Lennon Signs On

Finally an SPL club get their Lennon.

My first reaction to Danny Lennon's appointment at St Mirren was positive. Obviously it's not a bank busting move but these are straitened times.

Just reward for Lennon's excellent season at Cowdenbeath and the Buddies' board to be applauded for a brave move. No doubt they looked to Craig Levein's run at Hearts after stepping up from Cowden.

Does history repeat itself? Who knows? But full marks for shunning the orthodox SPL managerial roster.

There's two side to every story though.

Here's a St Mirren fan's reaction from Twitter (@_Jock):

"It was confirmed this afternoon that Danny Lennon has been appointed as the team manager at St Mirren Football Club" Whoop de fuckin' do.

@ScotFootBlog Daft to have got rid of Gus before sale went through. New owner should pick manager. Appointment shows low ambitions.

@ScotFootBlog The redundancies make it look like a "fire sale" is on the cards. So am surprised they have taken on more staff.

@ScotFootBlog New board will have their own ambitions, just hope they're footballing ones.

Maybe my optimism is misplaced. Will Lennon have been given assurances about his position after any sale? Is that sale likely to go through in the short term?

All that remains unclear. I still think this is an admirable move by St Mirren. Unfortunately it also seems to raise some questions that nobody is providing answers to.

Searching For Football

The World Cup will take over the world. Including Google apparently.

Help Please!

Now then, a request for some information.

I received an email asking if I had any information about Matt Brown who played for Stirling Albion and Inverness Caledonian back in the 1950s.

The email was from Matt's sister Irene who still lives in his hometown of Brigton.

Matt eventually emigrated to America where he stayed in the game as a university coach in Nevada.

Unfortunately Matt died a few weeks ago and Irene would love to get some more information on his playing days to send to his family in the States.

Irene thought that Matt might have played for Scotland. I can find no record of this but there were a lot of representative sides back in the fifties so it might have been that he was capped for a Scottish Football League XI or an amateur side.

Anyways, if you can shed any light please get in touch and I'll make sure the info gets to Irene.

Cheers
Tom

Scotland in 1974: Undefeated, Proud, Hame

1974.

The year we came so close.

But for a bounce here, a bounce there.

West Germany 1974. Scotland are undefeated but eliminated. Goal difference enough to send us home.

An agonising story for sure. But one that now seems to have provided the framework for how we view the national side. Luckless but plucky. Failing but fighting the good fight in the process.

The side Willie Ormond took to Germany was stuffed full of legendary names. Bremner, Jonstone and Law. Dalglish, Jardine, Jordan. Carslberg don't make Scottish international squads, but if they did...

Yet it still wasn't enough.

Zaire, Yugoslavia and Brazil stood in our way. Zaire were hopeless, Yugoslavia decent and Brazil, although not of 1970 vintage, remained Brazil.

A tough group but not one to overly concern such a talented Scotland side.

A 2-0 win against Zaire was a solid enough start but masked a poor performance. The group looked like being a three way fight. Given the chance to burst out of the starting blocks Scotland responded with a performance that was, at best, tepid. It was a start they would later regret.

Then came Brazil. And a performance that has come to define this Scotland side's greatness. Matching the South American's across the pitch Scotland held out at the back and were creative further forward.

Billy Bremner came within inches of breaking the deadlock but the game ended goalless.

A draw against the defending champions. A fine result, a fine performance.

But not enough. A result to echo down the ages. But within the context of the group we had come up short. Yugoslavia also managed a scoreless draw with Brazil. Crucially they'd also pumped nine past Zaire.

It came down to the Yugoslavia game. We needed a win or, at the least, we needed Zaire to pull of some miracle against Brazil.

Predictably neither happened.

Joe Jordan's 88th minute equaliser gave some hope but Brazil's 3-0 win did for us on goal difference.

Yugoslavia, Brazil and Scotland were equal on four points but our lack of goals against Zaire killed us.

Heartbreaking.

But were we the architects of our downfall? We'd taken a team full of world class players to our first finals in 16 years. But, again, we failed on the big stage. Yes, Brazil and Yugoslavia were good sides but the cold facts remained the same. In three World Cups we had only managed one win, against Zaire.

It was a shambolic record that was to an extent masked by the knowledge that this was a good side who went agonisingly close to progressing. The template for the glorious failure was laid down as the nation sought comfort in a hard luck tale.

But 1974 was, and remains, another failure. As footballing pinnacles go I'd rather be sustained by memories of a dodgy Russian linesman than of being the first team to be eliminated undefeated from a World Cup.

