Two miracles aside, it looks like it’s going to be down to Rangers to fly the Scottish flag in top European competition this season.
This evening, Hearts join Celtic on the list of candidates for an early exit from Europe as they go down 4-0 to a cracking Dinamo Zagreb side in front of 22,000 supporters inside the Maksimir Stadium.
Two goals either side of half time more than finished off any hopes Hearts could have of getting something out of the return fixture in Edinburgh on Thursday.
This latest result comes in another bad showing for Scottish sides in Europe. With Motherwell, Falkirk and Aberdeen already out of Europe, and with Celtic will be sure to follow next week as they try to score 4 without reply at the Emirates against Arsenal, so it seems even more unlikely that Hearts can overturn this scoreline.
On a choppy pitch that had earlier caused some concern for manager Csaba Lazslo, Dinamo got their scoring of to an early start as Mario Mandzukic headed the opener within five minutes. Greek striker Papadopoulos then took advantage of a loose ball from Hearts goalkeeper Marian Kello to tap in from close range. After the restart, Vrdoljak made it 3-0, firing in his shot off the post from 18 yards. The contest was already over by this stage, but defender Biscan managed to head the ball in from a corner with half an hour left to play.
Hearts will travel home knowing that another tough game against Rangers on Sunday awaits them on their return.
Editorial
What is particularly bad about this defeat is not that Hearts lost – I don’t think anyone seriously expected them to get anything from this game – but rather that our club sides have managed to emulate their dire performances from last year. Remember that at this stage in the 2008/09 season, all our club sides, with the exception of Celtic, had already been knocked out of Europe. Last year’s shameful result saw Rangers losing to a Latvian team, this year you can take your pick from Falkirk losing to FC Vaduz (a team from Liechtenstein for fuck sake) and Aberdeen, who lost 8-1 on aggregate to a relatively unknown Czech side (who, incidentally, lost 4-0 to Everton tonight).
There’s no point blaming the global recession or the Setanta deal for the failings of the club sides last year or this year. Quite simply put, our teams are shit when faced with opposition from outside our coastal waters and across Hadrian’s Wall, and Scottish football is in a deep, deep hole from which there seems no obvious means of escape.
When professional teams in the top division of your national league are getting turned over by mediocre sides from obscure footballing backwaters, there’s a real problem.
What happened to the days when English sides where filled with Scottish talent? Manchester United, Liverpool, Leeds, the great Nottingham Forest and Ipswich sides of the 70’s and 80’s where full of Scottish players. Now, the best we can do is Rangers reject Barry Ferguson at Birmingham, Allan Hutton at Spurs, Stephen Fletcher at Burnley, Darren Fletcher at Manchester United and not forgetting the UK’s most expensive goalkeeper, Craig Gordon at Sunderland. The rest end up in the Championship (and even then with shit sides), or in League 1.
Our national side is in crisis.
We’re struggling once again to reach a major final, led by a manager who so far has managed to record just 1 win in his time in charge, manage to alienate his best player (who also happened to be top scorer in Scotland for the past two seasons), a manager who implicitly authorised an all-night drinks binge at some posh country-house that resulted in an all encompassing PR fiasco involving Rangers and the SFA and which saw him lose two more players, and whose biggest footballing achievements so far are scraping past Iceland and only losing 1-0 to Argentina in a friendly.
Domestically, our game is in crisis.
We have a league dominated by two teams (neither of whom actually want to play in this league) to such a degree that I’m surprised the Monopolies Commission have not made inquiries.
We’ve got two clubs being hounded out of business by chairmen who couldn’t manage a fart, let alone a business (that’s you Livingston). Stirling Albion’s chairman refused to sell the club to a supporters trust who managed to raise the £300,000 asking price, instead putting the price up and plunging the future of the club into more doubt.
Clyde FC, relegated and forced to release their entire playing staff bar one in order to survive are now being hounded out of their stadium by a council that seems unwilling to support a football team in the town, chasing them for unpaid rent. Stranraer are facing similar problems, unsure if they’ll make the end of the season.
An open question to anyone who reads this: how do we get Scottish football back from the brink of extinction and back to a point where we’re no longer turning it into the laughing stock of world football.
I look forward to your answers, because I’ll be fucked if I know.
