This is one of my very favourite footballing images. Made preluding the 1990-91 Serie A season, on the back of the most operatic of World Cups, it comprises the best players in the world. A good game is trying to guess each player, so I won’t ruin that here, but if you’re stuck at Maradona, I can’t help you.
Being a young boy, pre-Internet and even pre-Football Italia, with the inimitable James Richardson, it’s hard to state just how cool Serie A was back then, just how much better it was than everywhere else.
It was the place to play your football. It had the coolest stadiums, the most beautiful people and the loveliest weather. It had the greatest club sides in the world, with AC Milan, Sampdoria and Napoli, and it had wonderful players getting relegated each year, why? Well, this was the age of the three-foreigner rule (with some exceptions), and they usually signed a trio of compatriots to hit the ground running.
Milan had the Dutch European Champions of Ruud Gullit, Frank Rijkaard and the greatest no.9 I’d ever seen until Ronaldo Fenomeno, Marco Van Basten, who retired at 28 with three Ballon D’Ors. Twenty-Eight! At a time when Maradona was still playing! He would’ve been the greatest striker ever, in my view, and was robbed of his peak years… but that’s for another day. Back to Milan, and to Inter, who had the World Cup-winning West German spine of Lothar Matthaeus, Andreas Brehme and Juergen Klinnsman. I could go on, but you get the point…
It is Maradona, however, as always, who is the anomaly, and the lens, through which everything converges, capturing an intoxicating prism of light that colours all else.
Though he joined Napoli for a world-record-breaking sum, this was a side who had finished just above the relegation zone a season prior. They had no superstars. He was it. They eventually signed Careca, a Brazilian, to help him out, but initially, there was no familiarity, no Argentinian brethren. It was just him, and them, the poor Southerners and the Barcelona outcast, against the world.
The truth is, Diego joined Napoli because there was no space for him anywhere else. The rich, Northern clubs were all fully booked. They had their sensible quota of nationalities. Maradona? He took a struggling club by the scruff of the neck and dragged them to relevance, then prominence. Eventually winning the Scudetto and UEFA Cup (when it was still for some of the very best teams in Europe). In my view, these years rank as the greatest achievement by a single player, coinciding with Maradona similarly carrying his beloved nation to the World Cup in 1986. He was truly otherworldly.
Why is all this then, in turn, relevant or prominent to a Scottish football website in 2023? Stay with me.
You may have noticed, but people are talking about the same things today. The same, but different. And because history is always the way we can better understand the present, we look at it slowly, to carefully predict the future.
What is happening now will shape football. It will shape Scottish football, and, by extension the Scottish National Team. Obscurity, to relevance, to prominence.
Saudi Arabia may not have the historical prestige of the Italian League, but it has the money.
Is it dirty money?
I recommend the Athletic’s recent podcast here, which does a superb job of illustrating a complex situation. What I would say is that we all knew of the scandal in Italian Lira in the 1980s. We knew of the bribery and the very real influence of Mafiosos in the running of prominent clubs, and players. Human rights violations were plentiful and barbaric. Bribery was rife. Watch Asid Kapadia’s breathtaking insight into Maradona for more. The atrocities were awful and heartbreaking, and so too was how trapped Diego became by the Mafia.
As a Scot, you should listen to the similarly gut-wrenching tale of Dundee United’s European Cup Semi-Final defeat to As Roma in 1985, as told by then Assistant Manager, the late, great Walter Smith, to Graham Hunter. Leading 2-0 from the first leg at Tannadice, Roma bribed the officials to win 3-0 in the second leg. It was a sickening instance, but was there justice for Dundee United? Nope. The prestige of power covered over the corruption. Thinly-veiled, even hidden in plain sight, or, to use a good Scots word; brazen.
Uncomfortably for people of my, eh, vintage, the beauty of Serie A was cloaked by dirty money. This was an open secret and the Calciopoli scandal was the unfortunate apex of this period, and the beginning of the end for Serie A’s dominance. However, unless you were a Dundee United fan, or directly on the receiving end of Mafioso threats, did you care about the morality in question? Did it change anything at all with how you observed football? I’ll bet, if you’re honest, that you didn’t really know about Dundee United’s might in Europe, or had at least forgotten, until now.
History is told through the pen of the victors.
Through hindsight and history, we’d have to say that we don’t really care. Major injustice? Sure. But we don’t really care. Not really. Protests subside eventually. Football moves on. There is a healthiness to this, of course, we are not meant to live in the injustices of the past, but we’re not meant to silence them either. Uncomfortable though it may be, Serie A’s golden age was built atop primer-covered rust that eventually showed. Moth and rust destroy. Thieves break in and steal.
Back to Saudi. Back to the here and now.
Players will move, and players will move for large sums and exorbitant wages. Sickening wealth will, inevitably, make us feel sick. And, in an age of food banks, it probably should.