Where could Scotland go from here? Many were convinced that only bad luck had hampered us. We still had the players to compete. What we needed now was a manager who could convince those players that they could take on the world and win.

We were about to go on a march...

> Stories remain that the playing field was not, perhaps, level. The suggestion is that Zaire were nobbled, that they allowed Brazil to score the crucial final goal. Distasteful, outrageous. But not excuse enough. We should have scored more against Zaire. And we only won one game. It was in our hands. We dropped the ball.

Scotland 1974

If you come up short with this squad then you're never going to amount to very much.

David Harvey (Leeds United)
Sandy Jardine (Rangers)
Danny McGrain (Celtic)
Billy Bremner (Leeds United)
James Holton (Manchester United)
John Blackley (Hibernian)
Jimmy Johnstone (Celtic)
Kenny Dalglish (Celtic)
Joe Jordan (Leeds United)
David Hay (Celtic)
Peter Lorimer (Leeds United)
Thompson Allan (Dundee)
Jim Stewart (Kilmarnock)
Martin Buchan (Manchester United)
Peter Cormack (Liverpool)
William Donachie (Manchester City)
Don Fort (Heart of Midlothian)
Thomas Hutchinson (Coventry City)
Denis Law (Manchester City)
William Morgan (Manchester United)
Gordon McQueen (Leeds United)
Eric Schaedler (Hibernian)

Scotland in 1958: Familiar Feelings, Familiar Failings

By the time qualifying came around for the 1958 World Cup, FIFA had decided that they could no longer justify offering two places to the Home Nations Championship.

England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales would now need to get through normal qualifying groups to takes their place in Sweden. Which all four of them promptly did: an historical curiosity that will surely never be repeated.

Scotland, hinting at the nailbiting qualifiers that would follow in the decades ahead, sneaked through with a 3-2 win against Switzerland. Unlucky Scots? Perhaps, but many who saw it would still argue that Alex Scott's winning goal was offside. No matter - we were on our way.

After the 1954 debacle and Andy Beattie's resignation during the tournament the SFA had turned to Matt Busby to lead the squad in 1958. With the Munich Air Disaster leaving Busby seriously injured, trainer Dawson Walker took on the manager's job.

France, Yugoslavia and Paraguay lay in wait for a Scottish team who had yet to record a victory in the World Cup.

Tommy Docherty, the presumptive captain, found himself dropped for the first game with Hibs' veteran Eddie Turnbull taking the armband.

The Doc was no stranger to run in with authority and his deselection seems to have stemmed from a disagreement with our old SFA chum George Graham after he pulled out of an international game. It also points to the inconsistency in selection that many players of the time continue to argue seriously hampered their progress.

That aside Scotland took their first World Cup point, Hearts' Jimmy Murray netting the equaliser in a 1-1 draw with Yugoslavia.

France had beaten Paraguay 7-3 in the groups other game meaning Scotland's point, while not the perfect start, was a source of some optimism going into the second match against Paraguay.

Optimism that would, somewhat typically, prove unfounded. Jackie Mudie and Bobby Collins both scored for Scotland but Paraguay held on for a 3-2 win.

The chance of a quarter final place looked all but gone and a 2-1 defeat to France in the final condemned us to bottom of the group.

After two tournaments our record stood at five games played, four lost, one drawn and none won.

We were starting slowly on the world stage, a theme that continued into the games, with both Yugoslavia and Paraguay going ahead inside the first ten minutes. To do that once is careless, twice is just bloody stupid.

For all that we can - and I frequently do - complain about the lack of professionalism at the SFA, we must also look to the players. Drawn from strong teams in Scotland and England the players in 1954 and 1958 should have done better.

Don't believe me? Northern Ireland got through their group before losing to France and Wales missed narrowly missed a semi final spot after a 1-0 defeat to Brazil.

Good news for the Anyone But England campaign though - three draws meant they also fell at the first hurdle. So that's alright then.

And how depressed could Scotland get? We were getting used to this World Cup malarkey now. And there would be another one round in four years for us to look forward to. Or so they might have thought...

> Despite captaining the side Eddie Turnbull was one of the unlucky Scotland players not to receive a cap for playing for his country. Only Home Internationals matched were marked with the presentation of cap, a situation that was finally remedied some 50 years later when the SFA awarded caps to Eddie and other players thank to a campaign launched on the back of Gary Imlach's excellent book My Father and Other Working Class Football Heroesabout his father Stewart.

Scotland 1958

Another inexperienced squad with 12 of the 22 having 10 caps or less. The second most capped, Tommy Docherty, didn't play a game.

Note this was a tournament in which we named a Haddock. Now we just try and qualify with huddies.

