Late Laurels: Berti Vogts gets some Credit for Scotland’s Resurgence

Berti Vogts’ reign as Scottish national team coach between 2002 and 2004 wasn’t particularly successful, filled with poor performances and a failed attempt to qualify for the Euros in 2004. When he left his job, the qualifying campaign for the World Cup in 2006 was quite messed up already as well. Things have changed dramatically over the last couple of years, culminating in Scotland’s recent historic victory over France in France. Berti Vogts has tried to use the change of fortunes to somewhat salvage his Scottish adventure, by claiming that it was him, who rebuilt the team and introduced many young players. A notion shared by Darren Fletcher and most recently by the super expensive Premier League keeper Craig Gordon, who said:

Berti Vogts put a lot of youngsters in the team - Darren Fletcher, James McFadden and myself, we were all very young to be playing international football.

Now we all have around 30 caps so having that experience at a young age is probably starting to show. We’re getting a team together that is young but also experienced. We’re reaping the benefits of what Berti did.

He made an awful lot of changes. It probably took longer than everybody thought to turn round but we are seeing the benefits now of what he started.

We’d gone down the ratings and it wasn’t a great time but we always knew we were a better team than everybody was making out and results suggested.

Though, that doesn’t change the fact, that Vogts isn’t the most versatile coach. He would probably make a better sporting or technical director. But it’s nice to hear that he put so much confidence in young players. At least he learned from the mistakes he made with the German national team, were he nominated a group of senior dads for the World Cup in 1998.

Category: International

Tags: Berti Vogts, International

Subscribe   The Offside RSS Feeds

Print

Share