, or our game justice.
Looking back it has been corporate self-harm.
For now, Good luck Steve, you and your team are a fortunate ‘once in a generation’ or even two. A balance of experience and youth and you have them playing like a club side under pressure.
Sometimes it works too.
I’ll be watching through my fingers and hope we really turn up in Piraeus and Mount Florida.
This Week’s Sting
1. The Man Talks Well and for Free
2. Hamilton Woes Get Worse
3. The Abba Song that Has Taken Over Fifa
4. An Unholy Relationship
5. American Vision Backed with Real Dollar Bills and Looking for a Return
6. Pilsner at Pittodrie, and at Mild at McDiarmid
7. Israel Pops Up Again
1. David Kogan’s Influence from Afar
The Football Regulator in England was interviewed by football journalist, Martin Samuel today in a Murdoch’s Times exclusive.
It's well worth a read.
And the comments too.
It was and is never going to be an easy project and is over political but he’ comes across as a good guy.
He’ll maybe ask some tough questions that the game and the whole Westminster Lawmaking Structure might not like answering and probably isn’t able to anyway.
And for now we can ride the wave from north of the Wall for free.
Kogan knows real regulation comes from within and that football in the rush to ‘grab the most’ makes mistakes that hurt the game.
And already he has bollocked his ‘shadow staff’, those he inherited from various government departments.
Staff allowed to leave their last roles so I’d guess 2nd and 3rd team players.
An easy attack for their quite unbelievable lack of integration into the game and knowledge, and a 9-5 attitude civil service that doesn’t work in the real world.
His inherited department that somehow thought it could exist without getting its hands dirty or knowing what it was doing.
Here are some one liners.
“Everybody in government focusses on legislation, never on how things might work”.
“Football has cliff edges”.
“The Premier League has 6 top clubs, a middle rump and perennial strugglers”.
“I’m not a regulator”.
“Is our 116 club pyramid the sustainable model or should we sustain every existing club?”
“Does any club have a God-given right to exist purely in a vacuum? No they don’t”.
“We need basic accounting and financial information. Some owners don’t want to reveal what’s going on”.
“Some clubs will be in trouble when the current owners stop putting money in”.
“Most clubs run on debt and we have a financial structure like any other business and over-borrow based on their assets”.
“What happens when the tv money doesn’t deliver?”
“Having regulation that is incompetent is worse than no regulator at all.
Our job is not to speak for every individual fan but find a structure within individual clubs where the fans voice can be heard.
If they choose to disagree among themselves about the price of a pie then I can’t do much about that”.
Smart Self-Regulation?
Scottish football has the same problems writ small.
We need the benefits of better run clubs without the expense.
Nothing that happens in England will be secret and none of it rocket science in any way.
We need to watch, listen and avoid what doesn’t work and copy what does.
2. When Company Law Isn’t Good Enough
David Kogan said it above.
Clubs don’t have a God-given right to exist.
But that truism doesn’t help the Hamilton fans whose club has historically self-destructed from the top down.
It's easy to shout at the SPFL and the SFA but the reality is clubs are individual businesses and football attracts the wrong owners.
Will the financial regulator solve this problem?
No.
But one of the things Mike Mulraney SFA President introduced was that clubs cannot play football without paying their vat and taxes.
That alone would have stopped the mess that was Rangers pre-2012 and also allows bells and whistles to blow before the problems have gone too far.
Legislation like that might be troublesome but is the right way forward and the game needs more.
The ultimate problem is clubs in their rush to win forget about ‘right sizing’.
3. Money, Money, Money, but it Isn’t Funny
Not happy with their ‘Dynamic Pricing’ outrage, Fifa’s latest World Cup wheeze to squeeze the most is parking at all 16 ‘official spaces’ for between $75 and $175 per game.
Makes George Street look cheap.
Meanwhile in UEFA land Sandy Ceferin has ruled out Fifa’s ‘Dynamic Pricing’ for Euros 2028 and promised that tickets will be ‘affordable’ and that at least half the tickets will be in the ‘fan first’ category.
England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales have collectively paid £740 Million to stage the events hoping for a £3.6Billion return.
All 4 will take part in qualifying but there is a built in safety net of 2 places for home nations if they fail.
4. You Can Bet on It
This week the Turkish Football Federation suspended 1024 players in a betting scandal that has rocked the game and the country.
Back home we have an unhealthy relationship with gambling firms and their marketing spends.
I personally admire our Women’s game for eschewing gambling and booze links.
And despite the money I know that gambling troubles leads to a suicide in Scotland every fortnight or so.
Dirty money and bad karma for clubs and fans.
And probably unjustifiable in any discussion except for money.
5 Dollar Bills, and More to Come
Apollo Global Management a US private Equity Giant this week bought a majority stake in Atletico Madrid.
They value the club at 2Billion Euros and see European clubs like Atletico as cheap and therefore easier to monetise.
It’s all about returns and nothing to do with support.
