MICHAEL BEALE insists Scottish football should do more to talk itself up and showcase the game to the wider world as he hit back at Neil McCann's criticism of striker Alfredo Morelos.
The former Ibrox winger labelled Morelos an 'idiot' after he celebrated the third goal in the win over Hearts on Wednesday night with his trademark knee slide in front of the home fans.
Supporters widely condemned McCann in the aftermath of the Tynecastle triumph and the comments have created a storm on the back of what was an impressive performance and result from Beale's side.
And the Englishman believes the spotlight is now being shone in the wrong direction after being made aware of McCann's harsh judgements during his commentary for BBC Radio Scotland.
Beale said: “Neil is my friend outside of this conversation, I think sometimes we can make a big deal out of something - but we have to celebrate goals. We have to understand that a lot is thrown the other way,
“The first two goals we scored, we do celebrate right in front of them because we’re not going to run 150 yards to our own fans. I didn’t see the celebration at the time because immediately after it was given we were talking about substitutions.
“When I heard about it this morning, I thought: ‘bloody hell, can we not concentrate on the performance on the pitch.’
“I don’t think many people in the stadium took exception to it either, so I think we should focus on football on the pitch,
“At this moment in time, Scottish football is really colourful. We’ve got players coming in from outside, whether that’s from down south, or from Asia and one or two from around Europe.
“The league’s in a really good place, so I think we should focus on the football.
“It was disappointing that game wasn’t on TV [on Wednesday] night. You have two teams unbeaten over 10 games and something that had to give.
"There was optimism in the air in the Hearts team and maybe in general in football with people saying: ‘okay, let’s see where Rangers are at’ and I thought it was always going to be a good game.”
The over Robbie Neilson's side was the most eye-catching showing that has been produced since Beale returned to Ibrox after leaving Queens Park Rangers to succeed Giovanni van Bronckhorst as boss in December.
Scottish football is often unfairly derided south of the border and Beale reckons those within our national game have a responsibility to be positive and talk up the product on and off the park.
Beale said: “It’s not so much in the media down there. It’s not until you come up here that you realise it’s a real goldfish bowl. That’s why people talk about it.
“I was following Rangers because I spent a lot of time here, but you don’t read a lot about it in the media and I think the achievements of the team in Europe can be easily dismissed and that’s disappointing.
“That’s why I say we have to promote our game because nobody outside of our shores will do it. I think we’ve got good players in the league, players who have gone out of our league and done really well.
“Maybe we need to talk our game up a little bit. I always feel we are a bit glass half empty rather than glass half full when we talk about football. I think we can talk up our game much better than we do.”
