Hopefully Scottish Women’s Success Can Inspire The Nation

Date: 6th September 2018

 

Scottish football has enjoyed some success this summer.

Our Under-21s impressed as they reached the semi-finals of the Toulon Tournament.

Both Celtic and Rangers have managed to reach the group stages of the Europa League.

Yet these accomplishments were eclipsed earlier this week!

The Scottish Women’s National Team managed to secure an away victory over Albania and it was enough to see the team qualify for the World Cup.

It’s the biggest success to date for our female national side and it should be celebrated and hopefully it could be the start of a golden era.

Our female stars are improving all the time and they aren’t scared to leave the country and prove their ability down south or abroad.

Ironically, the 2019 Women’s World Cup will take place in France. They were also the hosts the last time our men’s team reached a World Cup back in 1998.

Our men’s senior team are hopefully on the right course. We have a good group of young players that are technically better than previous eras. The new Nations League format could give us a better chance of reaching the next Euros.

If anyone in the game or supports the game are still harbouring doubts about women’s football or our team’s achievements then they are sorely out of touch.

This achievement of getting to France 2019 is better than anything our men’s team has done in the last twenty years!

As a nation we should use this qualification as a guiding light and as an inspiration to boys and girls and all of our national teams including the men’s senior side.

Alex McLeish’s squad will have hopefully watched the women triumph in Shkoder and believe that they can learn from it and match it.

I’d also like to see our Scottish Women’s Premier League get a boost in exposure and I hope they can get more fans through the doors.

The game is growing leaps and bounds and we need to look at achieving a more professional structure to help create a proper pathway for young aspiring females to come through and stay in the game.

I watched the local BBC news the morning after the team qualified and it was a mere passing note at the end of the bullet-in. They showed one goal and the lead up to the other. Quite frankly that’s shameful! They should have had both goals, end of game celebrations and an interview with the manager Shelley Kerr. I bet they’d have done all that and more had the men qualified for a major final.

Here’s hoping that our women’s game can keep going from strength to strength and starts to get the exposure it deserves, which then leads to a more professional set-up.

Plus let’s also hope that their success can spur our men into action and they can get to Euro 2020!

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