So much for international football being the poor relation. Overlooked in Gianni Infantino’s rush to flog the World Cup to the highest bidders, Germany and France emptied their wallets to hire a couple of high-performance thoroughbreds.
Jurgen Klopp swapped TV gigs and high-energy drinks to head up Die Mannschaft, and threatened to quit minutes after he walked into the room. Even Steve Clarke’s post-match interviews never dipped as quickly as that.
Zinedine Zidane’s appointment as successor to Didier Deschamps was the least surprising development since Andy Burnham stuck a whoopee cushion under Sir Keir Starmer but still had an impact. Not as great as Zidane’s forehead on the chest of Marco Materazzi, perhaps, but an impact nonetheless.
On the day the former Real Madrid icon was named as the new coach of Les Bleus, one of the leading candidates to succeed Clarke as manager of Scotland was chinned on the issue by Sky Sports.
No harm to John McGlynn. But even he would acknowledge that he lacks the charisma or clout of a Klopp or a Zidane.
An astute, intelligent and under-rated coach, the Falkirk boss has done a great job of sailing quietly under the radar for a number of years, performing minor miracles.
And, while the achievement of taking the Bairns from the depths of League One to sixth place in the Premiership in successive seasons merits a mention in dispatches, is that enough to land the job of guiding the national football team to the last 32 of a World Cup? Probably not.
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When pundits, journalists and fans push McGlynn or Steven Naismith as a potential successor to Clarke, they do it because they can’t see too many alternatives.
Taking part in a BBC Sportsound discussion on the subject after the World Cup, it was hard to hear who the next manager of Scotland should be above all the head scratching going on.
One of the studio voices belonged to former national team manager Craig Levein, the obvious candidate for the post back in 2009. Study the list of runners and riders now and there are no clear cut, stand-out contenders to pick from this time.
Derek McInnes has already landed a bigger job at Rangers. And, beyond a left-field pitch from Bobby Williamson, Clarke’s departure has been followed by the sound of tumbleweed. The usual rush by agents to throw the names of clients into the ring has been non existent this time.
Even the bookies seem clueless. Scanning a shortlist the other day, Everton boss David Moyes was the 3/1 favourite. Why anyone thinks that a manager in the English Premier League will swap his £6million a year for £500k managing Scotland beats me. It won’t happen.
At times like these, the Scottish wife of Roberto Martinez is portrayed as a homing pigeon, dragging her husband back to live in Lanarkshire, where he once played football for Motherwell. After leaving Portugal, the former Belgium boss might have options in the kind of places where the sun shines more brightly than it ever does in Bothwell.
Either way, the SFA are now sifting through a list featuring a disproportionate number of overseas candidates because the production line of world-class Scottish managers has ground to a halt.
As recently as August 2011, seven of the 20 managers at English Premier League clubs were born and raised somewhere between Gretna and John O’Groats. Right now, Moyes is the last man standing.
No one speaks, anymore, of a ‘Largs mafia’. The Inverclyde coastal town used to be as chic and fashionable as Miami or the south of France in the days when the great and the good of management would descend on an old country house on the hill overlooking the Isle of Cumbrae to compare methods, ideas and philosophies.
Sir Alex Ferguson, Sir Kenny Dalglish, David Moyes, Paul Lambert, Andre Villas-Boas, Brendan Rodgers, Roy Hodgson, Owen Coyle and Alex McLeish all studied for badges in Largs. Jose Mourinho famously identified himself as football’s Special One by demolishing a black pudding supper from the Blue Lagoon.
Equally fond of a double nugget from Nardinis were Fabio Capello, Giovanni Trapattoni, Marcello Lippi and Iran boss Carlos Queiroz.
They rebuilt the old place as part of a £12million upgrade in 2012. Around that time, other countries had cottoned on to what they were up to and reproducing their courses in their own centres of excellence.
Even Scotland had second thoughts, shunting coaching education to the Oriam National Performance Centre in Edinburgh around the time Sir Alex Ferguson was announcing his retirement from Manchester United. With no Fergie there to have a word in the shell-like of English chairmen, the number of Scottish managers working at the highest level fell off a cliff.
Fashions change. And when jobs crop up in England’s biggest leagues now, American and Middle Eastern owners draw up shortlists featuring Spaniards and Italians and Germans instead. There are now five times more Spanish coaches in the English Premier League than there are Jock Tamson’s bairns.
Even north of the border, native managers are becoming an endangered species. Season 2026/27 kicked off this weekend and just five of the managers in the top flight hail from these parts.
A 12-team Premiership is one of the factors at play. Younger coaches like Craig McLeish of St Mirren know they have little or no time to develop and learn from their mistakes.
While they might dream of giving 15-year-old kids a crack at the first team, they need to hit the ground running – or else. The only thing they learn now is the price of failure. Usually in the form of a P45.
Searching for a new national team boss ahead of the first Nations League fixture in Slovenia on September 26, all of this poses a problem for the SFA.
While the process is well underway, the lack of credible, attractive Scottish candidates will force Craig Mulholland to cast the net wide, and there should be no hand-wringing or angst over the appointment of an overseas boss or, for that matter, giving the job to a relatively unknown candidate. Few in Spain or Argentina had the first idea who Luis de la Fuente or Lionel Scaloni were before they led Spain and Argentina to the World Cup final.
Put it like that, and McGlynn might be as good a choice as any. If it really must be a Scot, however, then there is one out-of-work candidate who stands head and shoulders above all the rest. At 62, he has a track record of success in club football and has already led one underachieving international team to three major tournaments. If the SFA thought they could get away with re-hiring Steve Clarke tomorrow, they would do it in a heartbeat.
