Collins happy to hand goalscoring baton to Scotland's shooting star

It says much about Scotland’s lack of firepower over the past decade that Collins is the last player to achieve double figures. The man who earned 58 caps spread across his career at Hibernian, Celtic, AS Monaco and Everton managed to score 12 times for his country. McFadden netted his tenth in 28 appearances in the 6-0 rout of the Faeroe Isles and while some have predicted that ratio could lead to the Everton forward outstrip ping the joint record of 30, held by those luminaries Denis Law and Kenny Dalglish, the more obtainable goal is surpassing Collins.

Collins retired from international football on November 1999, after Scotland’s 1-0 win over England at Wembley in the second leg of the Euro 2000 play-off left them frustrated and sitting on the outside looking in on the finals. The Scots have not been to the finals of a leading tournament since the 1998 World Cup, when Collins was scoring the last of his goals in a Scotland shirt by converting a composed penalty against Brazil in a 2-1 defeat in the opening game in the Stade De France.

Collins never thought then that his total would be a milestone but as national fortunes dipped in the change-over between Craig Brown and Berti Vogts, the goals dried up. “It’s been a long time but we have not really had any consistency of selection until Walter Smith took over,” the man, who was wooed by Smith to Everton after France 98, said McFadden admitted yesterday that Collins was one of his childhood heroes when he watched Celtic before Collins made the move to Monaco that won him a French title and then a place in the last four of the Champions League before he returned to Britain. After Everton, the Scot played with Fulham in the Premiership before hanging up his boots at the age of 35.

Now he lives in Monaco with his family and has just acquired his Uefa licence after a summer spent at Warwick University in what he hopes is the first step towards a job in management. Yet Collins admits that you cannot teach what McFadden does.

“James has great self-belief,” Collins said yesterday. “He wants the ball all the time, even when his team is struggling, and he’s very off-the-cuff. Sometimes he can overdo his solo stuff, but when it comes off, it is a great weapon for a team to have. He’s also not afraid to shoot.

“It’s amazing but he has probably scored more goals for Scotland than Everton. That’s down to a few things like not being a regular at Goodison. He has spent a lot of time on the bench since he moved down from Motherwell. When he did play, he had a wider role than he does for Scotland and maybe he tended just to do the simple thing to make sure he was not making mistakes.

“It’s a big jump from the Premierleague to the Premiership. This season, though, he has started well with Everton even though he’s come off the bench. However, with Scotland, he is full of confidence. He is more psychologically equipped to go and destroy opponents when he plays for Scotland.

“Every time you pull that dark blue shirt, it feels great as a player. When I was on a good scoring run with Scotland, like in the qualifying campaign for Euro 96, or France 98, I had that belief going into games that I was going to score.

“The best part is when the national team get together and all the players are in a room going over the last game on video. If you’ve scored in the last fixture, you are sitting there waiting for your goals to come up and that gives you incredible self-belief to go out and do it keep the run going.

“It is important for any team to have goals supplied from midfield but especially in international football where your strikers are marked tightly and while McFadden is classed as a forward, he floats around off the front two, he does most of his damage from outside the box like he did on Saturday. He gives Scotland something that England have in Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard.”

Like McFadden, Collins also made his Scotland debut as a teenager — against Saudi Arabia in 1988 while still playing for Hibernian — and scored. Collins also netted against the Faeroes, this time in a 5-1 rout in 1994, part of his four goals that helped Scotland to qualify for the European Championship finals in 1996. He then contributed three in the 1998 World Cup qualification campaign. “We had Ally McCoist and Kevin Gallacher up front, who scored a lot of goals, but Craig Brown insisted that the midfield take a big responsibility to scoring too,” Collins said. “Gary McAllister and I used to take a lot of free-kicks and corners in training and we got our rewards when it came to the matches.

“McFadden symbolises the new confidence in the Scotland team. Now they believe they can get results, whereas three years ago they just hoped to get them. However, let’s not kid ourselves with just one result. Lithuania is a tough place to go and get a result. However, we have got off to a fantastic start. If we could get a result in Kaunas, we would be up and running.”

Collins is equally glad to see another of his former clubs, Hibernian, provide another eyecatching player to supplement Smith’s options. Scott Brown is in the Collins mould as an energetic and skilful midfield player and Collins increased his admiration of the Easter Road youngster as he watched Brown score a sublime goal nine days ago against Celtic.

“Scott likes to get forward and score goals,” Collins said. “He’s not afraid to shoot. In fact, I don’t think he’s afraid to do anything. If he keeps working, he has a real chance of becoming a top player.”

Taken from timesonline.co.uk