Soccer NewsBerti Vogts found a few friends yesterday when Celtic manager Martin O'Neill and the former Rangers boss Graeme Souness defended the Scotland coach.
The German is widely tipped to leave his high-profile position at Hampden Park next week. A 1-1 draw in Moldova on Wednesday is the latest in a string of poor results in his two-and-a-half-year tenure as Scotland coach.
An emergency board meeting of the Scottish Football Association is expected to meet on Monday to discuss Vogts's future.
But O'Neill is one of a growing number of managers who believe he has been harshly treated.
"I see there's a massive demand for Berti to go," he said. "It's interesting that he is to blame for the demise of the Scottish game, which is a good one.
"I was speaking to John Robertson, who was a top-class player, and he played with a number of top-class players like Kenny Dalglish, Graeme Souness and Alan Hansen. You could go through the team and they were great players, but at international level they never won anything.
"It seems strange that Berti is copping for it, big time. The current situation has been obvious for quite some time."
Souness claimed Vogts's current squad is particularly poor.
"This is the least-talented group of players that any Scotland manager has had to work with since football was invented," the Newcastle United manager said yesterday. "I don't think anyone thinks that Scotland have the quality now that they have had in their history."
The SFA will make no decision on the future of Vogts until the president, John McBeth, returns to Hampden. McBeth has been away on other business, delaying any decision on the matter.
Vogts is also absent. An SFA spokesman said: "Berti is out of the office on a day off. He has not been told to stay away and he is due back in the office next week."
The former Wales manager Mark Hughes also added his support for Vogts. The Blackburn Rovers manager was in charge of a Wales side that beat Vogts's Scotland team 4-0 in February.
"People think international managers cannot see the limitations of their own side," he said. "(Vogts) is a very fine footballing man, he knows the limitations he has in his squad but he is not in a position to do something about it.
"People just need to step back and understand how difficult being an international manager is. (They) are very quick to criticise the efforts of others rather than say how they would do it. They just need to step back and understand the difficulties."
Vogts's contract runs until the 2006 World Cup finals. Gordon Strachan and Walter Smith have been touted as replacements. Both are currently out of work.
Strachan has been out of management since leaving Southampton in February, while the former Rangers manager Smith left Manchester United in the summer after a brief stint as Alex Ferguson's assistant.
