Scottish football finds itself at a critical point. On the domestic side, it already feels like the league is wide open, albeit due to a lack of Old Firm form. The same cannot be said on the European front, as despite only being three matches in, it does not look like any Scottish team will be progressing into the knockouts.
It was a familiar story for Celtic and Rangers, who qualified for the play-off rounds in the Champions League but failed to win their respective matches, and were dropped into the Europa League. At the time of writing, Celtic sit towards the lower end of the table having picked up four points from their opening three games. Rangers have fared even worse, sitting bottom of the table on zero points, and a goal difference of minus five.
Things do not look much better in the Conference League. Dundee and Hibernian were both knocked out in qualifying, and Aberdeen are once again found at the bottom after losing their first two. In summary, the situation is dire: five Scottish teams entered the season with hopes of a strong European campaign; these will likely be over by Christmas.
As each year passes, fewer fans will remember the days of European glory in Scotland. I expect it is rarely known amongst young supporters that Celtic were the first side from the British Isles to be European champions when they lifted the 1967 European Cup. Rangers and Aberdeen have also had success, having won the Cup Winners’ Cup in 1972 and 1983 respectively. Unfortunately, these are only distant memories now, clouded by more recent painful experiences such as the 2022 Europa League final, when Rangers agonisingly lost on penalties to Eintracht Frankfurt.
So why is it the same humiliating, tired, and frankly shambolic story when Scottish teams get pitted against Europe’s elite. That in itself is part of the problem: there is an unequal distribution of power. Compared to the major European leagues, Scottish clubs have significantly smaller budgets, which immediately puts them at a disadvantage. Their inability to sign high quality players means their squads lack depth, which is needed to sustain form during busy periods when teams usually play three games a week.
Furthermore, it is widely accepted that the SPFL is, at best, a precession for the Old Firm, or at worst, a chaotic shambles where any team can beat anyone. A perfect example of this is the case of Hibernian. At first glance, it appears that they are doing quite well, sitting in third on 15 points. However, they have only won three out of 11 games and are only eight points away from Livingston. Hibs are closer, in points, to the bottom of the table than the top, which means that if they hit a sudden bad run of form, they could find themselves a lot lower down. This points to the fact that nothing really separates the sides outside of Glasgow, so despite the level of competitiveness making for an entertaining league, the level of quality compared to the rest of Europe is markedly worse.
The dominance of Celtic and Rangers in the domestic competitions (the last non-Old Firm team to win the SPFL were Aberdeen in 1985) has meant that players are not accustomed to the sustained pressure and intensity found at the highest level of European football. An obvious signal of this is the defensive fragility of Scottish teams, where at times their organisation is closer to grassroots than professional football. You need only look at Aberdeen’s opening match against AEK Athens—where they lost 6-0 in their worst ever European performance—to see the gulf between the sides.
Scottish football may be exciting and unpredictable on a weekend, but it becomes abysmal when these performances trickle into Europe. Sadly, they are the competition’s laughing stock, and given that nothing is going to change in terms of funding, supporters can expect more of the same. It seems then, for the foreseeable future, as though the relationship between European football and Scotland is fated to end in tragedy.
Image Credits: “Celtic lining up before the Benfica game” by StartAgain is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.