This is a man’s world?

Here we go again. There’s an old cliché that says; the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. It has to be said, several times when I’ve either travelled with Scotland or just sat down once again in front of the TV to endure another international match, I’ve questioned my own sanity.
Every time a new campaign starts, the disappointment, anger and sadness of the last one is forgotten. Empty promises declared in blind rage that I’ll never watch another game and that I’m ridding myself of being a supporter of International football are about as empty as some of the performances I’ve witnessed over the years.
New glimmers of hope start to appear. We convince ourselves that if teams like Iceland and Iran can make it to the World Cup, then surly we can. Young promising players coming through might have looked good but needed a bit more experience are now a year or two older and we even have a new manager who seems to be fine with our genetics.
And then before a ball has even been kicked in anger, debate begins. ‘Whys he not playing this system?’, ‘What does this lad have to do to get a cap?’ and ‘Where are the goals going to come from?’. The anticipation builds and builds. So much so that it becomes almost impossible to keep the promise that I gave to myself at the end of the last campaign. I start looking at the squad of players, there do seem to be a few young promising players there who do have a little bit more experience this time round. I look at the qualification route and we really do seem to have a great chance now with the Nations League. After all, look at Northern Ireland, if they can make it to a tournament then why can’t we? Here we go again…
A strange thing happened to me on Wednesday morning on my way into work. As I was listening back to the previous nights Sportsound, they replayed the moment where the fulltime whistle had gone in Albania and Scotland Women had just won 2–1 in a nervy World Cup qualifier. I hadn’t realised that the game was even on last Tuesday, nor did I realise the significance of the match. The commentator described the scenes of the coaching staff and subs running onto the pitch to celebrate with the players, who were just finding out themselves that the game between Poland and Switzerland had ended in a goalless draw and Scotland had now qualified automatically for the World Cup. For some reason, hearing the scenes being described as they unfolded, the joy from the commentator and the celebrations on the pitch, I started to well up with emotion and even shed a little tear.
I will confess before I carry on; I am no Women’s Football fan. I can’t even recall ever deliberately watching a game of football played by the opposite sex. I don’t claim to be an expert of any type on the subject and I would be the first to cynically and naively criticise their game in comparison to the men’s one. However, the profile of women’s football in Scotland has gradually risen, especially after their qualification to the 2017 European Championships in Holland. I had heard snippets of match reports on the radio and read bits and pieces in the papers and online. I knew that last weeks 2–1 home win over Switzerland was likely not going to be enough to get the girls over the line as group winners and a dreaded qualification play-off would be ahead baring Switzerland dropping points away to Poland.
A familiar twinge of disappointment ebbed its way into my mind, ‘here we go again’ I thought to myself. So when I heard the playback of the moment these girls found out that they had achieved the unthinkable, the emotion seemed to overcome me. Was it joy? Regardless of whether or not I was a fan of the female game, it’s always nice to see your country do well. Or was it jealousy? For 20 long years we have been devoid of an international tournament. Summers have been spent supporting teams who play England or finding something relatable with a nation at a World Cup so that we can adopt them as our own for a few short weeks. And yet, here were these women not just getting to enjoy what a whole generation of Scotland fans have missed out on but getting to do it for the second time round.
Listening to the celebrations as I drove into work hit me with the thought that not only was this a historical moment for anyone who had been or still is involved in the women’s game but in fact a moment a whole generation of football fans in Scotland had never witnessed before. Scotland had qualified for a World Cup!
Although the task of qualification for the men’s team may well be looked upon as much harder than that of the women’s, I would counter that argument by highlighting exactly what these ladies success means. When Anna Signeul decided that her time was up in Scotland after reaching the 2017 European Championships, no one could blame her. She had spent over 12 years with the international team and had finally taken them to their first ever major tournament. Many people wondered what kind of affect her leaving would have on the Scottish International set up. She had been so influential in building the foundations for the women’s game in our country. The players she was leaving behind had come through here system. She had laid the foundations for her own success and now she was leaving for someone else to take the reigns. It would be unfair for Anna not to receive a lot of the praise for this fantastic achievement. The transformation from the time where she started to now is something to be admired even without the achievement of Scotland qualifying for consecutive competitions.
