It’s hard to find the apt word to describe it, but its presence is unmistakable.
It’s a stench, almost, that clings to a manager when they are past the point of no return in their job, and the only thing keeping them in it is the reluctance of their employers to pay up the remainder of their contract.
There are a few in Scottish football that are positively reeking of it just at the moment, and none more so than Pedro Martinez Losa, head coach of the Scotland women’s national team.
I wrote in this column a few weeks ago about the folly of the Rangers board in tacking on a year’s extension to Philippe Clement’s contract on the back of very little at all, but in fairness, the decision-makers at the Scottish FA have made that call look positively prudent with their own handling of Martinez Losa.
The Spaniard’s reward for failing to take the nation to the last World Cup, losing out in the play-off final to a (with respect) distinctly average Republic of Ireland side? Why, a new four-year contract, of course.
It was a baffling call then and it looks absolutely bonkers now, after the dismal two-leg play-off final defeat to Finland this week that meant the Scots would not be going to the European Championships in Switzerland next summer, leaving them and the rest of us on the outside of a major tournament looking in once more.
Another dead giveaway that a manager is a dead man walking is when their post-match debriefs spiral into a mix of being forced to insist that you are the right person to turn things around, and outright gobbledygook.
I almost fell off my chair when I heard Martinez Losa bemoaning the freezing conditions at the Bolt Arena, using the pitch as an excuse for how his team failed to settle early on, and the Finns’ strong home record as mitigation for their defeat.
If only there had been a game on Scottish soil, where Martinez Losa could have sent his team – laced as it is with some attacking talent playing at the highest levels of the women’s game – out in a positive fashion, giving his side something to defend when they were forced to play in Helsinki.
But wait. That’s right. This was a two-legged affair. With the first leg at Easter Road. On a nice grass pitch. In Edinburgh. The capital of, erm, Scotland.
That he could stand in front of the cameras and the fans and talk about how difficult it was to take on the Finns on their own patch with their formidable home record and their frozen pitch, having set up in such a negative fashion when his team had the home advantage, was staggering.
The goalless draw at Easter Road was never likely to be a strong enough platform to get through the tie, and so it proved.
The players aren’t blameless in all of this, of course. This current crop, with the likes of Caroline Weir starring for Real Madrid and Chelsea’s Erin Cuthbert being nominated for the FIFA Best XI just last week, have been billed as a golden generation. They too must share culpability for another failure to reach a major tournament, a run that now stretches back to 2019.
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Finland 2 Scotland 0: Scots crash out in play off again to put pressure on Pedro
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Scotland manager remains committed to role despite Euro 2025 playoff heartbreak
But there is no shaking the feeling that they haven’t been given the best opportunity to shine and perform as they can by the approach of their manager. If anything, they have in fact been hamstrung by his negative tactics.
A stat that Martinez Losa would like to accentuate of course would be the fact that his side went into Tuesday night’s game on the back of a nine-game unbeaten competitive run.
But Scotland have registered just one competitive victory against a top 30 nation during his three-year tenure – a 1-0 win over Austria in 2022. And the win over Slovenia that kick-started that unbeaten run was their first competitive victory in 16 months.
The most important stat of course is that his team have now choked at the vital moment on two consecutive occasions, and their collective failure to make it to Switzerland could have far-reaching consequences.
The women’s game is very much still in a period of growth in Scotland, and an appearance at a major tournament could have done so much to improve its profile and media exposure, inspiring young girls and potentially leading to a boost in attendances.
The highest crowd that a home SWNT match has drawn is still the 18,555 who turned up at Hampden to wave the players off to the World Cup in 2019 with a friendly win over Jamaica. That should have been a launchpad, the spark that saw the women’s game really catch the imagination of the Scottish footballing public.
Instead, after this latest disappointment, it feels like a high tidemark.
Martinez Losa’s remit was to get Scotland back to a major tournament, and he has now failed to do so on two occasions. It will cost the SFA a pretty penny, certainly, to sack him. But they may wish to ponder what it might cost them, and the women’s game in Scotland, if they do not.
