Berti must go but what state will the team be in by then?; With World

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Aug 22, 2004 | by Michael Grant

THOSE who believe Berti Vogts should be locked in stocks and pelted with rotten fruit on the front steps of Hampden, as a prelude to his deportation, are being made to wait. As the countdown continues to his inevitable departure, they will at least be gratified to learn that the Scotland manager's existence is not without some well-deserved punishment. In the slow hours after his team's latest capitulation on Wednesday, he watched Hungary's 3-0 victory again on videotape and could not get to sleep until 5am. Anyone feel sorry for him? No, thought not.

Sitting through the team's abject performance for the second time amounted to self-inflicted misery, just as the match itself has been his latest self-inflicted disaster. In his scheduled press conference on Thursday, we were subjected to the familiar experience of Vogts attempting to wriggle free of responsibility for yet another farcical scoreline. There was "no excuse" for it, he said, before taking a breath and spouting some gibberish about Tuesday's poor weather limiting the team's training and the players themselves lacking match fitness at such an early stage of the season.

At moments like those it is impossible not to look at Vogts and wonder whether, World Cup winner or not, he grasps the fundamentals of management at all. Unless he is genuinely clueless about how matches are won and lost, the only explanation for plucking these random, pathetic explanations out of thin air - and remember we have previously been told about performances being affected by everything from poor pitches to the players being preoccupied by bonus negotiations - is that Vogts recognises he has been backed into a corner and reaches for anything he can to disguise the fact he is out of answers.

A bit of rain which stopped training? Players lacking match sharpness? God help us. Scotland lost on Wednesday night largely as a consequence of baffling tactical change by Vogts at half-time. In the first half Scotland were not as impressive as the manager subsequently claimed, but they were at least relatively compact and competent, and deserved better than to be trailing to an unjust penalty conceded by Andy Webster.

There was no need for any radical adjustments and yet Vogts, despite believing that the midfield diamond was performing adequately, did precisely that. Inexplicably, he threw on a third forward and left his three midfielders hopelessly undermanned against Hungary's four midfielders and two deep-lying attackers. It was a hopeless misreading of the match and Lothar Matthaus - who like Greece's Otto Rehhagel has the hallmarks of being an accomplished German manager - must have struggled to suppress a grin.

Scotland were overrun of course, with Szabolcs Huszti running through the team's patchy midriff (into space Gary Caldwell might have successfully closed down had he not been withdrawn) to score an impressive second, before Scotland's reckless shape left them vulnerable to being stretched and pulled out of position, as they were when Hungary completed their rout by forcing Steven Pressley into a desperate clearance which struck David Marshall's back to rebound in for an own goal.

When Vogts asked, "Do you know why I changed the tactics?", it was difficult to guess what was coming next. Was he about to tells us he overheard a fan suggesting he do so, or that Matthaus had dared him to for a (euros)50 bet?

In fact he said: "I was looking for a win. Maybe I changed it too early. That was a good lesson for me: don't change the system too early. Maybe we will be in the same situation against Slovenia and I will have to wait." So we have a 57-year-old coach still learning when he should change a team's formation.

It is certainly perfectly legitimate to suppose that Slovenia may take a lead at Hampden in the opening World Cup qualifying tie on Wednesday, September 8. Italy's 2-0 defeat in Iceland was the only encouraging result for Scotland in midweek.

Slovenia drew at home with Serbia and Montenegro in midweek, as did Norway with Belgium, while Moldova defeated Georgia and, alarmingly, Belarus won 2-1 in Turkey. Scotland cannot take for a granted even a place in the top four among this company.

Much has been made of Gary Holt being used at full-back rather than as a defensive central midfielder, although David McNamee would have been a more sensible inclusion as he is a natural right-back.

Quite apart from the fact that Holt was ignored for 25 months and suddenly seems so valuable that Vogts will even play him out of position in order to keep him involved, the Norwich City player unwittingly confirmed the widespread suspicions about a chilling lack of clarity in Vogts' preparation.

"In the morning [Wednesday morning] we went through the team and then we had the training. When he named the team, though, I still thought I was playing defensive midfield," said Holt. "It was only in the afternoon that it was mentioned I was playing right back, so I didn't really have the time to moan about it!"

So not a single training session was done with the back four playing as it would in the match itself, and a player operating out of position in the defence was given no specific instructions on what would be expected. Presumably Holt should have felt grateful that the manager "mentioned" his intended position at all. No wonder Vogts' reign has been characterised by Scottish players looking baffled and pleading for guidance from the touchline during games.