WHAT A fine figure of a man Lee McCulloch is. I was reminded of this the other day, when his face – and strapping frame – were blasted across every back page in the land. You might wonder why, as a student of Scottish football, thirled to the game, hopelessly fascinated by its every deedle and dawdle, I hadn't realised this before, but he's that kind of player. No-one is quite sure what it is he does.
I don't want to discuss the rights and wrongs of his decision to quit playing for Scotland – Pat Nevin grasps that thistle elsewhere – but I am interested in the curious, modern hybrid enormo-footballer of which McCulloch is an outstanding example. H
e's got the brawny build of an old-fashioned centre-forward but he doesn't score enough goals. He's nominally a midfielder but he's not an especially brilliant passer, or tackler. He plays wide on the left but the National Association of Wingers (Disbanded) would take umbrage at the suggestion he was one of them. And yet McCulloch is a £2m player, one that Walter Smith was desperate to get to Ibrox after establishing him as a Scotland internationalist.
McCulloch is not alone. There are guys like him at just about every Scottish club. Sometimes they're referred to as "utility players", a term that didn't exist when wingers were in their pomp, music was in its pomp-rock phase and the world seemed a better place. Their strength is, well, their strength. So how did they get so massive – is it CGI or have they been cloned?
Tony Blair, that's how. We were all expanding anyway, because of changes in our diet, but the boom years under Blair meant we were able to eat out more, and drink more, too. I'm not suggesting the likes of McCulloch and Ross Tokely of Inverness CT got so huge through bevvying – but watch one of those "Binge Britain" shows on Sky 3 full of bull-necked lads brawling over big-boobed ladettes and you'll see what I mean.
The era of the enormo-footballer, however, may be coming to an end. Blair has gone and the leisure pound has gone and the credit crunch means we're staying in and making a tin of beans last two meals. If the financial downturn continues, we're all going to get smaller. The impact on Scottish football could be, well, gigantic.
If the next generation pulls up short then we fans may be privileged to witness a comeback for the diminutive Scottish wingman. He may be bandy-legged. He may be gap-toothed, because the credit crunch probably means we'll visit the dentist less. He will give the impression man's development has regressed. But in football it's the utility players who travelled backwards with the ball, or at best sideways. Wingers, old-skool ones, only ever went forwards. And wouldn't it be fantastic if oor fitba' rediscovered the lost art of crossing, rather than the ball dunting off the first defender's backside?
Maybe McCulloch saw the writing on the ball for burly footballers and that's why he's giving up. Despite his name, George Burley doesn't seem to do burly. In the first half against Iceland, his team played with an all-out attacking verve rarely glimpsed under his predecessors, and that's not to detract too much from the tartanaccio era, which was probably necessary at the time.
The one flaw in my frankly stunning theory is that the big guys may not be all that big, footballers rarely looking quite so impressive when you meet them in their normal attire. But I believe Lee McCulloch is big, and hope he's big enough to acknowledge that international recognition has helped his career, and will aid his career beyond football – as a double-act with Ross Tokely touring seaside towns and recreating old Chuck Norris and Steven Seagal fight scenes.
