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We need leaders who will put first the interests of Scots

__________________ Campbell Martin ________________________________________________

There is something wrong with Scottish league football, and the national side’s promising result against the Czech Republic last Wednesday night gives a major clue to what is the problem.

The Scotland side that took the field in Craig Levein’s first match as national coach put down a marker that augers well for the future. With endeavour and skill, Scotland saw-off a strong Czech side, beginning the Levein era with a 1-0 win.

However, just three days earlier, Scotland’s two top club-sides played out a poor match, with members of both teams exhibiting a lack of basic skills and producing only one goal, which came from a goalmouth scramble in the fourth minute of time added-on for stoppages.

The match was, of course, the Old Firm game, and the 1-0 win for Rangers all-but guarantees a second league title in two years will be heading to Ibrox. Over the 90 minutes (94 with time added-on), Rangers were the better team, but only just, and that isn’t saying much, because Celtic were very poor.

The Scotland team against the Czech Republic consisted of, hardly surprising, eleven Scotsmen, and they tried their heart out for ‘their’ team. In the Old Firm fixture, of the twenty-two players on the field at kick-off, only eight were Scots.

Possibly Celtic’s worst player was the on-loan Landry N’Guemo: throughout the game he seemed to have great difficulty finding a team-mate with a pass. N’Guemo grew up in a village called Dschang, which you’ll find in the African republic of Cameroon. I could be wrong, but it is probably safe to say that the young N’Guemo did not grow up with a burning desire to one day play football for Glasgow Celtic. Instead, the African’s commitment to the club is based solely on the considerable pay cheque that slips into his bank account every month.

I singled out N’Guemo only because he was particularly poor in last Sunday’s game, but I could have picked any of the ten Celtic players who started last Sunday’s Old Firm game, and who were not born in Scotland. Actually, of the starting eleven, two were born in Scotland, but one, Aiden McGeady, has chosen to play for Ireland. Scott Brown was the only Celtic player eligible to play for Scotland.

In 1967, Celtic became the first Scottish side to win the European Cup, with eleven players born within 30 miles of Glasgow - Bobby Lennox, from Saltcoats, was the player who lived farthest from Celtic Park. Last Sunday, a very poor Celtic team lined up as follows:

Artur Boric (Poland), Andreas Hinkel (Germany), Josh Thompson (England), Thomas Rogne (Norway), Edson Braafheid (Netherlands), Aiden McGeady (Ireland), Scott Brown (Scotland), Landry N’Guemo (Cameroon), Diomansy Kamara (France), Robbie Keane (Ireland), Marc-Antoine Fortune (France).

Celtic used three substitutes during the game: Darren O’Dea (Ireland), Georgios Samaras (Greece) and Ki Sung-Yueng (South Korea).

Notwithstanding the obvious communication problems that must impact on a team with players who have eleven different ‘first’ languages, it is pertinent to ask how many of the current Celtic side can genuinely claim to understand the history of the club and what it means to the fans? While so many young (and not so young) Scots would give just about anything to wear the green-and-white hoops and play for the team they love, how many of the current Celtic team could make a believable claim to being supporters of the club, beyond the next pay cheque?

By all accounts, the answer to that last question is just two - McGeady, the Scottish-Irishman and Robbie Keane, a genuine Irishman. Speculation continues to suggest that the only Scotsman in the Celtic side, Scott Brown, grew up with an allegiance to Rangers.

The current Celtic side are a team of international mercenaries, whose skills, such as they are, will be made available to the highest bidder. Such a scenario is the name of the game in the world of top-flight football. It’s a business, and a very lucrative one at that.

However, scouring the world for footballing talent only works if you can afford to pay for the best: Celtic, and for that matter Rangers, cannot afford even second-best.

While both sides of the Old Firm currently pay wages of around £20,000 per week to their mercenaries, talented young Scottish players on their books ‘don’t make the grade’. The logic seems to be, if you’ve signed a foreign player, and are paying him such huge wages, you’re going to want your money’s-worth - and so, you’re going to play him.

Since the beginning of this season, I’ve had cause to take-in a number of Under 19 Pro-Youth games, mainly involving Queen of the South, who presently have on their books two local boys, one from Ardrossan and the other Saltcoats.

In each of the Under 19 sides I’ve seen, there have been young boys with exceptional skill. Those boys, with the right training and, crucially, with the right commitment on the part of players and clubs, could certainly, in a few years time, give the likes of Landry N’Guemo or Georgios Samaras a run for their money.

As things stand, though, young Scottish talent will not be given much of a chance to play for either of Scotland’s two top sides.

For that situation to change, Celtic and Rangers need to invest as much in developing young Scottish players as they presently squander on mediocre foreign mercenaries. Just for the record, Rangers were not as bad as Celtic in last Sunday’s game - fielding seven Scots in their starting eleven - but they still had an Algerian, a Bosnian, an American, a Spaniard and two Northern Irish on the field at some point during the 94 minutes.

It might mean a few relatively lean years as the young Scottish players build their skills, but the end result would deliver better and stronger Old Firm teams, with the national side also benefiting from young men finally being allowed to reach their full potential with the best club sides in the country.

Unfortunately, the money-men who run football clubs seem to see the short-term fix as the only option. If they aren’t prepared to build a better Scottish club, using young Scottish talent and developing Scottish skills - substitute ‘country’ for ‘club’ and the same applies in politics - then Scots will continue to suffer, while our money is poured down the drain or, to put it another way, into the bank accounts of over-paid and less-than-competent foreign players - for ’foreign players’ substitute ‘Westminster politicians and bankers’ and, again, the same applies to politics.

In football and politics alike, we need leaders who will put first the interests of Scots and our country.