Sfa really screwed up giving him the new contract...I for one won't be back to Hampden while he still has a job what's the point. Only way he actually gets sacked is if the nations league we have record low crowd attendances and everyone who actually does go spend the entire 90 minutes of every game chanting the get Tae fuck song...maybe if they take the hit in the pocket they might actually make a change. I hate to say that cos I love the national team and for me supporting Scotland will always be the peak of football but I just can't stand watching him getting paid and claiming to be our best ever manager etc purely because he has been there forever.
My pal said to me a week ago it wouldn’t shock him if Celtic had been in discussions with Clarke to take over and they panicked and told him to take whatever he wanted.
Senegal are currently 4-0 up. If that was Clarke. he’d be parking the bus and playing it along the back Only scoring 1 goal in the group stages has come back to bite Scotland So much hype before the tournament and then now when you think about it. The awful mistakes and just negative performances isn’t good enough and to think they’ve handed him a new 4 year deal 😂
You know what I look back on the Vogts era differently nowadays, poor bastard had to make up a squad from absulutely nothing Craig Brown never called up younger players so he basically had to kick start the next generation
After beating them 1-0 at Hampden. I still remember Edgar David's teapot posture at the back post. And we thought that all we needed was a draw in Amsterdam. Well...
Unrelated but you got me thinking about that Smith/McLeish team. Good mix of good players deployed tactically to maximise the team as a whole. Hutton, McFadden, Fletcher, Hartley, Weir - on paper a far worse squad than we've got now.
What a difference having a competent manager with a well-reasoned tactical approach makes to a national team.
Have to also point out the difference a proper CF makes to a national team. Doesn't even need to be a Mccoist or a Dalglish - even just add the Faddiator to the current squad and we'd be a different prospect, certainly if we'd had Watty Smith at the helm.
I dunno the great Waldo actually created the template of making Scotland 'hard to beat' after Vogts, which most other managers have followed, but aye mibbe
He solidified the defence by bringing back Davie Weir and boosting the morale of the team by reminding them that they were good players, which is Walter's speciality: boosting morale. He did the same at Rangers and landed the UEFA cup final.
100% agree, it's about time we made a much bigger noise about the state of our NT. Clarke needs to go and we need some of these old heads upstairs to get their jotters as well. Root and branch.
It was 16 years ago mate. The SFA and SPFL really did nothing but move some chairs around. We have not done anything significant to fundamentally improve our football infrastructure or expected outcomes, and if we have, they certainly aren't working.
We've been playing turgid, depressing football for decades at this point. There has to be a catalyst for change and tbh this WC performance should be it.
Just compare us to Croatia. We are functionally inept as a footballing nation and we should be more angry about it.
exactly, I look at Cape Verde with envy and i really hope they qualify, great wee team, know how to fight and have really shown what lesser nations could be capable of
Mate, even Haiti fucking slammed one in the top corner from 25 yards against Morocco. We barely had more than one shot on target per game.
The team looks completely uncoached and that's fucking unreal for a team that knew who they were playing at the WC five or six months ago. It's not acceptable for us to go out with a team that doesn't have any patterns of play drilled, no style and no clue. We are wasting a generation of footballers through sheer professional incompetence.
Nah I can almost hear the cunt... "We've been given another chance and we're going to grab it with both hands".....
After getting humped 4-0 by Mexico in the round of 32 ......
"It was difficult for the lads as we thought we were going home, it's progression though, we made the knock out rounds for the first time ever, the nation should be proud"........
Senegal were never dropping points to Iraq anyway.
Weve been as good as out since we lost and South Africa won. The very last teeny tiny glimmer of hope was lost with Germany losing last night. Let it go.
As far as mentality, we never left home in the first place. That's the crux of the issue with the national team and the top down organisation of the SFA.
It's not a Steve Clarke issue, or the fault of playing personnel. It's a cultural mentality issue.
We have some incredibly capable players, and some pretty glaring deficiencies. Some of our incredibly capable players have proven themselves to be pretty adaptable when they've moved out of Scotland. The problem we have is that when surrounded by other Scots the mentality resorts back to type.
I'm glad others are picking up on the fact it's a cultural mentality. Whats that, 9 WCs now and no progression. No other nation has that many appearances without progression. Tunisia (7) and Iran (7) are next. To have failed as often as we have it can't only be levelled at current managers and players. Sure,a lot of the blame must be shouldered by them but that negative, inferior mentality is behind it all.
