Oct 22 2008
Chasm
That’s the simplest way of describing the difference in English and Scottish league soccer.
Manchester United quite simply took Celtic apart in their Champions League tie on Tuesday evening, and with a few injuries to their name, Celtic look unlikely to emerge from the group stages of the competition following Villareal’s mammoth 6-3 win over Aalborg.
Celtic have never been afraid to spend a bob or two whenever needed. They might not be Man U or Real Madrid, but they’ve often signed the players they wanted. Yet even now, 16 years after the formation of the English Premier League, the Scots appear so far behind.
That isn’t to say that they’re rubbish; the game in Scotland is a very different beast, with four or five decent teams playing an ever changing combination of lower ranked teams in their Premier League to eventually play 38 games a season. It’s an unusual system, and not one that easily develops European or international quality.
In fact it’s true to say that since the introduction of this system in the late 1990s, Scotland’s international fortunes have been more desperate than those of an Icelandic bank.
You know what they say - where there’s blame, there’s a claim…
2 Responses to “Chasm”
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Nice post, it was a very comfortable victory for United wasn’t it! It wasn’t even a United side playing it’s best, more of a stroll in the park for the team. Was quite funny though how the two Berbatov goals were offside and yet were counted, and then when Rooney did score a legitimate third… it was ruled out for offside. A very comfortable difference and there is most definitely a massive difference between English and Scotish football!
It amazes me how it can be this way though. It can only be down to money. We’re all built from pretty much the same genepool in varying degrees, there’s no real reason why the Scots and Irish and Welsh should have less able teams and national teams than the English…