LIKE club managers the world over, Ronny Deila admits he would much rather that none of his players went away to represent their countries.
The Norwegian coach spends international breaks waiting anxiously to see if any of his charges suffer injuries which will rule them out of action with Celtic.
Yet, he will certainly not be urging his captain Scott Brown, or any of his team mates for that matter, to turn their backs on their respective national teams at any point in the near future.
It has been suggested that Brown is, due to the increasing demands being made on his body by both his club and country, contemplating his future with Scotland.
However, Deila is adamant the 30-year-old can continue to perform at a high level on the international stage in the forthcoming World Cup qualifying campaign and beyond - if he has the desire to do so.
“This is a decision he has to make about what he wants,” he said. “I will be supportive of him in whatever he wants to do. But for me he has shown, and his body has shown, that he is capable of playing a lot of games.
“When the players are getting older this is a very, very tough club to be in because of the amount of games. So that is something he has to feel - what his body can handle and also about the motivation. Those are the two things there.
“I haven’t talked to him about it. I wouldn’t pressurise him on anything. He is an adult and he has to find out what he wants himself. I will be one he can talk to him about it. We will see what is happening.
“If I could choose I wish everyone could stop playing for their national teams. Of course, that’s the best for Celtic. But we have also a responsibility for the national teams and we should also be very lucky that we have a lot of national team players.”
Meanwhile, Deila has urged the coaches of Scotland’s age-group teams to put performances ahead of results in a bid to end the senior side’s absence from the finals of a major tournament in the future.
The failure of Gordon Strachan’s team to secure a place in Euro 2016 in France next summer means the national team has now failed to successfully negotiate its last nine qualifying campaigns.
The Celtic manager believes Scotland should follow the lead of representative sides in his native Norway, who have made it through to the Euro 2016 play-offs, and other European countries.
“You have to dare to lose to get good,” he said. “There’s a lot of pressure in this country on results. When everyone is doing the safe things all the time you can win short-term, but you’ll never win long-term.
“I see counties like Switzerland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland and they really give opportunities to young boys, they develop them and give them the chance to get experience and develop.
“With the under-21s, Norway has done this for many years now. They were so bad for a period, but suddenly now they are coming because we also changed our way of playing and were much more wanting to create.
“If you lose you lose, but you want to win in the way you want to play. Then you develop more skills and that is the most important thing, to develop good, young football players, then give them a chance and let them play football.
“If it’s been too tactical and if you’re too afraid to lose then you’ll never develop the full potential of the player.
“So that’s the way I did it in Stromsgodset. We lost a lot, but I knew we would progress all the time and in the end we had a lot of national team players and people going abroad. If Martin Odegaard (the 16-year-old Real Madrid player) wasn’t given the opportunity to play free then we’d never get this talent."
Deila added: “It’s a lot about results here. Results are very important, but I can win one game, short-term, by just being very tactical and thinking this is important. But if you’re thinking long-term you play the same way you maybe will lose, but you’ll learn something from the game.
"So I think that is the way to develop your team and players. That is also a very difficult thing here when you have so many games and results. Pressure is here all the time, so you do the safe things all the time and it’s hard to be creative and do new things and develop as a player.
“The senior team is the one team that has to be all about results. It’s a bit different for them. But when you play under 15-21, it doesn’t matter if they lose. It’s the same here at Celtic. We want them to win but we want them to win our way.
“If you try to win tactically by closing down opposition to stay close then they have no chance. It’s all about the system and they are not using games to develop their skills. You will get results in the end.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel