Road To Rio: Kenny Miller reflects on the games and the Scottish media

Most of the fans don’t want Kenny Miller to start and want to see the new up and coming, young goalscoring sensation leading the line.

That’s the story for Miller right now for both club and country.

For Scotland, the fans want to see 22 year old Jordan Rhodes. For Vancouver Whitecaps, they want to see 22 year old Jamaican international Darren Mattocks.

Miller has been a loyal and valuable servant to Scotland, but at ten years the elder to both of these players, he is maybe looking at his best form being behind him and having to play a secondary role.

And it would seem that the Scottish media have been quick to pounce.

Miller has seen a lot of changes during his playing career, but one of the constants is the negative attitude the media have here. It always appears that they love nothing more than failure so they can go to town on the player(s) involved.

It must get wearing but you also get used to it.

Kenny spoke with AFTN after the recent qualifiers and the first thing we had to ask him was what he thought of the media’s coverage of the two draws:

“The Scottish press get something in their head. They’ve got different agendas to probably what the team have got.

“They’ve taken a negative spin on it. On Saturday they had a negative spin on it, and obviously rightly so on Tuesday night, because it was a poor performance and a poor result.”

So do the team, the media and the fans just need to get over it, move on and try and do better away from home to keep our qualification hopes alive?

“We’ve got to get over that.

“When you’ve been playing the game as long as I have, you don’t get too high about the highs and you don’t get too beat up about the lows. You’ve just got to pick yourself up and get on with it.

“That’s kind of where we stand with the national team just now, and that’s what we’ve got to do. We’ve got to pick ourselves up and get ready for the next double header next month.

“Personally, you’ve just got to get on with it. I’ve been knocked down many a time in my career and come back stronger.”

It’s not going to get much easier for Scotland or Miller, with the highly fancied Belgians coming up next month.

Belgium are clearly resurgent and many people tip them to win the group, helped by on-form Everton midfielder Marouane Fellaini and Eden Hazard from Chelsea.

“They’re a fantastic team . They’ve got a lot of high profile players, which we’ve seen one in particular really light up the Premiership in his first three games this season.

“When that game comes around, we’ll make sure that the manager has a set up and a way that hopefully we’ll get the right result.”

Wales are up before that and anything but a win will pretty much end Scotland’s already faltering qualification hopes. Then watch the media reaction!

Making the move to Canada and Major League Soccer, where the sport battles for column inches with the big four of American football, baseball, basketball and ice hockey, has meant that Miller isn’t under the same media scrutiny.

That must be nice:

“Well it’s that. Obviously, if you’re not doing well sometimes you deserve criticism.

“The way the Scottish press is, they are what they are.

“They’ve got a job to do and they choose to do it the way they do it and that’s the way we’ve just got to accept it.

“I’ve been well used to it over the last 12/13 years of my career, so it’s not going to start to affect me too much now.”

Despite the poor results and the negative press, Miller has no intention of stopping making the transatlantic journey to play for his country:

“Going away and playing for your country is always an honour. It’s something that I’ve always said I’ll enjoy doing.”

How long he’ll be a starter is now the big question. The one thing you can’t question is his commitment to his country.

Perhaps if there were a few more like him out there, putting their country ahead of their own issues, the national team wouldn’t be in quite the doldrums that it is right now.