GLASGOW: By all rational thinking Scottish football should be in a sorry
state of affairs in its current financial climate.
All top flight clubs have been forced into cutting their budgets, slashing
wages and replacing expensive established stars with younger, cheaper,
home-grown talents.
Even the two giants of the Scottish game, Celtic and Rangers, have been
forced into making cuts to their playing squads to reduce debts in recent
seasons.
And the days of either of the Old Firm sides spending ?12 million (about
RM82 million) on a single player, as Rangers did with Tore Andre Flo in
2000, seem to be firmly set in the past.
But as all lovers of the beautiful game will know - rationality rarely
rules in football.
Instead both Celtic and Rangers find themselves in European competition
beyond Christmas for the first time in 35 years.
Aberdeen are currently second in the Scottish Premier League, splitting
the Old Firm and challenging for Champions League qualification, with
a starting 11 regularly consisting only of Scots.
And against all odds Scotland's national side currently top their Euro
2008 qualifying group - which includes World Cup winners Italy, runners-up
France - whom they beat 1-0 at Hampden - and quarter-finalists Ukraine.
Of course not everything is rosy - especially in the country's capital,
Edinburgh. Hearts have seemingly stumbled from crisis to crisis under
the ownership of Lithuanian banker Vladimir Romanov.
Last season, sitting top of the league unbeaten in 10 games and looking
good as potential title winners, Romanov sacked manager George Burley.
The Tynecastle club never recovered and in the end had to settle for second
place and Champions League qualification.
This season again started promisingly but after the head coach Valdas
Ivanauskas was forced to take a break from a stress related illness and
captain Steven Pressley was released for publicly stating his frustration
at the running of team affairs, even a runners-up finish looks beyond
them.
With the club still having huge debts - thought to be around ?20 million
- the future of the club hangs in the balance and on the whim of an eccentric
Lithuanian.
However, on the whole the Scottish game looks to be on the up after decades
on the slide.
In the 1980s Scottish teams, especially Aberdeen and Dundee United - who
became known as the New Firm, were able to compete in the latter stages
of European competition.
The face of Scottish football was to change following the arrival of Graeme
Souness as manager of Rangers in 1986.
Backed by club owner David Murray, Souness spent millions bringing expensive
English and foreign stars to the Ibrox club which could not be matched
by any of their Scottish rivals - including Celtic.
This level of spending continued through the 1990s, under managers Walter
Smith and Dutchman Dick Advocaat, as Rangers won nine league titles in
a row.
The other Scottish clubs tried to follow suit, racking up huge debts to
bring in expensive but third rate foreign players to the detriment of
the clubs' younger stars.
Eventually the spending experiment was abandoned when clubs such as Motherwell
and Livingston were nearly declared bankrupt and were forced to live within
their means and drastically cut their expenditure.
Though Rangers dominated in Scotland, David Murray's gamble of running
up huge debts to try and chase success in Europe ultimately failed - leaving
the club with debts of nearly seventy ?5 million until a share issue in
2005 helped cut this to a more manageable ?23 million.
At the start of the current season the Ibrox club brought in highly rated
French manager Paul Le Guen after Celtic coasted to the SPL title last
season.
Without the transfer budgets afforded to his predecessors he has been
unable to make wholesale changes to the side and Celtic look likely to
retain their title having a huge lead in the league.
However, Le Guen has led Rangers to the last 32 of the UEFA Cup and they
are now unbeaten in their last 12 games in European competition.
Celtic, under the management of Martin O'Neill, spent big to wrestle the
SPL title back from Rangers and peaked in 2003 with a run to the UEFA
Cup final.
Since Gordon Strachan took over from O'Neill in 2005 the Parkhead club
have also cut back on wages and handed more opportunities to players who
have came through their youth system - such as Aiden McGeady, Stephen
McManus and Shaun Maloney. - AFP
,
24 Dec 2006.
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