Comments on: The Road Ahead? http://www.insideleft.net/archives/383 the corinthian {scottish} football blog Thu, 18 Aug 2011 16:02:57 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3 By: Swanney http://www.insideleft.net/archives/383/comment-page-1#comment-185 Swanney Thu, 02 Oct 2008 19:39:58 +0000 http://insideleft.wordpress.com/?p=2359#comment-185 With a population of around 7 million people in Scotland(figure may be wrong, but I'm far too lazy to check) we cannot expect a huge resource of footballing talent. Count out that (for arguements sake) half are women, and around 2/3rds of the remainder are too young or too old to play professional football, that leaves us with roughly 1.16million men and boys of professional age, and its doubtful that a large figure will be of a good standard. This is my claim as to why we have yet to win the World Cup(we're always cheated), and the strict guidelines on foreign imports on the league (I'm not terribly assured of this, but there is something about not being able to play in the league without an EU passport or being a naturalized UK citizen, or something) means that the standard of players coming in from abroad is likely to be low. Because of these two factors, and the limited comptetition of the SPL, few of the bigger continental players will come this far north anyway. This is an uninformed opinion, so I may be wrong on many points, but my basic point is, we dont have the talent pool at home, nor do we have the attraction of the Premiership in England. Without some drastic changes to rulings, we are unlikely to see huge improvements in the Scottish game as a whole. With a population of around 7 million people in Scotland(figure may be wrong, but I’m far too lazy to check) we cannot expect a huge resource of footballing talent. Count out that (for arguements sake) half are women, and around 2/3rds of the remainder are too young or too old to play professional football, that leaves us with roughly 1.16million men and boys of professional age, and its doubtful that a large figure will be of a good standard.

This is my claim as to why we have yet to win the World Cup(we’re always cheated), and the strict guidelines on foreign imports on the league (I’m not terribly assured of this, but there is something about not being able to play in the league without an EU passport or being a naturalized UK citizen, or something) means that the standard of players coming in from abroad is likely to be low.

Because of these two factors, and the limited comptetition of the SPL, few of the bigger continental players will come this far north anyway.

This is an uninformed opinion, so I may be wrong on many points, but my basic point is, we dont have the talent pool at home, nor do we have the attraction of the Premiership in England. Without some drastic changes to rulings, we are unlikely to see huge improvements in the Scottish game as a whole.

]]>