WHAT HAS SCOTLAND GOT TO OFFER ANGE?

WE’RE the best wee country in the whole wide world, so we are — for kidding ourselves that we can’t see what’s happening directly under our noses. I mean, with all those failing schools, failing hospitals, failing roads, failed bail-outs, boats that don’t sail and laptops promised to our kids presumably lost in the post, why wouldn’t you keep voting en masse for those responsible — all the way until the wheels fall off over one lie too many on membership numbers and heads start rolling like Mitre Mouldmasters tumbling out of the school gym cupboard?

Same goes for the national sport. There’s SFA chief executive Ian Maxwell this week, promoting events for his organisation’s 150th anniversary and insisting, with the straightest of straight faces, that ‘Scottish football is doing remarkably well’.

Someone wants to tell Japan coach Hajime Moriyasu or former Old Firm players James Sands and Giorgos Giakoumakis. They think it is pretty dismal. And happyclapping Hampden-style really isn’t much of a counter-argument.

Maxwell cited the men’s national team being in Nations League Group A as punching above their weight. It is good. Less good is the fact they have been to one major tournament in 25 years — and took stage fright at it.

He also believes the women’s team is progressing well after making it to the World Cup in France. That was nearly four years ago. They have failed to make it to two major finals since and are currently planning legal action against the SFA over what captain Rachel Corsie describes as ‘years of iniquity, disrespect and, in some cases abuse’. Peachy!

That’s before we’ve even got to no sponsor for the Scottish Cup, grim broadcasting deals, referees who still can’t get decisions correct even when they are allowed to watch them back on the telly again and again, and a league championship that has turned into a brain-numbing one-horse race.

A yen for the thoughts of Kyogo Furuhashi and Reo Hatate, too. The standard of that competition has been offered as the reason they are no longer involved with the Japanese national squad and must make them wonder about the worth of remaining within it for much longer.

Their manager Ange Postecoglou is surely the same. Stating this, of course, sends a certain section of the ‘Celtic Family’ into apoplexy.

It will surely be fun reading all those messages again about how there is a conspiracy to drive their head coach out of Scottish football involving everyone from the Orange Lodge to the SFA to the skin-shedding lizard illuminati to your average shameless Sevco apologist. Like me. Apparently.

The truth is that this is a compliment to Postecoglou. And to Celtic, in a way, for bringing him to these shores for two successful seasons in the wake of the clown show that was the campaign formerly known as ‘Ten-In-A-Row’.

The guy just has too much going for him to stay here. What else does Scottish football really have to offer him beyond this season?

He is nearly 58, he’s never had a really great payday, never had the chance to test himself in a top league and works in a game in which you have to jump while you’re hot or the moment passes.

Age, alone, makes him a man in a hurry. It is simple reality. Nothing controversial.

There is no question the club hierarchy will already be forming contingency plans. Supporters should thank him for everything he has given them in these past two years, accept the nature of the business and send him off with best wishes and rose petals in his path.

Yet, that’s not how it works. Seemingly sane Celtic punters continue to tell you they honestly can’t see why he’d leave, that he’s got it made at Parkhead, that another go at the Champions League is too big a pull.

That refuses to countenance another uncomfortable truth, though. Celtic are in no place to achieve anything in the rarefied atmosphere of the Champions League. That’s one ship in Nicola Sturgeon’s Scotland that definitely has sailed.

Draw a group like the one Rangers had — and suffer similar hammerings — and Ange’s hopes of trying his luck anywhere else could be sunk below the waterline. It’s a big gamble to take if something comes up in the interim.

Look, Postecoglou did hint last month that he wants to stay at Celtic and that people ‘will be surprised by how long’ he remains at the club. He is also smart enough, though, to remind those listening that things change quickly in professional football.

It is no coincidence his name appeared in the frame when vacancies opened up at Everton and Leeds earlier in the season.

There was genuine interest there. Postecoglou also has an agent of some influence at an agency of some influence. He wouldn’t be doing his job properly if he didn’t have his ear to the ground for opportunities.

Leeds might be looking for someone again in summer, having only given Javi Gracia a short-term deal. It was always unlikely Postecoglou would leave Glasgow mid-season — as he does feel a genuine debt to Celtic for giving him his long desired shot at European football.

However, going out on the back of a domestic treble, as will almost certainly be forthcoming, is a different kettle of fish.

Chances will come. Yes, Postecoglou’s record in UEFA competition may raise doubts.

He may suffer from the same perceptions that will leave Kyogo and Hatate, both excellent players, sitting in the house watching the international games on the box.

However, Frank Lampard being in contention for the England Under-21 job, having failed at Derby, Chelsea and Everton, suggests the pool of talent on the managerial merry-go-round down south isn’t as big as you might believe and that you don’t need the CV of Carlo Ancelotti to get on it.

Like it or lump it, Postecoglou showed real signs earlier this term of coming close to reaching his limit in the SPFL. VAR bugged him. The media bugged him. Other managers bugged him. Even if those irritants are no longer such an issue, the football is. And always will be.

Sands had a go at it after returning to New York City FC from Ibrox. And it must have featured in conversations Postecoglou had with Giakoumakis before he headed Stateside to Atlanta United.

‘The competition there is not so good,’ stated the Greek, in a less-than-fond adieu. ‘There are two clubs and all the other clubs try to defend.’

This isn’t Postecoglou’s idea of football, but it is going to get worse and worse inside a league becoming less competitive all the time.

It’s no place for a man on the up. No place for a person of ambition. It feels like a Scottish Cup triumph at Hampden would be the natural time for an amicable parting, if that is at all possible.

You don’t always have to read the runes to sense the future. As witnessed in other spheres this week, you sometimes just have to step outside the stifling tribalism and look again — because the truth, more often than not, is staring you right in the face.