Tommy Younger Liverpool
Bill Brown Dundee
Alex Parker Everton
Eric Caldow Rangers
John Hewie Charlton Athletic
Harry Haddock Clyde
Ian McColl Rangers
Eddie Turnbull Hibernian
Bobby Evans Celtic
Tommy Docherty Preston North End
Dave Mackay Heart of Midlothian
Doug Cowie Dundee
Sammy Baird Rangers
Graham Leggat Aberdeen
Alex Scott Rangers
Jimmy Murray Heart of Midlothian
Jackie Mudie Blackpool
John Coyle Clyde
Bobby Collins Celtic
Archie Robertson Clyde
Stewart Imlach Nottingham Forest
Willie Fernie Celtic

Scotland v France: 1958 World Cup

More on our experiences in 1958 later. For now here's some footage of our 2-1 loss to Just Fontaine's French side.

Sammy Baird got Scotland's goal.

Another brave failure? Not quite. We were already out so this was a meaningless game.

If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next

Grateful thanks to @Marrsio and others on Twitter for bringing this to my attention. A fantastic feature on "How A Soccer Star Is Made" by Michael Sokolove in the New York Times.

As Rob points out on Left Back In The Changing Room:

Proving, once again, that the Americans kick our ass when it comes to extended journalistic pieces. Wonderful, wonderful stuff.

In fact I'm not even sure where Sokolove would find an outlet for this kind of thing in Scotland.

Coincidentally we had John Collins wading into the debate today:

It starts at grassroots level, at five, six or seven years of age. The sessions I give help develop skill, create two-footed players, improve their balance and co-ordination, while enabling players to master the ball. And once you’ve given the kids that, you take it to the next stage and put them into game situations where tactics come into it. But that has to come after the foundations are laid.

I see too many big players playing at the back in under-10 games because they can kick it the furthest and are the strongest. That’s not what football’s about. We’ve got to develop skill and technique. It’s not about winning. Every kid wants to win when they go on the pitch so we don’t have to talk about ‘the will to win’. That’s in the Scottish blood. But the will to prepare for victory is vital and that comes on the training pitch.

Collins was launching a training scheme with The Platinum Scheme. Leaving aside the rumours that JC's attitude to teaching the young players in his first team squad was to remove his top and challenge them to sit-up duels, he is speaking some sense. Nothing new, but some sense.

But it's another scheme in a country of countless such schemes. Most are never heard of again.

Collins would probably find a lot to agree with in the New York Times article. The depressing thing is, in comparing the US system unfavourably to the Dutch system, Sokolove might just have highlighted how far Scotland is behind both.

Scotland in 1954: A Dismal Debut

Blazered buffoonery at the SFA had denied Scotland of their place at the 1950 World Cup but, just four years later, we were ready to unleash our best on the world's best.

In fact we only qualified courtesy of finishing second in the Home Nations Championship. Regular readers will realise that this was also the case in 1950 when the SFA refused to let us travel. All that seemed to have been forgotten when Switzerland 1954 rolled round. Maybe the blazers liked cuckoo clocks.

1954 was slap bang in the middle of something of a purple patch for competitiveness in Scottish football. Rangers were the dominant side but Hibs, Celtic, Aberdeen and Hearts would all weigh in with league titles before the decade was out.

Motherwell and Clyde had joined Celtic and Rangers in winning the Scottish Cup in the early fifties and Hibs were a season or so away from the semi-finals of the European Cup.

So you would expect competition for places to be fierce. And, with Rangers on tour in America and refusing to release their players and Celtic only allowing Bobby Evans, Neil Mochan and Willie Fernie to travel, this was one of the least Old Firm-centric squads Scotland have ever named.

Predictably, however, the SFA bigwigs still had a couple of cards up their sleeves in their apparently tireless quest to make Scotland look like idiots.

In a nod to modernity they appointed Andy Beattie as Scotland's first manager. They then informed him that only 13 of the original 22 man squad could travel to Switzerland. A cash motivated restriction that the players noted did not extend to SFA committee men.

Having had the carpet pulled from under him, Beattie felt he had no option to resign after the first game leaving a selection committee in charge of team affairs.

All things considered Scotland's opener against Austria, essentially our competitive debut outside the British Isles, could have been a lot worse than the eventual 1-0 defeat.

We know it could have been worse because we then promptly lost 7-0 to Uruguay in our second and final group match. We might well have struggled against the South Americans even if we hadn't been wearing kit that left the players better equipped for a North Pole expedition than a sunny Swiss day.

Partick Thistle's John Mackenzie who played that day recalled:

"Did I play in that game? I certainly didn't touch the ball very often. It was so hot and our kit was unbearable. I lost about half a stone in weight."

