Watenaccio

I asked a friend the other week: “How would you feel if you were told your team would win a major European trophy, but that they’d be remembered – even despised – throughout the continent as the most negative team ever to do so, your name synonymous with defensiveness for a generation or more to come?”

He answered, quite correctly: “If we won a major European trophy, I wouldn’t care how we did it.”

“Quite correctly” because that’s what fans do. All they care about, bottom line, is that their team does as well as its resources allow it. Anything extra, punching above their weight, achieving higher than those resources should allow them to reach, is the stuff of dreams. In the list of priorities, quality of football comes fairly far down.

Of course, you’d love to have the players that were capable of playing slick, penentrating football and beating all comers with wonderful, expressive goals. You’d LOVE that. You’d be proud as punch of your team. But if you’ve not got those resources, if you’ve got a decent squad of players, who can play reasonable attacking football and score a few goals but not well enough to progress all the way to the top of the tree, what are you supposed to do? Are you supposed to say, well, we’ll try our best and see how far we get, or are you supposed to look at the resources you’ve got and try and devise a system that will maximise your chances?

Say you were the manager of Rangers (of course that’s who we’re talking about here). Suppose this was the one chance in your tenure to achieve something on this scale. Suppose you’d only recently taken over the team after a bad, bad period and were trying to rebuild it on meagre finances by European – hell, even by Scottish – standards, and sensibly starting by spending on defenders and midfielders and young, inexperienced Scottish players. Suppose, looking, at the opposition as each round came up you saw better individuals on the opposite roster. What would you do? Seriously?

No, of course, you’d limit the opposition’s chances and try to grab your own on the counter. That’s what anyone would do.

The more I look at the “Watenaccio” formation (ain’t that a fabulous word?), Walter’s version of the famous Italian system, the more I realise how clever it is. It’s a system of absolute trust between the manager and the players, and it does allow for a switch to attack when it’s going well, but it’s a risky strategy. It hasn’t worked so well in the two Fiorentina ties as it did against Lisbon. The out ball to the lone striker hasn’t been held up as well, and the supporting midfielders haven’t be close enough to him. And that’s when you find yourself “hanging on”.

Fiorentina manager, Prandelli, is not happy about it of course, and Lionel Messi called it anti-football, but guess what, they’re not in the final. To deserve to be in the final, Fiorentina should have had a better ratio than 3 shots on target out of 21. They had their chances, but they didn’t take them.

I’ve enjoyed watching the the ITV4 commentary of the last few games. Not only because auld Archie’s voice drives me up the wall, but because they know what they’re talking about and they call these games as they see them. In the first leg of the tie, Rangers were poor. Their ball possession – a key part of the system’s success – was awful, but Fiorentina were profligate. I agreed with the analysts’ assessment that we’d have to be a lot better in Italy, and we were. And I agreed with their admiration of the work that Smith has done in motivating a failing, disjointed side into a genuine team that refuses to be beaten.

I was four years old last time Rangers were in a Euro final, and I’m delighted they’re there again. I haven’t a clue if it’ll be good enough to beat St Petersburg, or win the league, or even the Scottish Cup. I just know that the transformation in the personality of the team is astonishing.

These are the experiences that bond teams. There will be new faces next season (hopefully at least one really good striker), and withthe confidence we’ll have gained from this extraordinary journey I suspect when we take on the Chamion’s League again the system will slightly less negative.

Maybe we’ll even win the trophy this time round, maybe not. But this is just the start of the second Smith era. What I’m looking forward to most, is seeing how this team develops.

It’s a Farrago, I tell you

In the world of online fiction zines, Farrago’s Wainscot has established itself as among the most chic, oblique and unique. Their regular selection of literary short stories is always worth dipping into, and if that weren’t enough they have this little bundle of extras that goes by the name of Behind The Wainscot. In the words of the editors, BtW is: “is, in a literal sense, interstitial. An irregular blogozine, it features work that slips between the quarterly releases of Farrago’s Wainscot. Behind the Wainscot is a collection of short forms, of experiments, studies, and the fragments between.“

The latest issue of BtW has been handed over to Hal Duncan who was tasked with bringing in a Scottish flavour to the proceedings. Hal has answered the call with enormous enthusiasm, and collected a fistful of highly entertaining and deeply strange snippets from members of GSFWC and the East Coast SF Writers.