I guess deep down the moneymen know a European or even World League would have 3 Spanish clubs and it will come because the big clubs and their hungry owners want/need it.
6. A License to Drink
This week’s cheap news filler for our media outlets has been that alcohol will be sold in Scottish Grounds for the first time since August when it was sold at Scottish Grounds
The Dons and the Saints will lead ‘the rush’ and surprise some fans are pro and some against.
The last research I did on this gave the following fan views and I don’t think much has changed.
Fans View of Alcohol Sales at Scottish Football Matches:
Alcohol should be sold at all Scottish Football matches. 26.5%
Alcohol should be sold at matches which meet specific criteria 51.8%
Alcohol should be banned from Scottish Football Matches 21.6%
Like many things in football there will be no problems till there are problems.
7. If You Ignore a Problem it Often Festers
This week saw a noisy protest at the launch of Euros 2028 with marchers demanding Israel be barred from entry.
At the same time The Football Association of Ireland (FAI) passed a formal motion to UEFA urging it to ban Israel from European club and international competitions.
A statement said: “Israel’s genocide in Gaza has killed 344 footballers – more than the full squads of the League of Ireland Premier Division combined. At least 10 children from the Gaza Football Academy have also been murdered.
No country should be above the rules and statutes of Uefa and Israel must be held to account.”
Other UEFA member nations are uncomfortable hosting the Israeli national team for World Cup qualifiers with both Italy and Norway indicating that, given the choice, they would not fulfil fixtures.
Meanwhile Scotland have said say they have no choice but to play Israel.
(For what it’s worth I just about agree with their difficult decision but personally wouldn’t play).
The SFA said that as a member of UEFA they do not have “discretion to choose who they will or will not play against, which is why we are obliged to fulfil our fixtures.
“Indeed, to refuse to play would forfeit both matches and negatively impact the prospects of our women’s national team.”
Individual players can, of course, choose not to be selected on moral grounds.
Sting Is
A weekly insight into different things in the world of football and has the editorial freedom to rove and roam anywhere and talk about anything in football, especially at home, and North of the Wall
And it’s a strange old world indeed that would be much better without the extreme self-interest throughout our game that both rules the waves and also sadly waives the rules.
This morning BBC Scotland had an interview with someone introduced as the ‘Chair of the SFSA’.
That led to a few emails from long time pals asking me if I’ve stood down from something I and others put so much time into.
The answer is I have not stood down.
There was never a board meeting or even a discussion because although that particular fan organisation has set itself up as mainly shouting all about ‘governance’, it’s really something that the 2 co-founders don’t think is needed at home.
It’s actually quite funny.
So if heard someone who wasn’t me, or if you’ve been emailing me today or since July on my old SFSA address then apologies.
The co-founders locked me and the rest of the directors out because rather than discuss real issues like grown-ups , they simply said “It’s our company and we can do what we like”.
That’s why we collectively walked away.
That’s why the fast growing Scottish Football Union now exists.
It's all about working together rather than just throwing mud, fun though that can be.
In time there will be just one fans group in Scotland and it will work in union with other stakeholders and not just be a vehicle for personal revenge and unresolved anger issues.
In the meantime if you’re a member then thank you and if you haven’t come aboard then your support will lead to long term change that is already making a real difference.
Please Join Us
And as always feel free to write to me about anything in football or beyond.
Andy’s Album of the Week
The Marcians : Greece is...
My first ever flight took me after graduation into Athens on a hot July afternoon heading for a month in the islands before heading to Embra to sort out the British beer market.
It was a long time ago but I remember it like yesterday.
I fell in love with the city then and still love it today, warts and all.
Why?
Its people, its ambience, the Plaka, the shops, the sounds, the smells.
So different.
And back then the country was slowly awakening after the years of brutal military rule by The Generals.
And the views of truly ancient marvels, everywhere.
Overwhelming then and still.
Our 2 star(ish) hotel, now a snazzy apartment block, had an unhindered view of the Acropolis from its roof.
In that Greek summer the streets, the shops and especially the tavernas were alive with the sounds of Bouzouki music.
It became a brain implant, the soundtrack to good times and beers and wines in nice warm places.
To me Piraeus was the gateway to the Cyclades and cheap as chips deck-class transport to a welcoming and unforgettable world.
I’d have loved to be in the Plaka tonight with the Tartan army and know tonight’s welcome will turn into 2 hours of unfriendly noise at Georgios Karaiskakis Stadium tomorrow night.
But before and after, the music will play again, the drinks will flow we’ll drink together and the world will be a better place.
Mikis Theodorakis and his Marcians will be the soundtrack in Andy’s Morningside Taverna tomorrow just like they were on the cassettes safely wrapped up in my borrowed back pack years ago.
Chez Andy, the Retsina is already in the fridge, and the Metaxa 11 stars will toast a Scotland performance and I just hope we turn up.
Yiamas se olous kai oles
Ston Stiv empistevomaste
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