SP-HELL
2010 heralded the continuation of two seemingly constant trends in British football. Scotland didn’t appear at the World Cup and whilst England did they fell well short of looking capable of making an impact.
The difference in expectation levels between the nations is of course massive. The Scots would be happy to qualify for the tournament whilst the English expect to do so – and when there would fancy their chances of finishing up in the quarters or semis.
These expectations are not unreasonable when the relative sizes of the two countries are examined alongside the perceived quality of their individual footballing resources. That said the Scottish expectation levels have sunk over the last decade as the fortunes, or lack thereof, of Scotland’s top flight domestic league have flapped and floundered.
As a product the SPL is an extremely difficult one to sell right now. In recent years its attendances have declined, its attractiveness to TV channels has all but vanished, its best players have deserted, its teams are crippled with debt and its ability to attract top talent is laughable. Worse still, all this has come at a time when the SPL’s southern neighbours have grown in strength across all of these areas.
To someone on the outside looking in this may appear to always have been the case. But up until the late ‘90s not only could top Scottish clubs often compete with all but the best English teams in terms of retaining and attracting top talent, the clubs could also boast a degree of European success not to mention a national team capable of regular tournament qualification.
Now as the World Cup ends and the domestic season draws nearer my club (considered by many to be Scotland’s third force) scamper desperately around the English lower leagues hoping to find a gem amongst the dross. And as every decent player we have leaves to be replaced by cheaper less talented journeyman fodder (which has been the case since about 1998) not only does the already poor standard of football decline, so too does my interest in forking out to watch this ramshackle team. I don’t blame the club – times are tight, I don’t blame the SPL either, but I do wonder how it’ll ever get better so long as the league is perceived to be so horrendously unattractive.
Not so long ago my friends in England would have been happy to watch the likes of Henrik Larsson, Brian Laudrup, Jorg Albertz, Eion Jess, Giovanni van Bronckhorst, Ronald de Boer, Ľubomír Moravčík, Pierre Van Hooijdonk and Claudio Caniggia. But now I genuinely struggle to tempt a single Sassenach mate along to see the what the current SPL has to offer.
Weirdly whilst the standard of SPL football has dipped, the entertainment and skill on show is still largely no worse than that of the majority of English Championship matches. The real difference between the leagues (other than geography) is the fact the well marketed and much hyped Championship receives about £200 million more TV money than the SPL over a similar period. That’s a lot of cash for a product not discernibly different from what’s on offer north of the border.
Apathy amongst Scottish supporters has never been so strong and the fact that the league seems to be literally dying season on season suggests that something good has to happen soon for the SPL to survive as a credible brand. But how do you turn a brand so deep in decline that many of its own supporters have lost interest, into something that can not only reinvigorate domestic curiosity but make the product marketable elsewhere? I’m literally stumped and so is everyone else I’ve spoken to about the issue. I guess all we can do is hope some distracted TV mogul mistakenly adds an extra zero to the next TV rights deal cheque, because at this rate that’ll be the only way anyone will ever invest in or promote the seemingly moribund product that is SPL football.