Because, over the years, Scottish football has developed a regrettable habit for humiliating itself whenever it’s allowed out of the country and the fact that Kilmarnock were duly eliminated by such inauspicious cannon fodder merely served to hammer home the point.
A career low point? Is there any other way of looking at it? Banned. By Connah’s Quay Nomads. Granted, in this game, the occasional blackballing comes with the territory. It wasn’t that long ago your humble correspondent was considered persona non grata at Celtic Park for suggesting that the appointment of Ronny Deila was perhaps not one of Peter Lawwell’s shrewdest decisions.
And it was the same sin die treatment at Ibrox when critical of Pedro Caixinha. A week or two later he was muttering something about dogs and caravans as the wheels were coming off in spectacular style – having already been papped out of the Europa League qualifiers by Progres Niederkorn. The image of Caixinha remonstrating with his club’s irate supporters afterwards from the middle of a Luxembourgian bush, is a shivering reminder of how our game got into such a sorry state in the first place.
That’s one of the reasons why, in that pride swallowing summer of 2019, Kilmarnock, Celtic, Rangers and Aberdeen were all being lumped in with European football’s no hopers in the dross v dross eliminators.
Before the tennis was over and the golf had even started. Rangers faced the might of St Joseph’s of Gibraltar that same week in the first round of Europa League qualifiers. Celtic squared up to FK Sarajevo and survived a couple of rounds before eventually being knocked out by Cluj.
The Champions League got up and running later that summer without them. Aberdeen scraped through against RoPS Rovaniemi from Finland before being bundled out by Croatians HNK Rijeka, beaten 2-0 home and away over two legs.
It was nothing short of an insult to the game in this country that all four of Scotland’s European representatives had to enter into those first knockout rounds. But the fact that the Welsh Dog & Duck then took out Kilmarnock ensured that we couldn’t even get through it with our dignity intact.
So, now that Motherwell are about to kick it all off again on Thursday night when they face Sligo Rovers in the second round of the Europa Conference League qualifiers, let’s see this late start for what it really is – an undeniable sign that Scottish football is firmly in recovery mode.
Celtic will be spared the agony of having to qualify at all, with a place already secured in the group stages of this season’s Champions League. Rangers will have an opportunity of joining them there in the big boys’ playground, Hearts have a chance of reaching the Europa League and Dundee United, meanwhile, will discover today who they will face when they follow Motherwell into the Europa Conference League qualifiers at the third round.
While it would be too much to ask for all four to navigate a safe passage through to the group stages, there is reason to go into these ties with a sense of belief that our own rock-bottom moment has come and gone.
Better still, there are small fortunes to be raked in from competing in the group stages of all three competitions and what Rangers achieved last season, by reaching a Europa League final, has raised the bar for everyone else where expectations are concerned.
Giovanni van Bronckhorst and his players proved beyond question that the game in this country is beginning to thrive again so why shouldn’t the likes of Hearts, Motherwell or Dundee United carry realistic aspirations of laying down a marker of their own on the continent?
No, seriously. The time has surely come for our game to be unshackled from its own inferiority complex and to feel a whole lot better about itself than at any point over the last couple of decades.
Our national team is finally landing punches again, now that Steve Clarke is able to select players from England’s top shelf. The likes of Lewis Ferguson, Josh Doig and Liam Henderson are being cherry-picked for the big league in Italy.
And, as a result of last season’s epic run to Seville, Rangers are finally big-time operators again in the transfer market, having banked £10m from the sale of Joe Aribo with an even greater bounty to follow from Calvin Bassey in the next few days.
That the traditionally frugal Ajax are prepared to spend so heavily in recruiting the Nigerian international is another indicator of the importance of tapping into UEFA’s limitless cash reserves. With the value of Champions League qualification set to soar to upwards of £80m in just two years from now – when a restructured TV deal will become a financial game changer – Holland’s biggest clubs are already engaged in an arms race for domestic dominance.
That’s precisely why Ajax are prepared to throw the kitchen sink at buying the likes of Bassey but this willingness to pay top dollar for players from the SPFL is another sign of green shoots. Make no mistake, European football’s head has been turned by this sudden rejuvenation of the Scottish game.
Wouldn’t it be nice if, just this once, our clubs didn’t go and spoil it all by crashing out of the continent before everyone else has made it back off the beach? Especially the Welsh.
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