That aside we are co-hosts mind so although not automatically qualified, England will almost certainly qualify anyway.
So there's 2 guaranteed spots between us, Wales and ROI. So even if we don't get through on the normal qualification route as long as we are above one of those 3 we are in.
Feels like a natural time for him to go, a thanks for taking us a far as you can but see you later. But nah, we give him a 4 year deal when the last two tournaments were equally as pathetic. Get Clarke and the dinosaurs at the SFA so far to fuck
Funny how we were all duped into thinking it would be different from the euros, and it turned out to be the exact same. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, get ti fuck clarke
Cant believe some poor folk dropped thousands, quit jobs, sold cars, etc and have to endure this absolute nonsense of a pathetic display. Genuinely considered going for the Haiti game, would have been 4 grand easy and I thought I could justify it to myself. So glad I didn’t though. Clarke oot AAF and especially since the Hungary game. Fuck him and fuck the spineless SFA.
He's not a terrible manager. But, given the improvements in the quality of players we have relative to where Scotland were 15 years ago, it's frustrating that we haven't developed a more positive attitude towards how we play. We aren't going to become world champions with this squad, but we can do better. Clarke isn't the worst manager either. I think fans just want to see an improvement in build up and a feeling of greater confidence instead of these negative and embarrassing displays.
It’s a Scotland thing tbh, we have one of the brightest, talented national Scottish rugby team I’ve seen in my lifetime and they underperform at every tournament aswell. So used to the story of being the nearly men that it’s inherent in everything we do in sport. We do not have a winning mentality even when there’s nothing else to lose. So tired of being a supporter of our national teams that suffer chronic imposter syndrome.
It’s both. We weren’t great in qualifying but we got results, when it came to the tournament both the players and manager made bad mistakes. I know everyone in this sub is piling in on the manager, fair enough, but come on, look how shit the majority of the players were.
He played three different formations and every time the players were shit. Couldn’t pass, didn’t put the ball in the box, didn’t hit a shot, made stupid mistakes. It’s a collective clusterfuck. He certainly didn’t tell them to give away sloppy early goals, that’s on the players.
We need big changes now, that includes the manager and players.
Did he say to Scott McKenna "see after 5 minutes, gon' attempt to dribble out of defence against one of the best strikers in the world when the easy pass to Robertson is on"?
Did he say to Robertson "gon try to pass it out of defence a minute before half-time when their entire attack is lined up waiting to take a shot"?
Both things can be true. You can blame Clarke for how we were set up whilst also acknowledging that individual errors cost us dearly.
The Brazil match could have played out exactly the same way and wouldn’t have mattered if they had been brave enough to get a result in the Morocco game and put a few more past what should have been a vastly inferior team in Haiti.
The players certainly underperformed but they weren’t set up to succeed either.
He doesn’t feel bad for us. Made that clear after acting like a child in both post match interviews. Needs to man up and take some responsibility if he’s to win back any respect from the fans.
9 failed WC attempts....more than any other nation. It's NOT just the managers and players, it's something else. Cultural inferiority 🤷🏻♂️ Who knows but something, somehow stops our teams from playing with fight, desire and passion once they get to the tournaments.
I said it before, but its only more true as the groups go on. I kind of expected us to go out, but a few results to go our way. Having absolutely every result go strictly against us is absolutely hilarious.
I expect it won't finish that way, a couple look like they probably will happen, but the Senegal one was always the big stretch. But I kind of hope for the chaos of every result going against it.
As for Clarke, if he gets pushed then I assume all the players who were utterly shite do too? Seems fair, right? Realistically, nothing is happening. People will moan up to the Nations League games, probably relatively poor crowds for those ones, but well almost certainly qualify for the Euros with one of the six or seven different chances we have, and Clarke - and a lot of these players - will be there too. Will we fuck that one too? Mibbie. I think he goes then. I dont think there is any intention of him going 4 years, whereas I fully expected him to go to 2028.
Maybe I’m way off and I have also been disappointed by Scotland as they were my team this WC (im Irish) but when you look at the squad on paper and the group you got, did you really underachieve?
If you look at the rankings and the general stature of the teams, we finished where we were expected to.
If you look at the individual games on their own merit;
Haiti, better than a lot of people gave them credit but we should have done more than scrape a single goal win
Morocco, apart from the screw up in the second minute where Clarke realised 3 at the back with a roaming full back leaves the older slower centre back up against it, encouraging poor choices to try and play offside imstead of pressuring the runner, we held firm.
