Is Steve Clarke the right man at the wrong time?
WE are two games away from ending our 20- year hoodoo and qualifying for a major tournament and can take a significant step forward with victory over Israel tonight. That would set up a one- legged play- off with either Norway or Serbia and while both nations would provide a stern test of our side’s credentials, the thought of success isn’t an overly fanciful one.
The Scotland national team has a proud history of punching upwards and it was probably this quality apparent in Steve Clarke’s Kilmarnock sides that made the 57- yearold the standout candidate to replace Alex McLeish last year. It’s hard to remember the last time there was such a clamour from the Tartan Army for a manager to land the top job.
Since replacing McLeish, though, it’s fair to say Clarke’s start to life in the international arena has been fairly tepid. Four wins out of our last five paints a deceptively optimistic picture when the reality is that our performances have not married up with our results. We eked our way past Cyprus, struggled to create against Israel and just about got over the line against a secondstring Czech Republic side.
Plenty have pointed the finger at various targets – the formation, the available personnel and their suitability to certain roles have all faced the music at one time or another – but the truth may be far simpler than that.
Kilmarnock’s success under Clarke lay in the system that the former Chelsea assistant crafted at Rugby Park. Players were coached to within an inch of their lives to the point that everyone knew the intricacies of the strategy and by turning a squad of largely average players into a cohesive unit, he created a side that could go toe- to- toe with any in Scotland on their day.
It was these qualities that many thought Clarke would bring to the national setup. And perhaps he will do precisely that as he stamps his authority on the team. But that takes time, a resource which is in short supply at international level – and one that Clarke is unlikely to ever have.
Clarke’s credentials as a coach are undoubtedly exemplary but the reality of international football is that he has less time to work with the players and as a result, the effectiveness of his ability to coach the squad is diluted.
That’s a concern in the short term but looking further ahead, there are other question marks over Clarke’s long- term suitability to the national team job. His career has been built on creating sides where teamwork outweighs individualism and the system elevates players to a higher level but with the current crop of players at his disposal, this isn’t the requirement. What’s needed is someone to devise a
system to fit as many quality players into the starting XI as possible.
We have no shortage of footballers playing at a high level throughout the senior set- up and while it would be nice to see Scotland playing as a cohesive, functional unit with a clear identity, that is perhaps still some way off in the distance. A much more reasonable request is that we simply play as the sum of our parts – something that we have yet to see under Clarke’s stewardship.
Comparisons are often made between the relative success of the Northern Irish team in recent years and the underachievement of our own side. We saw a team of players who are largely average at international level working hard and leaving superior teams with a bloody nose, and we saw a little bit of ourselves and decided we wanted in on the act.
We turned to Steve Clarke, a manager cut from a similar cloth to Michael O’Neill, in the hope that he could perform the same miracles with Scotland but we forgot one thing: our players are much, much better than the ones O’Neill could call upon.
We weren’t looking for someone to come in and prepare footballers plying their trade in the second or third tiers of English football for international competition.
ASIDE from his work as an assistant at Chelsea and Liverpool, the current Scotland squad will be the most talented group of players Clarke has ever worked with.
It is the strongest team – on paper, at least – that we have had in quite some time, in fact. The usual challenge of trying to turn average players into a decent international side has changed and with it, so have the demands placed on the national team boss.
We have a squad full of technically gifted players playing in Europe and England’s top- flight with enough talent that playing defensive, reactive football shouldn’t necessarily be a prerequisite for success. Clarke’s teams have never played in such a way and it seems unlikely to expect this to change anytime soon.
His philosophy has always been one founded on caution and pragmatism – qualities that wouldn’t have gone amiss in Scotland teams in recent years, but ones that do not suit the current demands of the national team manager.
It might just be that, given the quality we now have at our disposal, the former Kilmarnock manager is suffering from one of the cruellest fates that history can offer: being the right man at the wrong time.
Clarke’s start ... has been fairly tepid