But it was Shelley Kerr who had the task of leading these women to the World Cup. Whilst Anna had left the team and set up in great shape, she put an enormous amount of pressure and expectation on the shoulders of the next person to step into her shoes. The first thing Shelley had to deal with was the retirement of 3 key players, one of which, was former captain Gemma Fay who had over 200 caps for her country over a 19 year career. As well as this, the World Cup qualification process allows just 9 UEFA spaces, with one of these being held for the hosts France. Whereas, Qualification for the previous European Championships had 16 spaces.
Having become the first ever female to manage at senior men’s level in the UK, many saw the step back to women’s football as a negative move. But considering she is now the first manager to take Scotland to the World Cup since Craig Brown, then some of her critics should understand the scale of what she has achieved in her career already. Shelley brought with her to the job a wealth of experience in playing and coaching in both the male and female game, something no other woman in the UK can do. Not only had she managed to maintain a consistent level of success at Stirling University FC, she was a key figure in introducing an Under 20’s development team for the future of the club as well as completing a master’s degree in Sports Science. On top of her UEFA Pro Coaching License she has spent time studying in Hertha Berlin and now with a World Cup qualification at the first time of asking to add to her CV, her stock in the game has never been higher.
A lot of us looked at the appointment of Alex McLeish as another backwards step for our national game. Although at the point of writing this, he is yet to take charge of his first competitive match in his second spell as manager, should he fail to achieve qualification then it really would highlight the failings in the SFA when it came to his appointment. And yet, as a fickle nation of football fans that we are, should McLeish lead us to the holy grail and qualify, not only will he be hailed as a hero, the Scottish Football Association will be due an enormous amount of praise for having 2 national teams qualifying for major tournaments. It’s a funny old game isn’t it.
It does however raise questions over the advancements of the women’s game in Scotland in comparison to the static state of play in the men’s game. The women’s game in Scotland is still very much in it’s infancy considering that the Scottish Women’s Football Association was only formed in 1971 and it wasn’t until 1998 that both male and female football was represented under the same association, the SFA. Funding for both men’s and woman’s football is distributed but it is far from equal. Understandably, the men’s game is much more heavily funded and the resources are far better. But this only highlights the hard work of Shelley Kerr, Anna Signuel and everyone else involved with women’s football, that despite their limitations, they have managed to achieve so much in such little time.
When Shelley first started kicking a ball, she was the only girl in her school who played football. Today, most senior clubs have their own or an affiliation with a Women’s team that play at age levels from seniors down to under 12s. The development of the young players coming through from girls football to women’s football are now being highlighted and enjoyed in the success that the international team is having. Although just 3 of the players who were named in the squad for the trip to Albania last week were home based players in Scotland, the rest of the squad is made up of players plying their trade in England, USA and Europe. Five of the squad are playing for the ‘big three’; Arsenal, Man City and Chelsea in England as well as girls playing in Sweden and the US who are both nations in the top 5 leagues in the world alongside England, Germany and Japan.
Players playing abroad isn’t anything new for the Scottish Women footballers, due to a lack of professional teams, finances and support, women have travelled the world for years to play at the highest levels. And it’s from playing in these different countries and leagues that they have received a level of coaching, conditioning and development that has churned out a generation of potential World Cup heroines for Scotland to look forward to.
It seems that every time another nation surprises us by making it to a European Championship or World Cup that we were unable to make it to, we analyse exactly why they made it and we didn’t. We even tried to pinch the Northern Ireland head coach on the back of his success in the 2016 Euros. We question why Iceland can progress past the group stages of the European Championships and then qualify for a World Cup with a population smaller than Edinburgh’s. We put ‘projects’ in place, change the youth development game and then change it back again, styles and systems are tested and then criticised because you can’t play ‘tiki-taka’ football unless half your team plays for Barca and the other half Real Madrid.
At what point will we stop looking at other nations and take a look at something a lot closer to home and realise that whilst we’ve been driving ourselves to insanity, an international team have been developing and growing this whole time and have now achieved something that we’ve been craving so desperately for over 20 years. Could it be said that behind every great man, there seems to be a team of World Cup heroines in waiting?