I enjoyed my little foray into that dark and mysterious space between wood and wall immensely. Hope you guys do too.

Gutted

So, despite all my tactics the game went exactly as I expected it to. Now, I have to think up diversionary tactics for the next year until the World Cup qualifiers get under way. At least we’ll have an easier set of opponents next time round.

Time to get back to the novel I think!

Diversionary Tactics (4)

God Bless M. In the end we didn’t resort to Children In Need. Our usual Friday night combination got us to through without thinking much about anything:  Sofa, Wine, Scrabble, Assorted Telly, Random Chat. That the last of these involved the new series of The Mighty Boosh was a special bonus.

Anyway, Diversions over. The song’s never really gone away from the back of my mind. We’ll Be Coming Down The Road.

And now we’re here.

Eight and a half hours. And counting.

Diversionary Tactics (3)

These attempts  are getting less and less successful.

At least the latest episode of Heroes kept me distracted. I liked the switch to five years in the future, after the bomb and everything’s changed.

I’m saving this week’s Jericho til tonight, so last night I fired up EQ for a couple of hour of good honest battering fuck out of monsters. Theraputic, but hardly mentally engaging. Like the new upgrade though. The new features are good and it seems to run smoother too (tho that may just be my imagination).

[As a little on-topic aside, I noticed a nice wee piece in the Evening Times about 17 being an unlucky number in Italy. Dunno how they're going to feel about playing on the 17th of the month at 1700, then...]

Anyway, one day to go. I may resort to Children In Need tonight.

Has it really come to that?

Coming Down The Road

I’ve got an earworm. You know, a tune that keeps popping into your head and won’t go away? This one, it’s the one that goes “We’ll be coming, we’ll be coming, we’ll be coming down the road…”

Aye, coming down the road.

Five days to go, and the tension’s already getting to me. By Friday I won’t be able to sleep. By Saturday I’ll be jittery and on edge all day until I can settle myself at that wee corner table in the Captains and get a pint of Best down me. And then, for the next two hours, my heart will cease to beat.

Until then it’s just the waiting. In the office we’ve already tried discussing the team and formation, but there’s not much to discuss. The formation will be the same as has served us so well all year, and the team virtually picks itself. Naysmith’s experience will get him the nod at left back, Hutton’s amazing consistency has made the opposite position his own. The only questions will be over playing McFadden as part of the mid-five or going with McCulloch or perhaps Hartley. Or whether Fletcher is match fit enough, and perhaps giving the in-form Hartley that spot instead. For me it’s Gordon, Naysmith, Weir, McManus, Hutton, Ferguson, Brown, Fletcher, McCulloch, McFadden, Miller. I can’t believe how dependable that sounds.
But the composition of the team is not really the question. We know they’ll give everything they’ve got. We’ll know they’ll defend across the middle and close down all night long. We know Italy have the luxury of being able to wait until the game stretches to look for gaps that they can exploit. What we don’t know is will we be lucky? Because that’s what games like this turn on. A hand ball in the box missed by the referee or undeserved sending offs by an over-officious official. Will a dive over a desperate lunge in the 75th minute be a booking or a pen? The widths of posts, the ricochets off shins, the snaring of studs in the turf at the vital moment. All of these things can/might/will make the difference.

So, yes. I genuinely believe that the gap between us and the world champions is so small that the outcome will be decided by a single piece of luck. The kind of luck that can absolutely break your heart when it goes against you.

It’s been so long since we’ve been here. It’s been so long since the outcome of a match like this mattered.

And the waiting for it to arrive is palpable here. It’s shivering the crisp Novemberish air.

It’s the noise of the tartan army boys. It’s coming down the road…

It’s not often you know what you’ll be doing seven years in the future

…but in the summer of 2014 I rather imagine I’ll be strolling down to Kelvingrove to watch the bowls, or heading out to Hampden to catch the athletics, or perhaps even scoping out the swimming at Tollcross.

Commonwealth Games, blimey!

To those who wait…

…and we’ve waited a heck of a long time.

OH. FUCK. AYE.

No wait, it’s even better in French.

Visions Of The Future

Courtesy of the ever-eclectic Boing-Boing, I’m totally charmed by these 1910 French lithographs depicting life in the year 2000. Probably my favourites are these marvelous armoured bicycles and this uncanny prediction of Mad Max or perhaps Death Race 2000.