And so that was that. Debut over. Two games played, eight goals conceded, no goals scored.

In an interview after Scotland's exit Tommy Docherty was asked if, having played in an FA Cup Final, captained his country and played in a World Cup, he felt as if his ship had come in.

"Aye," replied The Doc, "just my luck I was at the airport."

A decent group of players handicapped by bad organisation and incompetents in charge. A familiar refrain.

Still we'd made our debut. Things could only get better...

Scotland's 1954 Squad

(Amazingly, given the resources at our disposal in the early fifties, only Evans and Brown had more than 10 caps going into the World Cup. Our 13 players combined had only one more cap than England's Billy Wright had amassed on his own.)

Fred Martin (Aberdeen)
Willie Cunninghan (Preston North End)
Jock Aird (Burnley)
Bobby Evans (Celtic)
Tommy Docherty (Preston North End)
Jimmy Davidson (Partick Thistle)
Doug Cowie (Dundee)
John Mackenzie (Partick Thistle)
George Hamilton (Aberdeen)
Allan Brown (Blackpool)
Neil Mochan (Celtic)
Willie Fernie (Celtic)
Willie Ormond (Hibs)

How much did the players receive for their role in the World Cup? Either £15 or their shirts to keep as souvenirs. Many just kept the shirts.

No doubt they were worried the SFA cheques would bounce.

Book Review: Martin O'Neill: The Biography

Martin O'Neill: The Biography by Simon Moss (John Blake Publishing)

It's a tricky thing, writing an unauthorised biography. How do you pitch it? Do you go for the muckraking reportage of rumour and innuendo like Kitty Kelley or Albert Goldman? Or just use existing sources to build a portrait of the subject.

In Martin O'Neill: The Biography, Simon Moss takes the latter approach in a workman-like book that ultimately fails to satisfy.

Partly this is the fault of O'Neill himself. A complex, intense character he deserves more than a life illustrated by old cuttings.

Even here though you feel Moss could have done better. O'Neill's relationship with Brian Clough obviously shaped both his playing career and his subsequent attitude to the role of manager. Moss refers to it a lot but fails to properly examine it.

Similarly the way events in Northern Ireland affected O'Neill as a young Northern Irish Catholic living in England are alluded to but not really analysed. That might be excusable in a football book but they must have played some part in shaping O'Neill and certainly influenced his relationship with Neil Lennon when he joined him at Celtic.

And brevity is not always the author's friend. I feel that a sentence like "O'Neill...may have been immune to the troubles taking place in his homeland, but Forest had their own problems on the pitch" veers towards the offensive when the year in question is 1972.

So we are left with a chronological tour through O'Neill's career. And there's nothing wrong with that, especially for Celtic fans as the Parkhead period is given the lion's share of the book.

Personally I'd have like to hear more about the playing years. I know a little about that strained relationship with Clough but I was unaware, for example, that O'Neill scored for Irish club Distillery in the Nou Camp as a teenager.

Still, that's a minor quibble in a book that is clearly geared towards those interested in O'Neill the manager - an approach that might yet have Liverpool fans snapping it up in the weeks ahead.

Less easy to overlook are the errors that litter the pages. The Manchester United of one sentence become the Untied of the next. It becomes laughable when "former O'Neill charge Emily Heskey" gets what must surely have been a memorable equaliser. It is perhaps unfair to judge Moss' work on the failings of his editor - Lord knows this blog is not without errors - but when "Nemanja Vidi?" is making an appearance on the second last page this reader's patience was sorely tried.

An editor with a knowledge of Scottish football would probably have also realised that Celtic were unlikely to be playing "Livingstone" (Doctor, I presume). Similarly The Herald is suddenly transformed into Sydney's Morning Herald.

There are numerous examples of this: O'Neill is quoted as saying that John Clark told him the Celtic team of 1976 never got booed. Why Clark would pick a season five years after he left Celtic is unclear. Unless, of course, he was talking about 1967. A big mistake that as far as Celtic are concerned.

When, on page 213, "O'Nell was forced to blood nineteen-year-old David Youngster" in goals at the Nou Camp, these errors had me snorting my tea. Still, for a marshall, Youngster did very well.

And that's all a shame, because the book deserves better. It's not a classic, it's not the definitive O'Neill story, but it's a worthwhile look at a man who has been involved in senior British football for almost forty years.

It's certainly readable - I particularly enjoyed having my memory jogged about Celtic's run to the UEFA Cup final - and remains so despite some of the more glaring errors.

