Why Scottish football needs James McFadden to be its saviour

Prince of Paris James McFadden - the Messiah of Scottish football?© SNS Group

Scotland’s performances against Serbia and Macedonia last week were a lot like a second-hand jigsaw puzzle – ragged, frustrating and with a lot of missing pieces.

Chief on the absent elements list were attacking intent, creative instinct and the unpredictable frisson that suggests a moment of magic may be lurking, ready to pounce at any moment.

In other words, Scotland were missing this:

Some of this:

And most emphatically any trace of this:

It feels like a long time since this sentence was the underlying point of any national team match report, but - Scotland Needs James McFadden.

Well, you say that and then hesitate. You reflect on that France goal, watching it for fourth or fifth hundredth time and make peace with the idea that what Scotland actually needs is the concept of McFadden – of that impish youth, that gallus kid, that ‘cheeky boy’ that Berti Vogts would fawn over in his comparatively less hapless moments.

But that McFadden is gone, you think, succumbing to age and injury and unfulfilled potential like so many Scottish starlets before him.

But check that Wikipedia profile again – McFadden is 29. Twenty-nine. He is, theoretically, in the prime of his career.

Instead, McFadden seems to have fallen into the same limbo of public perception that has dogged Michael Owen for so long: the teenage wunderkind who blazed gloriously, a blistering taste of the future now – like a walking Tomorrow’s World segment – who suddenly became the grizzled veteran masked in a permanent fug of regret, with seemingly no intermediary stage to his career.

Five years ago, on the eve of a Euro 2008 qualifier against Italy that might have seen Scotland stumble into a major finals (they didn’t stumble through, by the way. Scotland decided to stick with a familiar script and wallowed in glorious failure instead), McFadden was asked how it felt to be seen as Scotland’s saviour.

McFadden replied with a shrug, ‘I’ve been a saviour for five years’. We should, in other words, be celebrating the Decade of Faddy – instead we are mired in the two year low of an era without magic, without excitement, without any real joy in the Scotland team at all.

He went out on a low did McFadden, subbed at half time after an unusually subdued and ineffective performance, lost in the thick casserole of malaise that was Scotland v Liechtenstein in September 2010.

Craig Levein dismissed McFadden as lazy and seemed to decide there and then not to pick the player again, not willing to fit an anarchic talent like McFadden’s into his pet formation – a tactical scheme so rigid it suggests Levein earned his coaching badges on a foosball table.

And McFadden never got the opportunity to prove him wrong, as 24 months of injury and directionless-ness followed. Five games for Birmingham here, seven games for Everton there, punctuated with the depressing cycle of ruptures, tears and sprains that are the thieves of continuity.

So here we are, twenty-nine and healthy, but without a club. It is clear that McFadden needs games, but where to get them? The lack of impact his Everton and Birmingham careers had in comparison to his regular messianic interventions for Scotland suggest two things: If he’s going to wear blue, it had best be dark, and, if McFadden is to save himself needs to find a team he can be the saviour of.

He is the classic example of a player who needs to be the central focus of the system, thriving on the creative and emotional responsibility. He is, therefore, in the tricky situation where he needs to find a team that are good enough to accommodate his gifts, but bad enough that he’d be the best player.

This rules out a return to the Scottish league. As much as Hearts could do with a creative hub to prevent the support drowning Tyncastle in tears as another long ball sails over the area where Rudi Skácel used to patrol, or Celtic could do with a player to prevent Georgios Samaras full stop – McFadden remains, even after everything, far too good for the SPL.

Aiming higher, the English Premier League offers few destinations. The only clubs in the market for an elusive second striker in the McFadden mould are Norwich, West Brom and – bizarrely – Liverpool.

Not that Brendan Rodgers is likely to opt for McFadden, but the fact that they are in the market for a fluid forward who can play across a front three and interchange with his colleagues in a way that fits the Faddy skill-set perfectly makes this McFadden to Liverpool idea far from the most ludicrous thing I could suggest.

I could, for instance, suggest that McFadden sign for the Moon, spend eighteen months painting it in a white and black interlocking hexagon and pentagon pattern, then kick the tidal-determinant natural satellite into the Maracana goal to settle the 2014 World Cup Final and declare Scotland the winners of all football forevermore.

But I digress.

It seems then that the only road from the wilderness for Scotland’s Saviour lies in the Championship – a realisation that is grimly fitting when you consider the apparent quality of the current Scotland squad, if not the actual providence of most of its players.

Perhaps one of the more attacking, progressive sides in that division could accommodate McFadden’s Second Coming – Blackpool, Brighton or Middlesbrough all seem to fit that bill.

Or maybe – if you’ll permit me to really play Fantasy Transfer Market here – we could email some choice YouTube links to India and foster a prolific partnership between McFadden and Jordan Rhodes at Blackburn Rovers. Build some familiarity at club level and then watch Scotland surf a tsunami of scoring all the way to Rio.

In any case, the priorities are clear - fix James McFadden, then fix Scotland. Perhaps then a glimpse of that missing magic might be restored to Hampden Park.

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