Scotland's pain: Why summer on the sidelines is bad for Gordon Strachan

A glorious summer for British and Irish summer, they’ve claimed. After years of turgid decline and insipid decay, the home grown game is enjoying a resurgence at Euro 2016. Everyone is there, and furthermore everyone is enjoying success there. Well, almost everyone.

While England, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland and Wales have made their respective history by not just qualifying for this summer’s European Championship, but making the last 16, Scotland have made their own history by missing out on their ninth successive major tournament. Tartan tears are flowing.

Even the most level-headed Scots have watched the last fortnight of action from France with at least a slight crick in their neck. With every goal that England, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland or Wales score at Euro 2016 the sound of gritted teeth can be heard across the country. Indeed, watching everyone else have so much fun, leaving Scotland slumped at home once again, has been rather difficult.

Of course, having failed to qualify for a major tournament since the 1998 World Cup, Scotland is used to being on the outside, peering on the party through the window. But this time it’s different. Ordinarily Scotland has at least one drinking buddy to swig on the kerb with. This summer, they have been left all alone without so much as someone to hold the hip flask. It’s that solitude in failure, rather than the failure to qualify itself, that hurts most.

While missing out on tournament football was once the source of nationwide anguish, now it is worthy of little more than a shrug of expected disgruntlement. Not so long ago it was taken as a given that Scotland would qualify for major tournaments. Craig Brown left his job as manager after failing to deliver qualification for Euro 2000. Contrast that with current national team boss Gordon Strachan, who was given a standing ovation by The Tartan Army after a campaign which saw Scotland finish fourth in a six-team group.

Is this really the standard accepted of the country’s national team in 2016? Despite his failure to deliver Euro 2016 qualification, Strachan was handed a new two-year deal to keep in charge until the 2018 World Cup. What does that say about the ambition of Scottish football?

However, Euro 2016 could inadvertently prove a watershed moment for the national game north of the border. British and Irish success in France this summer has put into focus just how far short Scotland and Strachan have fallen. Scotland haven’t played a competitive game since October, but the national team boss is under pressure now than at any other point over the course of his three-year tenure.

In fact, disgruntlement runs so deep it’s difficult to envisage how Strachan will recover. His position as Scotland boss is seemingly under threat - definitely under question - due to the success of others at Euro 2016. That much has been obvious in some of his comments over the past few weeks and months. He knows how bad England, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland and Wales’ achievements make him look.

And so Strachan rallying calls have been getting increasingly desperate, this week insisting Scotland are “as good as” or better than many of those in France this summer. More than once he has lamented Scotland’s difficult qualification draw. “Germany and Poland, two of the teams from our group, are flying along so I do believe that we are good as teams there, if not better than some,” he claimed just this week. He’s also moaned about Scotland’s lack of a Gareth Bale or a Robert Lewandowski, conveniently ignoring Northern Ireland’s success at the Euros. Who is their Bale? Who is their Lewandowski?

There will always be a begrudging acceptance of the Auld Enemy as British football’s predominant force, but Republic of Ireland’s place at the 2016 European Championships has been more difficult to accept for some Scots, least of all Strachan. Over and over again he has made the point that Scotland claimed four points from a possible six in qualification clashes with their Celtic counterparts, encapsulating the pent-up frustration of a nation that they - not Scotland - made it to France.

To the outsider, that probably makes us bad losers. They’ll say Scotland should accept its own shortcomings and cry into their Saltires without hitting out at others. The majority have done that, with most fans even having the good humour to enjoy their own schadenfreude (albeit barely).

And that’s one thing Scotland does excel in - taking humour from their own misfortune. Considering it was the Scottish FA that proposed the expansion of the European Championships to 24 teams it’s nothing short of hilarious that Scotland are in fact the only Home Nation not to have benefitted from that new format at Euro 2016.

Scots may well be hurting this summer, but they’re not complete scrooges. Very few north of the border could begrudge Northern Ireland or Wales their place in the last 16, with one of the two incredibly guaranteed to make it to the quarter-finals. Even Scotland can acknowledge that achievement without projecting its own jealousy on to it. After all, we’ll be there next time. Maybe.