After the Scotland victory in Norway against a team with players apparently worth individually more than all of them put together, commentators, including Norwegian ones, were most impressed by the solidarity of the Scotland team.
I was too, and have been for some time now.
Football is a team game so its not really surprising when combinations of star individuals, like say Paris St Germain, can’t beat more modest but more cohesive opposition. Croatia recently is another case in point. Greece and Denmark have won competitions in the past based on a similar principle.
For some reason ‘smells like team spirit’ popped into my well-worn brain and I felt the terrible urge to use it and, of course, to reduce the readership for the blog.
Getting back to the presence of the global stars, Haaland and Odegaard, in the Norwegin team, this is interesting:
Need better performance? Then hire the most talented people you can find — but not too many of them. Having too much talent in a team often means that it performs worse overall, according to a study by Roderick Swaab, a professor of organisational behaviour at the business school Insead. His research with elite sports teams suggests that adding highly talented people helps up to the point where they make up 68% of the team — and then it becomes a hindrance. In other words, when about two-thirds have superstar levels of ability rather than the (already high) standard needed to make it as a professional athlete, things start to fall apart.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/too-much-talent-kills-team-spirit-jgzbb7mq6rt
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
So we didn’t make a mess of Argentina ’78 because Ernie Walker, then blazer-in-chief of the SFA, booked the players into a complex (possibly on the cheap) at the back o’ beyond, with no distractions/entertainment other than alcohol; we just had too many good players in the squad?
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And too high a perm count?
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I’m no psychologist, but maybe Peru’s players just couldn’t take our players seriously, when they were flouncing towards them, whilst impersonating their own grandmas; perhaps if they’d stuck to another favourite of the era, the mullet, the Peruvians might have been a bit more intimidated?
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So media studies prof must have researched that!
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Some..
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I still have a set of Tennents lager glasses signed by every member of the Scottish 1978 team.
Some of the best players ever to play for our country and an unforgettable goal scored by Archie Gemmill against the Netherlands.
A team blighted by poor discipline,cohesion and perhaps overconfidence resulted in us being sent home tae think again.
Lessons to be learned.
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And too high a perm count?
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To be fair to them, they were stuck in a compound with nothing to help them relax, or keep them occupied. I don’t think Ally McLeod was too hot on discipline and I very much doubt that the SFA blazerati were anything other than useless.
They were a very young squad, bored out of their skulls most of the time, its hardly surprising that they weren’t fully focused.
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The team spirit is something that has been greatly enhanced under Steve Clarke. Ten or more years ago Scotland were so bad that the players selected were making excuses not to play. Their resolve and cohesiveness is greater that it has been for years.
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