Someone posted a piece earlier today about the initiatives in the MLB and it got me thinking. This is what I would like to see in the Scottish game to improve the product and what is stopping the S.F.A from doing it?

1. Lose the preoccuption with trying to be a 'mini' England - identical league names shows the mindset of those in charge. It's not a fair comparison and we don't need to copy them.

2. Drop the minnows - 42 teams in 4 divisions - for a Country of barely 5 million people. It's too many. Most don't survive on a commercial basis and are staffed by volunteers. I would have a top division of 16 teams and a second tier of 12 teams. The rest drop into a pyramid of part-time regional leagues or merge.

3. Get a sensible fixture list - I would have as many games start at 3pm on a Saturday as possible. I don't want anymore games of Falkirk 'entertaining' St. Mirren at 8pm on a Tuesday night.

4. Slash prices across the board - food, drink, tickets and merch - The product is not value for money. £28 for an adult ticket and £10 for children. That's  £76 for a family of 4 - before buying a match programme, food and drink!

The SPFL just rest on their laurels because it's 'the national sport' - this isn't the 1920s, we live in a time of abundant content where you can watch movies, games, socials - no entertainment has a god-given right to exist, you need to convince people it's worth spending their money on. Flat rate of prices on everything and improve the experience - music, fan zones, kid's footballs, autograph sessions, food trucks the lot.

5. Trial Alcohol - let's see if people can be sensible about it.

6. Introduce Summer Football - We don't have the weather. Fans don't need to freeze on a cold dark February. It will mean better weather, better pitches, better quality football, less money spent on heating and floodlighting and better preparation for European Football.

7. Better socials and engagement - It needs to be a spectacle - I'm not saying cheerleaders and half time shows - but better highlight packages, engagement online. Right now you've got people like Open Goal, PLZ, The Warm-Up all doing their own thing. Bring them into the fold and start promoting our league.

7. Get the TV deals nailed down - The Scottish Government are all about 'standing up for Scotland' - then do it, hold the BBC's feet to the fire. We get under 5% of BBC football rights despite having 10% of the population. Every match should be streamed. There are loads of streaming services in Asia in India, China, South-East Asia that don't get Premier League rights we could be selling to. Centralize all the commercial rights with the SPFL

8. Youth Development - We need a national coaching academy. Partner with a University. We need to modernize tactics and raise standards, technical ability, bringing through players and facilities to do it. England did it with St. Georges and we can have something similar. Mandatory minutes for Scottish under-21 players.

Are the S.F.A going to do any of this? Nah, what's for lunch?

I can see a lot changing especially in the squad too with a lot of players like Miller and Todd being called up to the national team who could really benefit us in this tournament. However, the manager is always the one who makes the decision that wins us the games.

My first thought of a realistic is Rafa Benitez who has ready declared interest in the role. I feel like John McGlynn lacks top level experience but it could be worth a shot in the dark. Any thoughts? And how far could we go under each possible candidate?

My second sport is baseball and I was delighted by the impact that the Tartan Army made on fans of America’s pastime during the World Cup.

It got me thinking about how brilliantly Major League Baseball promotes the sport and what the Scottish football authorities could learn from it.

Some things that impress me about MLB are:

1. How quickly it puts up highlights, with commentary, for fans from around the world to watch on YouTube.

2. The clubs run frequent promotions to entice fans, and especially kids, to attend games. Tickets can often be bought extremely cheaply on the day of the game, too.

3. MLB has a large social media presence and posts lots of shareable content (I know, it’s not my kind of thing, but it certainly promotes the game).

4. It runs its own streaming subscription service, allowing fans to watch games live from anywhere in the world. It also offers the ability to watch games later, watch condensed versions of the games, etc.

5. It does a good job of marketing star players and making them the face of the game, helping to attract interest in the sport.

6. It hosts special events like the Home Run Derby, the All Star Game, the Field of Dreams game, etc. Again, this helps to draw in people who might not normally take an interest in the sport and, hopefully, spark their interest and hook them.

7. MLB invests heavily in grassroots baseball to make it accessible for everyone, especially kids.

I think there’s a lot that Scottish football could adopt and adapt from how MLB goes about its business in terms of promoting itself.

For example, it usually takes quite some time for highlights packages to be posted on YouTube and they generally lack any kind of commentary. MLB often posts a 10-15 minute highlights package of a game within an hour or so of it finishing and posts a daily round up of the best bits of play covering every game. Why can’t we provide a highlights package that presents our game in the best possible light?

Lots of Scottish games don’t fill stadiums, so why not sell the tickets cheap on the day of the match? You can literally get into a baseball stadium for under $10 on some occasions - let’s do what we can to pack our stadia and create an atmosphere.

More controversially, instead of an All Star Game, could we have a Glasgow vs Edinburgh game, or games based on other themes in which the best players are picked and play against each other? That might not fly given domestic rivalries, so how about a Scots vs non-Scots game? Basically we should explore anything that gets eyeballs on our game, because investment will follow. We could also have a penalty kick/free kick challenge to ape the home run derby.

Wouldn’t it be great if grassroots football was subsidised to make it as accessible as possible for as many kids as possible? Why not subsidise training for adults who want to be coaches? That would likely have positive long-term consequences for the quality of players we bring through.

Anyway, I’ll stop here as this post is getting pretty long.

TL;DR we should do everything possible to promote our game and we could learn a thing or two from the MLB.

Pretty solid view of the game. The graphic on Messi's impact post substitutions is incredible.

Where’d they go?

I hope his next shite is a hedgehog

The age-old dilemma of how to shorten Vennegoor of Hesselink in Edit Mode...

Good luck making it through this! I only managed to make it through while muted 😂

If you were the new Scottish manager, what would you do with the squad going forward? I feel like the home Euros gets in the way a bit. It is the easiest Euros ever for us to qualify for - at least 3 of the 4 hosts will be there so not qualifying would be a disaster. So you need experience for 2028 but a number of those players aren't going to have a role to play in qualifying for, and hopefully playing in, 2030. Robertson, McTominay, Hanley, Tierney, McGinn, Christie, Hendry, Souttar, McLean and McKenna as well as Shankland, Adams and Dykes will all be at least 33 by 2030. But we need a lot of that experience over the next 2 years. If you were the new manager how would you approach it? I'd be tempted to bin most of them after the Euros.

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