As the Euro 2012 squads were finalised yesterday, I thought I’d take a look at which SPL stars would be lining up in Poland and Ukraine. After all, every two years we watch the Euros or World Cup and the sports pages of the Record are filled with players linked to Celtic and Rangers. Maybe we’ll see it a bit less this time round but it stands to reason that these sides must feature some of the top players in Scotland, doesn’t it?
Well lets take a look. I think we can claim four SPL players at Euro 2012 if we’re generous. All of them are at Celtic, sort of. Samaras is at least pretty clear cut, Brozek is on loan at Celtic, O’Dea is on loan from Celtic (at Leeds) and Lustig has played five games since signing in January. So with Greece, Poland, Ireland and Sweden, will we see any SPL player beyond the group stages?
Compared with the English Championship (taking into account this season’s promotions and relegations) the SPL’s representation pales in comparison. A rough count puts the number of Championship player at Euro 2012 at nine, more than double the SPL tally.
Now it would be oversimplifying things greatly to say that having capped players is the only factor that determines the strength of a league. However, when we look at the Scotland squad who lamentably went down 5-1 to the USA, we see that only seven of those twenty-two players are at SPL clubs – given that performance maybe we should be grateful!
The reason for all of this is clear, that any player who has real ability packs their bags and goes elsewhere either because they want to play on a bigger stage or because their club can’t turn down the money. Often they go to England as Jelavic did in January but some, like McGeady, head off to more exotic leagues where the petro-dollars make for big wages.
Countries of a similar size to Scotland who have qualified – Ireland, Croatia, Denmark – show the same pattern with a large number of their top players playing in the leagues of bigger European neighbours. So there is no obvious answer to how we could convince top Scottish players to play in the SPL. What is obvious is that the SPL needs to get better, not just to attract the money into the game that would keep the top players but to give them the level of football that they want to play.
Too many decision about the game in Scotland have been about short term financial interests. I have no problem with financial interests coming into it, the game needs money to survive, but we have to have some sort of vision for the future. We need a more competitive league that more people want to come and watch. It’s astoundingly simple but hold it up against some of the decisions that have been made in the past and you’ll see we are not always working towards that goal.
I’m steering clear of discussing Rangers too often at the moment as there are likely to be further developments but I do hope that some lessons can be learned about how our game is structured from that unfortunate saga.
UPDATE (1/6/12): O’Dea has officially left Celtic ahead of the tournament
Always play to the whistle! 