Scotland's decline leaves Vogts facing formidable task

It was a Scot, William McGregor, who founded the Football League. His compatriot, James Lang, was the first professional player. Glasgow staged the world's inaugural international, while Hampden Park once housed the biggest crowds the sport had ever recorded. And every one of the Celtic side that became Britain's first European Cup winners was born within 30 miles of the ground.

How, then, has Scotland, with such a rich football heritage, reached the point where it fears for its national team against the Faroe Islands? After a tiring trek by air, bus and boat, the Scots launch their quest to qualify for the European Championship finals in 2004 against the Faroes in Toftir on Saturday. Even allowing for their record against supposed inferiors, it is a fixture they would normally expect to win. These, though, are abnormally dire and dangerous times for Scottish football.

The Faroes is actually a protectorate of Denmark rather than a nation. The population, 45,600, is less than that of Kilmarnock, and it has 1,000 footballers compared with Scotland's 130,000. They began playing under their own banner only in 1990, a year when Scotland contested their fifth consecutive World Cup finals, and lie 123rd in Fifa's world rankings. They lost their first three games against the Scots, and when they did scrape a last-minute draw, in 1999, Scotland played half the match with 10 men.

This time there is an uneasy concern that, even with a full complement, Scotland will struggle to beat their part-timers (some currently fishing the North Atlantic) and unsung pros from Denmark and Norway. One ex-Scotland player told me he expected to watch the action in the gale-lashed, cliffside Svangaskard stadium "through a crack in my fingers".

The simplistic explanation of Scotland's nosediving status – Fifa places them joint 60th with Iraq, 33 rungs lower than when they last faced the Faroes three years ago – is to point to the management style of Berti Vogts. Since the former Germany coach succeeded Craig Brown in February, they have lost five matches in a row for the first time ever.

Vogts' reign started with a nightmarish defeat by France, 5-0 going on 10-0, and has continued in similar vein. The man known in his playing days as Der Terrier has used 33 players, Scotland having gone from a manager who knew the strengths and weaknesses of every Scot playing on either side of the border to one starting from scratch. The concept of caps as a reward for excellence at club level has been rendered redundant by his selection of players who do not even make the substitutes' bench in domestic football, sent out in ever-mutating formations, from 4-4-2 to 3-4-3 and 3-5-2.

Perhaps because of a lack of communication skills (his English is not as good as, say, Sven Goran Eriksson's) Vogts has repeatedly undermined his credibility by becoming embroiled in damaging controversy. He had a heated argument in a Parisian airport lounge with Rab Douglas after leaving him on the bench. The giant goalkeeper, due to become a father that week, had travelled on the understanding that he would play the second half.

Vogts then dispensed insensitively with the long-serving goalkeeping coach, Alan Hodgkinson. On two occasions he publicly highlighted the nervousness of a young player, Kevin McNaughton. He also criticised Paul Lambert and Barry Ferguson, two players on whom he will be heavily dependent in a group that also contains Germany, only to claim he was misquoted.

There have been other PR own-goals. It was folly for a national manager to sign exclusively to one newspaper, as he has done with the Daily Record (thereby risking the wrath of its rivals). And if Vogts' exhortation before the Denmark game for his players to be "like the English" was well meant – he wanted more "swagger" and "self-belief" – it betrayed a lack of understanding of the countries' historical relationship.

Brown's detractors complained he was too loyal to the older players and did not give youth a chance. The same pundits now bemoan the devaluing of the cap and the jersey. They are already nostalgic for a time when Scotland participated regularly in major tournaments (they would have made it three in a row had the 1-0 success at Wembley in the 1999 play-off against England not been preceded by a 2-0 defeat at Hampden).

It would be crass and premature, however, to lay the blame solely at Vogts' door before he has overseen a single competitive match. What are friendlies for if not for experimentation, for getting your mistakes out of the way?

