Dismissal of Rangers boss Pedro Caixinha's tactical chats shows Scottish football...

[ian1964 10,429]

...is closed-minded.

 

by Derek Rae

 

I’m not just talking about Rangers here, although it is the Ibrox side who have brought this topic to mind, but as a country I think we need to be a lot more open-minded than we are when it comes to outside influence in our game.

 

Look at the reaction to Pedro Caixinha’s post-match press conference after the defeat to Celtic on Sunday where he used glasses as illustrative tools to explain his tactics.

 

What he was saying was not particularly revolutionary, but I got the impression from a few people that they thought he was speaking a different language or talking about a different sport.

 

I think that in Scotland, for whatever reason, we’re far more comfortable talking about battles, commitment, guts and courage than we are about technique and tactics or defensive systems.

 

I’m not saying we have to be obsessed with such things, but as a broadcaster and as a journalist, when a manager starts to talk about such subjects then I’m interested in what he has to say.

 

I think we would be better off as a football country if every manager spoke that way and was encouraged to speak that way, rather than it being dismissed as gobbledygook or irrelevant.

 

I’ve even heard some former Rangers players this week talking about how when they played they didn’t really spend that much time on tactics, and that tactics weren’t the thing that was uppermost in a player’s mind in this fixture.

 

But tactics can win you a game and it was clear that the Rangers players maybe hadn’t quite got the message that Pedro Caixinha was trying to put across to them on Sunday.

 

It’s early doors for the Rangers manager of course, and he will take time to bed in, get his points across and get the players in that he wants.

 

When you have a better quality of player, then you can do more interesting things tactically, and any coach or manager would tell you that.

 

It becomes very easy just to say things like ‘why didn’t Rangers press?’ or ‘why didn’t Rangers get in Celtic’s faces?’, but it is far from as simple as that.

 

A coach is analysing every aspect of every minute of every game in a way that fans, broadcasters or journalists aren’t, and I do think that we are being left behind a bit in this country.

 

I’ve heard Ian Cathro reference this, that in Portugal the analysis is much more analytical, whereas in Scotland we like the headlines and we like the soap opera.

 

Sometimes I actually wonder how much we like the football as much as we think we do. We know good football when we see it, but I’m not sure if we like the technical side of the game as much as we should.

 

It was said to me on Twitter recently that tactics and the technical side of the game were not things that you could talk to your mates about in the pub, but maybe it’s time we did start talking about it in the pub if we want to get better as a country.

 

Fighting qualities and heart and spirit and everything that Scottish football is renowned for are wonderful attributes to have, but on their own, they are not enough.

 

Hopefully, the Rangers players are open-minded enough to give Pedro Caixinha a chance to do something a bit different, and hopefully they buy into it.

 

And maybe we, as fans of the Scottish game, should have more time for tactical chat and more interest in the technical side of the game than we currently do as well.

 

http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/15249829.Derek_Rae__Dismissal_of_Rangers_boss_Pedro_Caixinha_s_tactical_chats_shows_Scottish_football_is_closed_minded/#articleContinue

[stewarty 1,877]

A good piece.

 

But what hope do we have of providing in-depth tactical analysis if our flagship weekly highlights provides no more than 4-5 minutes of each weekend's games; and to then rely on a host of former players who then criticise "laptop" managers and make sneering comments about Caixinha's analysis and use of glasses to illustrate his points.

 

Its all rather tired, lazy and predictable at the moment. And thats not to say there isn't a place for that type of programme, but we also need the in-depth analytical approach and it strikes me that there is a chunky market out there for content of that nature. Will any broadcaster attempt to break the mould?

[Oleg_Mcnoleg 50]

It'll be interesting to see how this develops with tactical managers in charge of our three most prestigious clubs.

That said, all the tactics in the world won't save you if you can't pass the ball to a team mate a short distance away or your strikers can't strike.

[Uilleam 5,451]

A good piece.

 

But what hope do we have of providing in-depth tactical analysis if our flagship weekly highlights provides no more than 4-5 minutes of each weekend's games; and to then rely on a host of former players who then criticise "laptop" managers and make sneering comments about Caixinha's analysis and use of glasses to illustrate his points.

 

Its all rather tired, lazy and predictable at the moment. And thats not to say there isn't a place for that type of programme, but we also need the in-depth analytical approach and it strikes me that there is a chunky market out there for content of that nature. Will any broadcaster attempt to break the mould?

 

They would have to knock the mould off first.

The sports' media in Scotland is pretty dire, as a whole; the fitba' writers, commentators, pundits etc., are excepted, only insofar as as they are the most wretched, and irredeemable of the entire species.

Edited April 27, 2017 by Uilleam

[Scott7 5,206]

Well done Derek Rae. He supports Aberdeen, his home town team but he spent a few years in US sport. Travel broadens the mind.

 

How often have we seen brave, battling performances from Scottish sides sometimes laced with marvellous individual skills only to be torpedoed by some crafty continentals who have applied a bit of brain.