How fortunate we have a national association, as trumpeted in a statement last month that blamed everyone from fans to pundits to managers for some numbskull putting a referee’s details online, that prides itself on dealing with inconvenient truths.There’s certainly no shortage of those banging about right now. After a third bout of stage fright from the national team at a major football event in five years, it’s clear the only progress being made these days under Steve Clarke is that the entire world — rather than just those on this continent unfortunate enough to catch us in the Euros — now scratches its head over how Scotland can possibly be so awful in big tournaments.The head coach is hardly likely to face the music, mind you. He is allowed to do what he wants. Flounce out of post-game TV interviews like some nursery child told he can’t have his Play-Doh at potty-time. Say he’s almost certain to leave after the World Cup before announcing he’s ‘50/50’ over staying, revealing he maybe fancies a club job and, suddenly, ending up with a new four-year deal before a ball in America has been kicked.Next thing will no doubt be disappearing into thin air. Just like in the aftermath of the total humiliation of Euro 2024.The odds are certainly long on Clarke offering any analysis of what went wrong in Group C to the thousands who forsook their right lung — or their ongoing credit score — to spend astronomical amounts on a three-game package that might put you off going to an international match ever again.And this is not about asking him to plead for forgiveness before presenting his guts on a silver salver for Rod Stewart, the few returning Tartan Army members not holed up at home with the DTs and that duck spotted waddling around Boston on the pre-game marches.It’s just about asking some questions. Hearts wouldn’t have used Lawrence Shankland up top on his own against Livingston, so why did Clarke think it would work against Brazil? SFA chief Mike Mulraney (right) has spent time with FIFA boss Gianni Infantino this weekWhere does playing two left-backs in that first-half mess against Morocco fit into developing a style of play?If Scott McTominay and John McGinn pull on the dark blue and look like pub players (copyright Roy Keane), where can the blame for that lie other than the manager?Perhaps the biggest question of all is: Where next? Where is the evidence we are learning anything?If Clarke won’t front up, that responsibility should fall to SFA president Mike Mulraney or his chief executive Ian Maxwell. And if two guys needed their feet held to the fire, it’s them.Clarke should have gone after Euro 2024. It was disgraceful.Instead, he was given a bumper new contract before the World Cup started and only reiterated the fact that he isn’t cut out for major- tournament football. This is where Mulraney has to be pulled up on practising what you preach.Before seeing us lose to Hungary in Stuttgart two years ago, the former Alloa chairman was unequivocal. ‘Qualifying can’t be enough for Scotland,’ he stated. ‘One part is the aspiration of the fans, the young fans, to realise we don’t just qualify now — that, hopefully, we go beyond that. That is really, really important.’Now, those words just feel really, really inconvenient. Much like being spotted sitting beside Gianni Infantino at the Morocco game and leading people to speculate that the reason he didn’t jump into the debate on outlandish ticket prices is because he is actually the chairperson of the FIFA finance committee.He certainly needs to be held to account over using the SFA’s finances to hand Clarke that new deal and locking the nation in to four more years of this.Scotland are almost guaranteed to reach Euro 2028 because of a reserved spot for one of the host nations. There is nothing to suggest we won’t be embarrassed again, though, unless the coaching staff changes. Questions ought to be asked over Clarke after a disman campaign in the World CupJoin the discussionWhat will it take to finally hold Scotland’s football leaders and manager accountable for repeated failures?What’s your view?What leaves Mulraney and Maxwell on a sticky wicket is that the SFA made a decision they didn’t have to make with Clarke. No one was coming for him.He suckered them into putting that deal on the table. In truth, it looks like he’s enjoyed the run of the place for years.It is an incredible situation for a national team reduced to the role of a laughing stock at successive major competitions to be in.Clarke simply doesn’t seem accountable to anyone. The only public conversation that exists over the job he’s doing involves telling the public they should applaud him like performing seals and be grateful.Perhaps Mulraney ought to turn to his SFA vice-president Andrew McKinlay for guidance. He gave Steven Naismith a new contract at Hearts just two months before booting him out the door. Mind you, he also helped make Neil Critchley head coach without ever meeting him face-to-face.McKinlay, of course, jacked in a job at the SFA to become chief executive of Scottish Golf in 2018 and admitted that ‘when it came to 3pm on a Saturday, I didn’t feel I wanted to watch a game of football.’Thanks to the SFA still being run like a bowling club, he’s the guy in line to take over the train set when Mulraney’s time is up.Discussing the legacy he wants to present to his successor, Mulraney talks about facilities and millions have been raised from the UK government and others to improve them.Meanwhile, Maxwell, another to benefit from being on a FIFA committee, said on a podcast recently that the one thing he wants to remembered for is the association’s social projects.This is all very worthy. It is also dull, a bit of a cop-out and of negligible interest to Joe Public. You already sense there is a desire in some quarters to move the World Cup post-mortem onto grassroots issues, but that should not be permitted. Not yet.What