Its been a long wait, and like his reaction time when Maradona skipped past him back in Mexico in 1986, it took him a while to realise, but clogger extraordinaire and Scotland deputy coach, Terry Butcher woke up this morning and cried:"That dago's taking the piss!"While the rest of the world and its mother laughed along with Diego after Wednesday's "Who is Butcher?" put-down, it wasn't until Saturday morning that Terry, not the sharpest tool in the box, finally worked out what had happened. " I wondered what the entire Scottish press corps was laughing at during the press conference. I now realise: they were laughing at me."
Terry, for whom the expression, "done up like a kipper" might have been invented, failed to realise before Scotland's mid-week game against Argentina that, in asked to comment on Maradona's perfectly fair "hand of God" tactic back in 1986, he was being invited by the Scottish press to perfom the difficult task of taking the piss out of himself without realising it.
Which he duly did.
A wiser head might've thought about it and replied "Mexico 1986 was a long time ago, I'm here to talk about Scotland."
But no.
Terry gave the Scottish media exactly what they were looking for and, happily for Burley, detracted attention away from a Scotland performance that graphically illustrated the playing chasm between us and, er, any team that can play fitba a bit.
From a manager's point of view, having your deputy make a tit of himself is a valuable short-term tactic, diverting scrutiny from your own short-comings, up to the point that is when critics recall just who it was that appointed Terry in the first place.
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