Celtic - the worst football club in the world?

[Potterologist]

I don't know an awful lot about Scottish football. But I know an awful lot about football.

In every country where there are 2-4 dominant teams with big stadiums, good sponsorship, annual Champions League/Europa League money, these teams also build state of the art academies producing top players every year.

The league most similar to Scotland is the Portuguese league. Three teams have dominated forever and had the time and room for a permanent oligpoly to take shape - same thing could be said for Celtic & Rangers (who may be the second worst club in the world).

The difference is in Portugal they did something useful with that domination. Portugal got 2x the population of Scotland, yet they always have ca 200 players in the top 5 leagues while Scotland generally have ~35.

Similar things could be said for Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands etc... all of them pump out players, through great acadamies as well as modern scouting. All of the produce a lot more talent per capita. Scotland should have at least 75-100 players in the top 5 league as well as some reasonably competitive teams in the CL/EL.

The clubs needing to lead the way for Scotland are antique. Any time I tune into a Glasgow derby I get shocked by how clubs with these resources are just filled with dross who are at best going to play in some bottom half PL team at their peak. Both player development and scouting is clearly on a very low level and has been for twenty years or so, when the football world moved on and your giants didn't.

This is a football thought I have had for a long time, and just taking the opportunity to get it off my chest... I think a somewhat football mad country like Scotland just deserve better.

On the bright side of everything, mr Tony Bloom has entered the chat and I think he will have a massive impact on the entirety of Scottish football.

[wokinginashearerwonderland]

Interesting points 

In the same way, England intrigues me.  So the population of England is 10 times that of Scotland and based on your figures, England should have 750-1000 players in the top 5 leagues in Europe.  They currently have about 180. That's about 21% of what they should have, Scotland's 35 players accounts for about 40% of what they should have.  So double.

Last weekend English players in the starting line ups in the top 5 teams in the EPL accounted for just 30% of the 55 players.  Plus, with the STAGGERING resources available to English football, can you believe the English national team have won the same number of major trophies in the last 60 years as Scotland.  Mental.