Let’s not kid ourselves, however, the only reason the British media is in uproar is because the Saudi money isn’t coming into ‘our’ (read: “England’s”) game. To his credit, Gary Neville has spoken up about the game being stolen from the people, with regard to the European Super League, but during writing this piece, my pals reminded me of his appearance on Have I Got News For You, where his silence concerning attendance at the Qatari World Cup was deafening. I’m not coming down hard on Gary Neville here, I think he was put in a very uncomfortable position. In fact, as he squirmed, so too did the conscientious football fan. For a man who the nation is used to having such self-assured, knowledgeable answers, especially relating to social issues in football, to be rendered silent, was achingly powerful. Aching because, for every finger pointing at him, there were three putting back at us.
What are we to do?
To go further still, it wasn’t until Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine that ‘we’ seemed to care about Roman Abramhovic’s links to him, it wasn’t until Manchester City started winning literally everything that ‘we’ cared about their State ownership. Basically, it seems that ‘we’ like to point the finger at City, or Newcastle, or Gary Neville, and when that happens you don’t have to go too far before someone says, as an apparently intelligent defence, ‘yeah, but what about them?’
Now, disclaimer, I’m not about to compare a man leaving one job to go to another as being a human rights violation, but just as I’m sure some Celtic fans will forgive Brendan Rodgers within sight of the first treble, group stage qualification or Old Firm victory, if they haven’t already, so the vast majority of English football fans will forgive any grievance towards Saudi money if their club is bought, and they then start winning. I daresay you can remove the prefix English here. If any European Club is bought, and that buying leads to success, you can put your house on the majority of murmurs within the fanbase subsiding.
Remember, it’s history that’s being made; more winning means more victors… and more pens.
Winning games and trophies does that. It really does. It covers over things that shouldn’t be hidden. Why? Because an overriding and overwhelmingly good feeling, that of triumph, of being the best, means you feel an equally powerful emotional pull to defend the validity of that win, and therefore, the source of it. Again, during this edit, I had another pal get tetchy with me because I sent the above Athletic podcast to a WhatsApp group. He’s a Chelsea fan. He thought I was provoking and so got defensive. I wasn’t, and I love him, but I really get it, it’s emotional stuff this silly old game.
Football shouldn’t be more than morality in these instances, and it gives me no joy to write it, but it is. History shows it to be true again and again. Yet, in history, there are also good stories, there is also warmth, hope, and light… so let’s go sit by the fire of nostalgic glow.
As someone born at a time when Aberdeen won European trophies and Hearts challenged for league titles. When Motherwell became, by some distance, the second-best team in Scotland, giving Rangers a title fight and a superb Borussia Dortmund side a very close game. (leading to the Germans signing Paul Lambert and winning the European Cup a season later.) A time when Dundee United went one better in reaching a European Final, only to lose out to a once prominent, now forgotten, IFK Gothenburg in 1987. As this person, I really do remember a more equal footing.
I remember a time when every side, from every country, wanted to win their league and division because if they kept doing that, they got to play in European competition. Whether the Champions Cup; for Champions only, The Cup Winner’s Cup; similarly self-descriptive, or the UEFA Cup, which was massive and won by both the aforementioned Maradona and Ronaldo. By the way, those players didn’t look sad at winning a second-rate trophy, because it wasn’t. It was huge.
This time existed. Better yet, and with as much self-awareness as I can muster, let me say this; it really was better. It didn’t mean bigger clubs didn’t exist, or that they didn’t buy smaller clubs’ players, but provincial clubs could, and did, compete and win with more regularity. There was Nottingham Forest under Brian Clough, who, in successive seasons, went from the old Division 2 to Champions of England, and then conquered Europe, twice. This inspired others, so Aston Villa, Aberdeen, Ipswich and Dundee United became European heavyweights. (Most of them had a Scottish spine too)
The beauty of this equality meant that domestic leagues were stronger, all around Europe. Malmo reached the European Cup Final, Red Star Belgrade and PSV won it.
Crucially, because the domestic leagues were more competitive, players stayed at clubs for longer, because their clubs were richer (comparatively) and they legitimately stood a chance of winning something that then meant something. Clubs like Aberdeen were signing Dutch internationalists, or latterly, buying Paul Bernard from the Premiership for 1 million pounds.
However, as the Premier League swallowed the TV money, so we said goodbye to Dundee United and Aberdeen. Goodbye to Red Star and Malmo. Benfica and Bruges. Rangers and Celtic. Ajax and PSV. If you weren’t ultra-rich, and/or in one of the ‘Top Five’, you were done. Just like that.
