THE SITTER – How Missed Chances Can Destroy a Nation

It’s called a sitter. The ball is right in front of the goal, it’s easier to score, harder to miss, but somehow the ball refuses to go home to the net. The player’s face is agape in disbelief. He has missed a sitter. And he will be remembered for it. It might be the only thing he is remembered for. He might wake up in the middle of the night screaming, his form might plunge, perhaps the opposing fans will compose a new song celebrating his disaster, maybe he’ll think he is cursed.  Or doomed.

It might not be damaging if it is a mid-season game but missing a sitter in a precious moment will haunt a player like a ghost in a Dickens novel. Best to look at an example. Billy Bremner was a tough, popular redheaded Scottish footballer. He shone in the seventies, played for his country, starred at his club, and enjoyed the party-boy lifestyle of the celebrity. But then he missed a sitter. It blackened his name forever. No one wanted to buy him a beer anymore. People turned their backs on him and whispered – There’s Bremner. He let us down.

Bremner’s doom came in the Scotland v Brazil match during the 1974 World Cup Finals. The ball was one yard from the goal line. The nearest Brazilian was five yards adrift, and the goalkeeper may have been on the beach in Rio. And there was Billy Bremner, alone with the ball, the moment that would have made him a national hero, a new Scottish Braveheart, beckoned. The nation rose from its seat in front of its television. The word goal was shaped on lips and roars dredged from throats, Scotland were about to beat Brazil. But Bremner blew it. Like a stumbling drunk, he fluffed, and puffed, and defying Newton’s laws of motion, put the ball past the post. The nation never recovered. The Bremner hangover has lasted three decades. His curse was last seen a week ago, when Scotland missed several sitters against Holland, and went out of the World Cup.

The media made sure he never forgot it. In 1998, with Scotland drawn against Brazil in the opening game of the France World Cup, the Bremner sitter was shown on TV, over and over again. Billy Bremner dropped dead from a heart attack, aged 54.

With the World Cup Finals now on the line, all countries still in with a shout, will be praying that Bremner’s ghost will not rattle his chains.

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The Death of Scottish Football

If you’re Scottish, your football is dead. Once, a thriving field of imaginative players lived in this football worshiping country; now a dead zone, populated by footballing zombies. Scotland’s latest humiliation against Wales ranks as the worst effort by a Scottish team, probably, ever. An abomination of capitulation.

So what has made this footballing country die? Is it the culture? So long enveloped in drink and bad habits. Throughout the years, so many Scottish players banned for alcohol inspired abuse. Is it the fact that Scotland is not a nation, but a region of the United Kingdom? You can only play for your country if you truly have one. Or maybe Scots can’t dance? Brazilian Samba, Argentine Tango, cool, and svelte; the Scottish Highland Fling, no use in football. A corrupt and provincial mindset at the top of the Scottish football establishment condemns it to the grave. Scotland is now a minor football planet, a Luxembourg, an Iceland. And once they talked of winning a World Cup. And still they sing that ironic dirge, I’ll Walk a Million Miles for One of Your Goals, Oh Scotland. Indeed, that is the distance the Tartan Army will have to travel to see their nation score big again. And all that they have left..Let’s hope the English lose. Ashes to ashes. Dust to Dust. The end of Scottish football.

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World Cup Round-Up- Why are some teams better than others?

Scotland and Holland, two similarly small countries, one is flat, one full of mountains. The Dutch have pretty flowers, the Scottish have sharp spiky things called thistles. The Romans conquered Holland, they left Scotland out of the Empire. Flushing toilets came to Scotland last year.

In footballing terms, Holland are far superior. Why? They have a player pool from former colonies in the sunshine, Scotland has hunchbacks from local caves. The Dutch eat vegetables, the Scottish players are vegetables. The Dutch smoke reefer and imagine impressionist football, with flair, and lightness; in Scotland it’s kegs of dark beer, and frequent blackouts. Scotland is wee men, they are big men. Scotland’s national anthem sounds like a dirge at a sheep’s funeral, Holland’s swings.

So what options do a team like Scotland have? The traditional approach is to break opponent’s legs, set fire to their villages after the game and use the word fuck more often that a rapper with Tourette’s Syndrome. But a more realistic choice is required – abandon ship, withdraw from FIFA and never set foot on a football field again.

In football it is this simple – We are Good or We are Rubbish.

Holland 3 – Scotland 0

Gazza

Yes, he has suffered bombing but of his own making. Paul Gascoigne, that great English weeper, is back in the news crying re-hab. It’s last chance Gazza, and drink has turned out to be his hardest opponent. Death is the next stop if he raises an elbow again, according to the England legend and his bartender.  He puts brandy away like he put Scotland away in Euro 1996. A whole generation of English boys wept with Gazza in his greatest moment, England’s semi-final battle with the Germans in Italia 90. But like many great English explorers before him, Gazza was wiped out before reaching the summit. In Scotland, on that day, we wept too. Tears of fucking joy that the English were out. Thankfully though, Germany lost in the Final. Not much time for them either.