are Maxwell, Mulraney and Co doing to raise standards at elite level right now? Mulraney has spent 13 years in Scottish football’s corridors of power as a director at the SPFL and SFA.Maxwell has had a decade, including an eight-year spell as SFA chief executive, which started with him having to deny he’d been installed as a place man amid behind-doors politicking. Where’s their vision, ambition and strategy for the top-end of the game?Maxwell chooses to deflect attention onto police involvement and ‘a hysterical media background’ when faced with a refereeing department which is underperforming badly and a global audience aghast at the VAR-related chaos that scarred last term. Shankland led the attack against Brazil but was found wanting against superior oppositionScotland’s Under-21 team withers on the vine, with Scot Gemmill now a decade at the helm. Maxwell was chief exec when Shelley Kerr was inexplicably allowed to continue — and fail — as head coach of the Scotland women’s team after the messy aftermath of the 2019 World Cup. It’s been downhill all the way at that level since.It has been conceded Performance Schools don’t work. Cooperation agreements between clubs now exist to try to develop young talent, but it’s all a bit meh. There’s nothing radical or energising out there.Even the appointment of Craig Mulholland as the SFA’s new chief football officer just feeds into that sense of predictability. He’s an SFA old boy. He did run the Rangers academy for a while, but that’s hardly been a conveyor belt of emerging talent.Maybe Mulraney or someone will come out to offer the post-mortem that never arrived after Euro 2024. Don’t put the kettle on for it, though.His insistence back then that qualifying was no longer good enough has never been referred to since. Instead, we’re back to the likes of Clarke stating punters should thank his players in the wake of abject failure simply for getting them to the States.We stink out these tournaments routinely now and are told from those at the top to accept it.We reward the manager despite failure. We accept and defend mediocrity. It’s an environment in which there is limited incentive to be anything other than perennial losers, which is exactly what we are.That’s not just an inconvenient truth. It’s an unacceptable one.McInnes must be eyeing shambolic Celts with relishDerek McInnes came within an ace — or, rather, a denied stonewaller at Fir Park — of taking the title off Celtic as Hearts manager and must be bolstered by what he’s witnessing across the city of Glasgow since taking over at Rangers.Despite all the talk of learning from the mistakes they made last season, there’s little evidence of the defending champions getting their act together and becoming a reinvigorated operation ahead of the new campaign.Martin O’Neill has somehow ended up back in charge. God knows why it took so long to hammer out agreements with Shaun Maloney and Mark Fotheringham to remain as his coaching team. The squad needs completely overhauled, but there remains no sign of any imminent arrivals.Sure, there’s a while to go yet until the action gets under way, but the degree of work required at Parkhead is so great that you would have expected the board to snap out of its usual glacial pace of operating.There remains no replacement for Paul Tisdale, who left his role as head of football operations in early January. Brian Wilson is still operating as the interim chairman. The same old faces sit beside him on the board.What’s more, the fanbase is beginning to rumble again in the wake of the uneasy truce that helped see the team over the line in the dramatic, controversial conclusion to last term.The Celtic Fans’ Collective may not be everyone’s cup of lapsang souchong, but, with good reason, they have taken to repeating promises made by those at the top of the club and highlighting the fact that nothing has been done about them. McInnes will be eyeing revenge against Celtic as Rangers managerWilson vowed there was work going on to refresh the board in April. He talked about greater engagement with supporters. Instigating a big summer of change was, he stated, ‘an absolute commitment’. Lesser-spotted CEO Michael Nicholson promised better communications and improvements to the stadium. Ross Desmond, son of top banana Dermot, said work at Parkhead would go hand-in-hand with work on recruitment, data analytics and facilities.Yet, for now anyway, the tumbleweed continues to roll on down The Celtic Way. The only hot news really revolves around players moving out, with £25million-rated Arne Engels attracting fresh attention and Daizen Maeda’s form at the World Cup with Japan surely destined to attract a sizeable bid.McInnes will be hoping, too, that Nicolas Raskin and Thelo Aasgaard — two guys best shipped out — bring in some extra revenue through attracting suitors by getting starts in the finals with Belgium and Norway.The difference with him and O’Neill, however, is that things are already beginning to crystallise around him at Ibrox.Stig-Inge Bjornebye has been confirmed as performance director and will work with McInnes and technical director Dan Purdy on transfers.McInnes has tied up Ross McCrorie and looks close to securing a loan deal with Atalanta for one-time England defender Ben Godfrey.There are rumours rattling around about all sorts of other signing targets.McInnes was clear at his official unveiling that he is out to win the title as quickly as possible. It hardly needs said that the way last season played out — plus that final-day pitch invasion at Parkhead — will only fuel his desire for revenge, particularly if the SFA hand him a ban for hitting out at refereeing decisions.Yet, the sound of silence at Parkhead must register with him too. There’s a power of work to be done at Ibrox too.But McInnes is a man on a mission and with Celtic continuing to sit on their hands must offer all the encouragement he needs.