The roots of Scotland's crisis run deeper than the failings of any individual. As Brown would point out, while preparing meticulously to compensate, the days when Scotland could call on high-class players like Bremner, Baxter, Mackay, McNeill, Johnstone, Law, Hansen and Dalglish are gone. Every top English club once had Scots in key roles; think of Don Revie's Leeds with Bremner, Lorimer, Gray, Jordan and McQueen, or Bill Shankly's Liverpool with St John and Yeats.

Today they are absent even from the top Scottish sides, Celtic and Rangers being largely Scot-free. (Not that Martin O'Neill's polyglot band were good enough to reach the Champions' League proper in Switzerland last week, while Livingston needed the away-goal rule to win their Uefa Cup tie with Liechtenstein's Vaduz, eighth in the Swiss Second Division. This from a country half the size of London whose clubs produced seven European finalists from 1967-87.)

So if there were hungry young men looking to football as an escape from poverty or tedium, latterday Busbys or Shanklys, opportunities would be scarce. The production line is almost as still as the steel plants and coal mines of Lanarkshire and Ayrshire, whose communities once churned out stellar talents by the score.

Brown acknowledged the wider problems in an interview with The Independent before the 1998 World Cup. I asked where all the tanner ba' players and jinking wingers had gone. "To play on their computers and mountain bikes," he sighed. "We don't have the facilities to nurture talent properly."

Norway, he noted, had Europe's best record for producing players, per head of population, and the lottery that had funded development since the 1950s had paid for 15 full-sized indoor pitches. "The result," said the man currently managing Preston, "is that a small country now has more than 30 players in the Premiership."

Norway's neighbours, Denmark, offer a valid comparison with Scotland, as well as a topical one after outclassing them last month, since they have a near-identical population. Thirty years ago, Scotland triumphed 4-1 in Copenhagen in a World Cup fixture. Now the Danes are ranked 12th in the world and have three players at Milan.

Ebbe Skovdahl, Aberdeen's Danish manager, echoes Brown's comments. "The difference between the two countries isn't down to football – it's society," he said. "In Denmark nearly everything is funded by the councils, from youth coaching to training facilities. Only Brondby and FC Copenhagen own their grounds. All the others are rented out by the councils to clubs."

Scottish clubs spend their money on buying players rather than on training facilities, which Skovdahl describes as being "far behind" Denmark's. Brondby, for example, have a staggering 1,200 players on their books. Including women's and girls' football, there are more than 270,000 active footballers in Denmark, more than twice the number in Scotland.

There are, of course, no Danish equivalents of the Old Firm, clubs that stir the emotions and command vast support. The Danes' priority is the national team. Vogts believes the same is true of Germany and may be moving towards the conclusion that the dominance and interests of the Old Firm and the well-being of the national team are mutually exclusive. Neither now provides more than the odd player for Scotland.

For Vogts, who pledged to make Scotland a force in two years, the past six months must have been a rude awakening. Last week he used his column to take what read like a veiled dig at Brown, who was, after all, the SFA's technical director as well as manager.

"Frankly, the SFA should have reacted after France 98 because the truth is Scotland did not perform well," he wrote. "It is no one person's fault but perhaps the country is suffering from an island mentality. No one looked closely enough at what was happening around the world... The result of Scotland's neglect, something I can't explain because I don't understand why nobody did anything, is that Scottish football is already four years behind." Judging by South Korea and Turkey, to name but two fast-rising countries Scotland would have been expected to beat in the 1990s, four may be erring on the side of optimism.

Even if the political will and finance were there for a restructuring along Scandinavian lines, Scotland's fortunes could get worse before they get better. Berti Vogts' team may avoid becoming the Faroes' biggest footballing catch in 12 years, but another hiding-to-nothing qualifier – away to the altogether meatier minnows of Iceland – looms next month.