The most damning indictment of the disappearance of this equality was that football became a company game run by company men. ‘TV money to compete’ became the mantra and subsequent justification of every decision, replacing the moral fibre of clubs because it became the lifeblood of their club. Play the new game, or stop playing. A ‘whole new ball game’ right enough.
Clubs grew desperate to take part, and dreamt big, too big for many, resulting in collapse. Rangers and Celtic tried to compete, for a while, and signed more and more foreigners. As a professional who specialises in inclusion, and a self-identified citizen of the world, there’s nothing wrong with that, that’s great! Except, they often weren’t any better than the young players coming through. Dundee and Livingston observed and so did the same. Everyone was at it. Then, collapse. And along with it, the collapse of Scotland producing a generation of great players for the National Team.
Or rather, it wasn’t that they weren’t there, it was that there was no place for them.
As a youth player, why would you think you could get in your local side if there was only one Scotsman? What does that do to your psyche? History lays this bare; it collapses. My daughter’s team recently won the Cup, and were given a pre-match video message from Leanne Crichton. I watched her face light up. See it, be it. What you can see, and project, and dream, really matters.
All of a sudden the likes of Maurice Malpas, John Robertson and Willie Miller were nowhere to be seen, because they didn’t exist. They had nowhere to play, grow and develop. That is unless you think that they emerged fully formed as international-class players? Of course not! They were given the time and space to grow. To develop. To be coached. Before John Robertson was the best winger in Europe, scoring the winning goal in the European Cup Final, he was playing in the Second Division, thinking he was rubbish. Watch ‘I Believe In Miracles’ by Jonny Owens for more.
Robbo wouldn’t have been given a chance because there was no route into the first team, and no route into representing your country.
Compare this to my experience growing up, when McKimmie and McKinley were the wing backs. When McCall and McStay were there midfield. When the other John Robertson, McCoist and Johnston were the cream of the crop.
Am I shocked that the Premier League clubs feel threatened now that such a history is on their horizon? Knocking at their door? No, because it is a culture shock the rest of us have been getting used to over a much longer period.
This distaste is chiefly why I support Scotland above all else, and adore international football, because it still resembles something of the game I fell in love with. Most importantly, it is affordable, and so, with a bit of budgeting, I’m able to take my kids; the next generation.
It still feels like it is for the fans because it is. Personally, I find a greater connection exists between player and fan because we don’t need to worry about contracts running out, or them getting a better offer elsewhere. I’m not blind to the controversy of international football, like South Korea’s run to the Semi-Finals in 2002, but I’m inclined to say there are far fewer instances of such injustices, for the moment…
If Scotland’s recent successes and sold-out campaigns have shown anything, it’s that, like Dundee United, Aberdeen, Ipswich and Forest; a well-coached underdog is still the greatest story in football. It’s still the one we all want to see.
So how do we get reinject this with more regularity to the Club game? How do we make it fairer for all?
As a Scot, I want to see young Scottish players playing for Scottish clubs. As a citizen of the world, I want to see people of all nations given the same opportunity, firstly in their communities and leagues, including Saudi Arabia. I want young Saudis to see their local side and see a pathway to play. I want young Saudis to be able to come to Scotland and play, if they want. I may be dubbed naïve, but if you want to see equality for all, then we must allow opportunity for all, and that starts at home, in your local communities and clubs. It doesn’t belong to the elite, or the exclusivity of the shrinking top table. We don’t need to assimilate, paying exorbitant fees for our children to play a game we did for free. It belongs to the people, to us.
A great man once said, ‘imagine all the people’.
Imagine.
I can’t be alone in wanting to see the likes of Red Star and Malmo return. I want to see players stay for the badge and a fair wage. I want to see the beautiful game made beautiful. I believe this beauty is made manifest by people doing beautiful things. By us, not the company man. So it is that when fan groups unite, protest, and form a voice to combat such issues, that needs highlighting as ‘good’. We must laud and support each instance, across partisan boundaries, because we’re now fighting a bigger fight.
Hands up, I know I’m a romantic. Guilty. But I’m willing to look foolish because I’ve seen enough around the nerdy football sites we all frequent, via Google translate and otherwise, via Twitter and forums and YouTube comments, to know that there are Dutch, Belgian, Swedish and Serbian football fans nodding in agreement.
We want football to be for everyone.
Is Saudi money dirty?
The answer is not really the issue here. A hard yes or no is important, but it’s not really what we’re interested in. Our conversations can no longer orbit whataboutery indefinitely. It’s not about what club you support, or what someone else did. Just as Serie A’s wealth influenced the Premier League to form and compete, influencing Barcelona to drastically overspend, and pricing out the smaller nations along the way; so Saudi’s growth as a league will shape our game from our elite at Celtic Park and Ibrox, to those priced out at Kilbowie Park and Cliftonville.
The question is; why do we care if Saudi money is dirty, and what, if anything, will we do about it?
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