THE Scottish Football Association is a law unto itself, as this column has shown over many months.
Anyone with any doubts about that just needs to look at the latest fiasco over the appointment of a replacement as the manager of the Scotland national men’s team.
One minute we are being told there is no hurry to find the best candidate for the job, there will be plenty time to interview a range of candidates, blah, blah, blah, and the next we hear that an official approach has been made to the Northern Irish FA – the Irish Football Association or IFA – for their manager Michael O’Neill.
O’Neill knows Scottish football well and he is both articulate and – in terms of what he has achieved with a less than stellar squad – he is successful.
One wag commented why would he leave Northern Ireland, who made the second stage of Euro 2016, a feat Scotland has never achieved in any major finals, to manage an inferior national team.
Still, he is undoubtedly a good manager and Scotland will do well to get him. What it does show, however, is that the SFA tells porkie pies about its plans, because we were being told there was no hurry as Scotland does not play a competitive match until well into next year, when the long and tortuous process of qualifying for Euro 2020 begins.
There are friendlies, probably against teams who are going to Russia, but there’s nothing scheduled for next year at this point.
We are currently rated six places behind Northern Ireland in the Fifa world rankings, though that will change when the new rankings are issued because Northern Ireland got to the play-offs and we did not. That’s evidence enough, apparently, to prove that O’Neill is Scotland’s man, but why the rush to appoint O’Neill? Did the SFA balk at the thought of Rangers or Sunderland getting in there first?
The approach is official so that means the SFA must be prepared to pay the IFA the compensation fee required to release O’Neill who is not even halfway through a four year contract, but it won’t be that much and even the cash-strapped SFA could afford to probably double O’Neill’s salary.
He is said to want the job, and after six years in his current post he probably feels he has taken Northern Ireland as far as he can – they only missed the World Cup due largely to the worst refereeing decision of modern times.
About the only thing the approach does is to stop the embarrassment of Rangers having to admit that they were never going to have O’Neill in the Ibrox hot seat. It’s a shame to have to say this in 2017, but the fact that O’Neill is a Catholic from Northern Ireland might have upset some of their supporters. The majority would have welcomed him, because at least he’s not Pedro Caixinha, but a sizeable minority would have protested vehemently, as a look at online fans forums would show.
Let’s hope that if O’Neill does become manager of Scotland then he will be welcomed with open arms. And if we do qualify for Euro 2020, he will surely get the Freedom of Hampden or wherever the national side plays...
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