Wonder if those clever, clairvoyant Frenchies have managed to predict the result of tonight’s footie game in Paris. Seriously, I’m so excited about this one. On one hand I fear we’re on for a revenge humping after having the temerity to beat them last year (and what a rollercoaster ride that one was), but on the other hand…it’s Scotland – REAL Scotland after a few years of uncharacteristic meekness, the Scotland that chaps the doors of the game’s big boys and runs away. So you never know. There’s hope in the heart, and when it comes to Scotland, hope is a dangerous thing.

Anyway, I’ve got the cricket on to take my mind off it while I get back to work.

Later: Well the cricket was probably a bad choice of distraction. That was like going one nil up early doors and defending well only to lose one just on the nick of half time, then being soundly whipped in the second half. Hope it’s not prophetic.

Tribalism

Sometimes the best of things give you cause to examine your attitudes to certain aspects of life. I love being Scottish, but I’ve never been the sort who gets misty-eyed when I hear bagpipes or see a bloke in a kilt or receive postcards from the Highlands. I like a dram, sure, and love to hear the rough-and-ready rumble of the Scots tongue, but beyond that (and a decent roll and lorne sausage) I’m no different to most 21st century citizens of a decent sized western city. I buy muffins in Starbucks, books from Borders, and laugh at Extras and the Simpsons along with everyone else. My passport also says I’m a British citizen, and I think that’s fine. It could say worse things. But I don’t feel particularly British. I’m not sure what feeling British is like? I do know what feeling Scottish is like though. And I like it. Understand, though, that I’m no Nationalist (note the capital ‘N’). I think the political semi-autonomy that Scotland has now is healthy, but I don’t see any particular advantage to divorcing ourselves entirely from the rest of the UK.

So why does my blood run cold at the prospect of a british national football team for the 2012 Olympics? And even colder that our national manager has endorsed it? I don’t like the way it feels petty and parochial and sour inside me, but I can’t help it. Does it really matter, you ask. Well, no. Let’s face it, any British football team is going to consist in the most part of English players. There’d be two or three Scottish bums warming the bench at most. So, would I support such a team in the competition? Well, I wouldn’t wish them any harm, but the concept of a British football team is meaningless to me. (Yes, I know that we used to have them years ago, but that’s beside the point.)

Thing is, I’ve been a follower of Scottish football all my life. World Cups, Euro Chamionships and Home Internationals are stitched through my psyche like gold thread. I remember beating Holland in 78 and losing to Costa Rica in 90. As a kid I spent any number of dreich November nights on the old Hampden terraces, warmed by the collective humour and desperate hope, the cheeky bravado and barely contained rage of the home fans as much as by the black, black bovril. I’ve marched through the streets of St Etienne with the Tartan Army on the way to a dreadful three nil defeat to Morocco – and loved every minute of it. On Saturday I squeezed into a corner of the pub across the road. It was stowed to the gunnels and as the game wore on, the pre-match sense of laissez-faire (it was France for god’s sake, all we really wanted was a decent, spirited showing) was transmuted into something we’ve not had for a good few years now – real hope, and belief in the players, the system and manager too. And it wasn’t just among the small number of us in that pub. It was in every pub in the city too, and everywhere else in the country where people had congregated to watch the game. At the stadium itself, you could see it boiling over out of the stands and onto the pitch.

When we scored the place just took off. Strangers were brothers, hugs and half nelsons were distributed randomly and gratefully received. And for the half hour that followed once the dust settled and the spilled pints were refilled and the dislodged light fitting was replaced we were a family united in a growing sense of hope and belief and, finally, relief. For me it’s unarguable that the fortunes of the Scottish football team are an unbelievable glue, doing more to unite the people of this land than any other single factor.

There’s a sort of gentleman’s agreement at FIFA that allows the UK special dispensation to have four football associations instead of just the one that every other member country is allowed. It might be to do with us inventing the game or something, I don’t know, but it’s no more than a nicety and it comes under scrutiny every now and again. So, do I worry about the introduction of a (one-time only, honest) British football team lending weight to those members of FIFA that have believed for years that the UK should only have one soccer team? Bloody right I do.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – if Britain is forced to adopt a permanent, single international football team, that’s the day I’ll vote for independence. And I won’t be alone.