But you can't help picture O'Neill's demented leaping at so many missed opportunities if Moss was playing for one of his teams. In the end this book leaves you wanting more. For that we might have to wait for Martin O'Neill: The Autobiography.

If he can ever sit down long enough to write it.

You can buy Martin O'Neill: The Biography and loads of other stuff at The Scottish Football Bookshop. Mercy me, I need the cash.

Bruzil

I've been getting inundated with emails asking me to promote various England related World Cup products on the site.

No, I wouldn't. And check the name of the site before getting in touch.

Nice then to find a World Cup campaign celebrating Scotland. And Brazil.

Irn-Bru have created Bruzil:

Who cares about not qualifying in 2010, when we can win in 2034? The plan is to make babies with Brazil to create a Samba McFootball team that will gub the world.

Away From The Numbers reports that:

Barr's Martin Steele visited Rio de Janeiro last week in order to place the lonely heart ads on billboards and in the dating sections of the Brazilian press. One, placed in the O Globo newspaper, reads: "Scots lass seeks Brazilian man with good sense of humour to make Scottish football magic".

I'd volunteer to get involved but the DNA test on Irn-Bru's website suggests that while my "swerviness" is unrivalled my "impressive tackle" rating leaves a lot to be desired. It was ever thus.

Here's the first of six videos. The others are (or will be) available here.

All the best
Tomtos

De-Press-ing

We often hear that Alex Salmond is the supreme political mind in the Scottish Parliament. As compliments go this is much like telling me that I'm a world class footballer after watching me play five-and-in with Stephen Hawking.

Still, if Salmond had the guile he's credited with surely we'd preparing for a vote on independence during the World Cup. Before the tournament is out there will be more than a few Scots wondering if we couldn't rebuild Hadrian's Wall to keep the English media out.

I've already stated that this blog will be neither a cheerleader for the England team nor a supporter of the "Anyone But England" squad.

That's not going to stop me joining the "Anyone But England's Media" campaign.

King Dennis II

An email earlier today from Craig Anderson - blogger at The Last Ditch Tackle and currently editing Scotzine as Andy Muirhead takes a honeymoon shaped holiday - calling for some World Cup memories.

So many. But for my favourite goal I go back to 1998. Dennis Bergkamp v Argentina, Quarter Final. Genius.

I was in Holland at the time - and for Germany's capitulation to Croatia. They're a nation that knows how to celebrate.

So, here's mine. What's yours?

Scotland in 1950: The World Cup That Wisnae

We begin our look at Scotland in the World Cup in 1950. Obviously the fact that we didn't actually play in the 1950 World Cup might make this a strange place to start.

But 1950 does provide some valuable insights into some of the self imposed handicaps that have so hampered Scottish football down the years. Well one, anyway. Our unerring ability to give pompous incompetents positions of power within the game.

Prior to World War II the Home Nations had shunned FIFA, withdrawing in 1920 over a row about amateur status in the game that I suspect is too dull for me to even research let alone write about. And also, one must imagine, because they had little doubt that Johnny Foreigner couldn't tell them much about the game they had invented.

So Scotland pretty much ignored the first three World Cups.

But after 1945 FIFA were desperate to remedy the situation. They wanted the Home Nations back in the fold and they were prepared to prostrate themselves at their feet to achieve it.

So Scotland got a FIFA vice-presidency, England, Wales and Northern Ireland got representation on the FIFA executive. And as a final deal sweetener FIFA essentially ignored their own qualification processes to give the Home Nations Championship two qualifying places.

Finishing in second place in a four team competition was enough to reach Brazil. And it wasn't even a home and away format. Three games to qualify for the World Cup. Easy.

Unfortunately the SFA supremo of the day, George Graham, believed in the purity of sport. Scotland could only go to the World Cup if they went as champions. Second place was not good enough.

Even the least fatalistic of Scots - a rare breed indeed - could guess at what would happen next.

A loss to England at Hampden condemned us to second place. We weren't going anywhere.

The players begged, the public clamoured, England captain Billy Wright pleaded. But George Graham had made his mind up and he was not the sort of man to change his mind in the face of overwhelming public opinion. Better to be called stupid and wrong than do the right thing and be deemed a decent enough old cove.

The expense of mounting an assault on Brazil might have clouded his considerations. But 134,000 fans watched that final game against England at Hampden. What on earth were the SFA doing with the cash?

And so the Brazil World Cup of 1950 went on without us. It would be 1954 before we made our debut, reaching Switzerland by finishing in second place in the Home Nations Championship. You couldn't make it up.

Things change of course. But sixty years on we're sitting out another World Cup. Whose fault is that? Let's not get into the blame game. But do a couple of SFA employees called George not spring to mind?