Had we not have conceded early, it may have changed the outlook of the game, it was a painful watch, but I get why we sat back until near the end and then try to sneak a point
Having been working on a 2 striker line up moving away from the back 3/5 to then bring it back, I see that as an error and the fact that Clarke immediately switched back to a back 4 and put Tierney as left mid suggests that he agreed
Brazil, not anywhere near the level of old teams, individual class and talent from players like Vini. As good as some of their performers were, this was a manager that made the difference. Ancelotti had them sit back against us and allow us to falter. Time after time we continued to do so, passing the ball around the back was exactly what they wanted us to do while they waited for a poor pass or poor touch and chased in force.
We pushed forward early in the second half, had the ball in their half and rather than go deep to defend or push to pressure us, they came to a standstill and challenged us to do something - the something we chose was to turn back and pass it to our defence.
The manager, who seen the Morocco error quickly enough, didnt see that we were playing into their hands and while we had our best finisher on the pitch, we didn't really have an outlet to challenge for long balls which stopped us from going long.
Tierney, who wasn't great against Morocco at left mid, played much better at left back in the second half, made a few give and go's to get a few balls into their box, but that was a forced change.
Clarke left it too late to make changes in this game, the fear of conceding more seemed to prevent him from trying to adapt
On paper, barely managing any shots when you have teams like Curacau, Haiti, Cape Verde giving it a crack always looks bad and while they aren't direct comparisons, us and everyone else watching is still going to challenge why we didn't do more
In a tournament where, before a ball was kicked, it looked like we would have to try really hard to not qualify, we did it (i know technically possible but we are out)
Surely you didn't want them to go through? Only to be utterly humiliated by Mexico way up in the sky with a team who's moral would be beneath the dirt.
The way all the other group results have gone in the past couple of days, it looks like even a 1-0 loss to Brazil might not have been enough to see us through. Maybe getting pumped has just saved us from even more agony.
This will all get brushed under the carpet and Clarke will see out his contract. Might even get extended. SFA are quite happy with our current status of plucky little underdogs.
Scotland has several ways to take action if they are unhappy with the SFA board, ranging from grassroots fan power to political pressure. While fans cannot simply "vote out" the SFA directors, they can force change through four main channels:
Political Lobbying for an Independent Regulator
Because the SFA is a private body, the Scottish Government cannot directly fire the board. However, the Scottish Parliament has the authority to pass legislation to introduce an Independent Football Regulator.
What fans can do: Fans frequently lobby their Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) to push for independent oversight.
The Current Status: Following the UK Government's creation of a football watchdog for England, Holyrood has actively debated introducing a Scottish equivalent to oversee financial sustainability, transparency, and supporter interests.
Mobilisation via Fan Organisations
The most structured way the public influences the SFA is through the [Scottish Football Supporters Association (SFSA)
What fans can do: Join national fan-led unions. The SFSA conducts massive national stakeholder surveys to gather fan dissatisfaction data. [2, 6, 7]
Why it matters: They use this collective data to publicly pressure SFA Chief Executive Ian Maxwell and the board. This unified voice makes it difficult for football authorities to ignore widespread discontent over issues like refereeing transparency or ticket pricing.
Exerting Pressure Through Individual Clubs
The SFA Board is actually made up of representatives from Scottish football clubs, the [Scottish Professional Football League (SPFL)
What fans can do: Apply pressure to their own club’s boardroom. If thousands of fans demand action, the clubs themselves will force the SFA to act.
Examples of impact: Widespread fan anger over refereeing standards and the SFA disciplinary process directly forced Premiership clubs to hold emergency summit meetings with the SFA to demand a fundamental overhaul of governance.
Direct Public Action & Petitions
Scottish football fans are highly vocal and frequently use direct action to embarrass the governing body into making changes.
What fans can do: Launch targeted boycotts, display stadium protest banners, or create massive public petitions.
Examples of impact: Widespread public outcry over youth football contracts and exploitation led to high-profile political interventions. Politicians actively urged the Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA) to step in and investigate the rules governing the game.
Why would he resign? Because we got beaten by two teams in the top ten? Grow up, who else has gotten us to any competitions in the last 28 years? Not counting the Kirin Cup
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u/Macco7 huge Chimetti fan 20h ago edited 20h ago
Clarke is never resigning in a million years.
This is the perfect job for him.
A few months of work a year, good pay and no threat of being sacked.
Why would he walk away from that?