“Fkn chinkys. Fk it. There’s enough dogs in Cardiff for us all to go around.”
“Go on, fat Phil. Nothing like a Jew that sees money slipping through his fingers”
“Not many white faces amongst that lot but worth considering.”
“I hope she’s looking after your needs. I bet you’d love a bounce on her falsies.”
“He’s a snake, a gay snake. Not to be trusted”
Today, the Scottish FA finally put us out of our misery. After a week of teasing, they announced Malky Mackay as the new Performance Director for the organisation. As the Scottish FA statement said, they were delighted to appoint Mackay to the role.
The author isn’t going to even pretend this is going to be an even-handed assessment of the appointment. I’m too angry for that.
It goes without saying that Mackay shouldn’t have been given this role.
As Ewan Murray pointed out in The Guardian last week: “When Mackay was flying high at Watford or Cardiff City, he would have had no interest whatsoever in Scotland’s performance plan. He is a manager, not a youth football strategist; just as, should any decent English club show interest in Mackay’s services again, the notion would persist that he couldn’t cross the border quickly enough.”
So, on technical skills and expertise, Mackay falls short. But the real reason he shouldn’t be occupying an office at Hampden is a moral one.
In 2014, Mackay was on the cusp of securing a job with Crystal Palace, when texts and email that Mackay sent were leaked to the Daily Mirror.
Mackay didn’t get the job and exacerbated the situation further by allowing the LMA to issue a (now deleted) statement apologising for sending the messages but arguing he “was letting off steam to a friend during some friendly text message banter”. This “banter” was not addressed in the Scottish FA’s announcement. Perhaps Mackay and the Hampden Park bosses were hoping that somehow we’d forget all this?
No real apology, no mea culpa, no understanding as to why people might be upset at his appointment. Perhaps Mackay’s friends in the Scottish sports media (of which there are clearly plenty judging by his favourable coverage in the past few weeks) think that Scottish football fans simply don’t care about racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny and homophobia.
Mackay’s cheerleaders within football, “real football men” tell us that Mackay is rehabilitated. That he made a mistake and he deserves a second chance. To use Jonathan Liew’s superb post from last year, where you can substitute Malky Mackay for Jamie Vardy: “Yes, we all make mistakes. But my drunken mistakes tend to involve falling asleep on the night bus rather than racially abusing a stranger…You really have to feel for Vardy here. The only time he’s said something racist – in his entire life! – and it gets caught on camera. Talk about unlucky.” This idea that somehow he was rehabilitated because he took an FA equality and diversity course doesn’t ring true for me. Maybe it’s just me, but it hardly seems like punishment that befits his wrong doing.
Strangely this week it appears that large swathes of our fourth estate believe that the Scottish FA have a role in rehabilitating “good football men.” Forgive my cynicism, but I haven’t heard calls from many journalists over the past few years to reintegrate Hugh Dallas back into the Scottish game. Or other players that have made lesser “mistakes”. The idea that Mackay has been treated as pariah in football is nonsense. Pariahs tend not to be sitting in the corporate hospitality sections at Betfred League Cup finals.
Mackay hasn’t been excluded from football. He has allegedly turned down other positions in both Scotland and England since his 138 day stint at Wigan Athletic. If another club wants to take a chance on him, so be it. But the governing body with responsibility for promoting the game, and crucially equality and diversity? Absolutely not.
Whilst I have nothing but disdain for Mackay, it’s the Scottish FA that I have real anger towards.
How can they be so blind to this appointment? Are they that ignorant? Are they that inured to public opinion? To fans? To parents of children to which Mackay will ultimately be responsible?
For all the good work the Scottish FA has undertaken on social issues in recent years, it’s just been thrown in the bin. How are we as fans meant to respond to the Show Racism the Red Card action weekends when it’s clear that using racist language is no impediment to the upper echelons of Scottish football?
The Scottish FA are currently recruiting six independent advisors for their Equality & Diversity Advisory Board. I hope the appointment of Mackay is the first item of their next meeting.
Without wishing to sound melodramatic, I’m writing to Stewart Regan and Rod Petrie today to hear their side, even though they had ample opportunity to do so in the press release. It’s hard not to sound like a wishy-washy social justice warrior (and yes I do realise the irony of a middle class white man castigating other middle class white men) but we all have our breaking point and today might be mine.
This appointment could very well be a watershed moment in Scottish football. For years many people felt removed from the Scottish FA. A feeling that the organisation was being run for a small cabal of people within the game. Today, with this appointment, they no longer have that feeling. They know.
The moment the team at Hampden Park decided to offer Malky Mackay the role of Performance Director was the moment that the pretense was over.
And what’s worse: it’s been made entirely clear how little power fans have in Scottish football. There’s no recourse for us. We’re the lifeblood of the game when it comes to selling us tickets or marketing the game to sponsors but woe betide us having a say in the game.
The message from the Scottish FA is clear, and I don’t use this language lightly: fuck you if you’re from an ethnic minority. Having Malky Mackay as a Performance Director is more important than showing racism the red card. Fuck you if you’re Jewish. Having Malky Mackay as a Performance Director is more important than any sectarian initiative we’ve ever paid lip service to. Fuck you if you’re a woman. Having Malky Mackay as Performance Director is more important than bringing a diverse group of people into our game. Fuck you if you’re gay. Having Malky Mackay as Performance Director is more important than any amount of rainbow laces.
There was nothing in today’s appointment and news release that provides me with any hope.
Scottish football has been a great well of joy for me for the past twenty five years. It has been for others a lot longer. But I never thought I’d ever get to the stage I am today: ashamed of Scottish football.
Written by Duncan McKay