DISAPPEARING SCOTS THE FADING TARTAN INFLUENCE IN ENGLAND

Scottish players in starting line-ups in England's top division on the opening day of the season

1972-73: 50 PLAYERS
Arsenal (2): Frank McLintock, George Graham
Birmingham (3): Alan Campbell, Roger Hynd, Bobby Hope
Chelsea (2): Eddie McCreadie, Charlie Cooke
Coventry (3): Roy Barry, Bobby Graham, Willie Carr
Crystal Palace (3): John McCormick, Willie Wallace, Tony Taylor
Derby (3): John McGovern, Archie Gemmill, John O'Hare
Everton (2): John McLaughlin, John Connolly
Leeds (4): David Harvey, Billy Bremner, Peter Lorimer, Eddie Gray
Leicester (2): John Sjoberg, Malcolm Manley
Liverpool (1): Brian Hall
Manchester City (1): Willie Donachie
Manchester United (3): Willie Morgan, Martin Buchan, Denis Law
Newcastle (3): Tommy Gibb, Bobby Moncur, Tony Green
Norwich (2): Duncan Forbes, Jim Bone
Sheffield Utd (3): Tom McAlister, Eddie Colquhoun, Stewart Scullion
Southampton (4): Eric Martin, Francis Burns, Hugh Fisher, Jim Steele
Stoke (1): Jimmy Robertson
Tottenham (1): Alan Gilzean
WBA (4): Ray Wilson, Ally Robertson, Ally Brown, Asa Hartford
West Ham (1): Bobby Ferguson
Wolverhampton (2): Francis Munro, Jim McCalliog

1982-83: 31 PLAYERS
Arsenal (1): George Wood
Aston Villa (3): Ken McNaught, Allan Evans, Des Bremner
Birmingham (1): Jim Blyth
Brighton (2): Neil McNab, Gordon Smith
Coventry (1): Gary Gillespie
Everton (1): Graeme Sharp
Ipswich (2): George Burley, John Wark
Liverpool (2): Graeme Souness, Kenny Dalglish
Luton (1): Jake Findlay
Manchester City (2): Bobby McDonald, Asa Hartford
Manchester Utd (2): Gordon McQueen, Arthur Albiston
Notts County (2): Gordon Mair, Ian McParland
Nottingham Forest (3): Willie Young, Ian Wallace, John Robertson
Stoke (1): Davie McAughtrie
Sunderland (3): Iain Munro, Ally McCoist, Gordon Chisholm
Tottenham (1): Steve Archibald
West Brom (1): Ally Robertson
West Ham (2): Sandy Clark, Ray Stewart

1992-93: 13 PLAYERS
Blackburn (1): Colin Hendry
Chelsea (2): Steve Clarke, Robert Fleck
Ipswich (1): John Wark
Leeds (1): Gary McAllister
Liverpool (1): Steve Nicol
Manchester Utd (2): Brian McClair, Darren Ferguson
Middlesbrough (4): Willie Falconer, John Hendrie, Derek Whyte, Tommy Wright
Norwich (1): Bryan Gunn
Nottingham Forest (1): Scot Gemmill
Oldham (2): Paul Bernard, Graeme Sharp
Southampton (1): David Speedie
Tottenham (1): Gordon Durie

2002-03: 6 PLAYERS
Everton (2): Gary Naysmith, David Weir
Leeds (1): Dominic Matteo
Middlesborough (1): Robbie Stockdale
West Bromwich (1): Derek McInnes
West Ham (1): Christian Dailly

SCOTLAND ON THE INTERNATIONAL STAGE

EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIP
1960: did not enter
1964: did not enter
1968: did not qualify
1972: did not qualify
1976: did not qualify
1980: did not qualify
1984: did not qualify
1988: did not qualify
1992: first round
1996: first round
2000: did not qualify

WORLD CUP
1930: did not enter
1934: did not enter
1938: did not enter
1950: did not qualify
1954: first round
1958: first round
1962: did not qualify
1966: did not qualify
1970: did not qualify
1974: first round
1978: first round
1982: first round
1986: first round
1990: first round
1994: did not qualify
1998: first round
2002: did not qualify

UNDER BERTI VOGTS
All friendly internationals
27 March: France (Paris) 0-5
17 April: Nigeria (Aberdeen) 1-2
16 May: South Korea (Pusan) 1-4
20 May: South Africa (Hong Kong) 0-2
21 August: Denmark (Glasgow) 0-1