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By Chick Young BBC Scotland football pundit

E-mail your reaction to Football Talk

It's time we took a serious look at ourselves.

Once renowned and feared throughout the globe, Scottish football is a whimpering shadow of that bygone age.

Never was it more underlined than last week when we plummeted to an all-time low in the Fifa rankings, a short head in front of Andorra, Madagascar and Rockall.

We are a shambles at international level, big time, and I can only hope Berti Vogts is a registered miracle worker. I would be happier had I caught him experimenting with five loaves and a couple of fishes.

But he is hardly being helped or inspired at club level.

Livingston, for example. Their rise and rise has been a fairy story, but the latest instalment is Grimm reading for Scottish football.

Sure, the Lions of West Lothian are odds on to go through in the Uefa Cup after the 1-1 draw in their first ever European fixture, but count me out of the singing and dancing.

Livi could only draw in Liechtenstein

I mean, has our game really slumped to the stage where we should be content with a draw against a team from Liechenstein?

I mean, have you been there? It's about the size of the Beechgrove Garden.

I do find it very difficult to fire a salvo at Livvy because here is a club who dared to challenge the Old Firm and who have lit up the place.

But if we are supposed to be happy at the fact that our third best club can manage a draw in a country the size of a public park then the mighty haven't just fallen, we've crash landed.

And what of Aberdeen? Once they set Europe on fire and now they are quivering in their boots about a second leg in Moldova against a team who sound like 200 Scrabble points, Nistru Otaci.

What ever came out of Moldava that could claim a place in Europe's hall of fame? I'll bet your average fan couldn't pinpoint it on a map....and yet the noises coming out of Pittodrie would make you think they were heading off to play Real Madrid.

Except of course they used to BEAT Real Madrid.

Berti Vogts has a big job on his hands

This week Berti Vogts has his final rehearsal in a game against Denmark at Hampden before setting off on the European Championship campaign with an opening fixture against the Faroe Islands.

As the action unfolds in Glasgow I'm alongside Jimmy Sinclair of the SFA coaching staff in Torshavn watching the Faroes play Liechenstein in a friendly, a clash of the Euro titans if ever there was one.

Jimmy is spying on our first opponents and I am filiming a preview of what Berti's boys and the tartan army face in what claims to be a country but is in fact 45,000 fishermen clinging to a rock.

Once upon a time we could have laughed this fixture off and run sweeps on the number of goals we would rattle past a goalie in a sou' wester and an Aran knit sweater.

But times have changed and who out there would not settle now for a flukey 1-0 win with a deflected shot off Kevin Kyle's backside in the last seconds of time added on?

The Faroes is the land that time forgot and people there are so far out of touch they are fair looking forward to the seventies.

If only we were the same. Then we would have Baxter, Law and Johnstone strutting their stuff.

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