Shocking lack of minutes for young Scots laid bare in report

Except, according to a new wide-ranging report commissioned by the Scottish FA’s Professional Game Board, it is not really any of these things at all. In the main, it is a lack of opportunity.

“I think obviously we have shown that there are a number of myths within that,” said Andy Gould, the SFA’s chief football officer.

And how. The study, entitled ‘Report on the transition phase’, lays bare in some shocking detail not only how difficult it is for Scottish youngsters to get minutes at first team level, but why many of the reasons traditionally given for relying on older professionals don’t actually pass the smell test.

For example, across the first 33 SPFL Premiership matches last season, Rangers had a Scottish under-21 player on the park for an astonishingly low total of just 26 minutes, while Celtic had one on the field for just 89 minutes tallied up across all 33 of those games.

And yet, what the study found was that there is no evidence to support the theory that any club would be less successful if they instead trusted younger players. On the contrary, the trends point to the clubs who consistently over-achieve against their budget being the ones who have ‘made the academy and the transition of young players to professional football a central point of their strategy’.

If it is not only the comparable leagues around Europe who are outperforming Scottish football when it comes to giving minutes to young players, but across the top five leagues on the continent too where the overall standard is far higher than in Scotland, then it suggests the main cultural issues facing the game here are not societal ones per se, but those within our boardrooms.

“I think it's clear to see that the strategic element of clubs taking a real intentional approach to player development and youth development is one of the things that can really make a difference, and elevate a club beyond other clubs in terms of trying to create that competitive advantage,” Gould said.

“A lot of the data and insight you'll see within that shows that the clubs that are outperforming on a European stage are the clubs that are committing very much to a long-term, well-established, well-resourced academy player development system that transitions players into those first teams.

“We're seeing that happening at an earlier age now across European football, between the ages of 16 to 18. We can refer to that in the report as a ‘golden age’ that we think is really, really critical and that's clearly not something that we're seeing in the Scottish context. In fact, we're seeing the opposite of that.

“So, that's the real worry and the real concern for us against the backdrop of European Champions League, top clubs in Europe using that model, using that approach and converting those young players into their first team to help them from a competitive point of view.

“I think fundamentally for us, what it highlighted then was the gap that we have in our game from the ages of 16 to 21 in terms of giving those minutes and giving those opportunities to young players.

“I think another thing that's probably worth highlighting is there's probably a myth that playing young players has a detrimental effect on the team. I think we've shown that that doesn't necessarily need to be the case.

“When you have a well-developed system, well-resourced system, then those young players will have a positive effect on the team.

"So, there was probably a degree of, ‘well if you play young players in two or three games that will have a risk that will result in an impact on the head coach and the tenure of the head coach’. Not the case, as we can see in a lot of clubs that really drive this model effectively forward well from that point of view.

“There's a real opportunity to educate and help clubs, help the system, the game in Scotland understand how best to develop talent, and what is the model that you can use to generate that.

“As an example, we've demonstrated that in Croatia and Denmark, who've got more competitive leagues, arguably - Denmark, for example, there's two up, two down in a division of the same size - but they're playing far more young players, [and giving] more minutes for young players.”

Chris Docherty, head of men’s elite strategy with the SFA, chimes in: “More than double the minutes.”

Chris Docherty (Image: SFA)

Docherty leaned on his own experiences working abroad as a sporting director as a starting point for the report, having been aware of a lack of playing time for Scottish prospects upon his return to his homeland in comparison to other European nations, but shocked by the extent of the issue when he dug into the data.

We have all wondered why Croatia, for example, where Docherty worked with Hajduk Split, have a smaller population than Scotland, but are regularly competing in the latter stages of major tournaments, and even got to the World Cup Final in 2018.

“We wanted to get a comparison and see the players who go on to have an elite level career, and by elite we mean really at the top end of the game,” Docherty said.

“What were they doing between the ages of 16 to 21, or in some cases like in Norway, they were making their debut in senior football at 14 and 15?

‘’When we started to look at all the trends, and then we started to look at the comparison, we've seen that it can't be the population size because these countries smaller than us are doing better at it.

“It can't be that there's a lack of resource and infrastructure because these countries have got much less infrastructure and training centres and everything than us, but they've got more players.

“It can't be the size of the league because Croatia's got a 10-team league, Denmark's got two automatic relegation [places], that can't be the factor as well.

"So, you start to go through that checklist, and it was something that happened organically, not setting out to do [bust those myths].

“It was a research project that then led us to the conclusion that ultimately, it probably comes down to, and what we do see in the countries and clubs that consistently do it well, they've got a strategic approach from the board level.

“The board level sets the agenda for what they want to do all the way through the club - playing principles, game model, etc - that run all the way through first team and academy, and that all being interlinked and the head coach being a part of that strategic approach rather than being the person that everything gets blamed on.”

Both Gould and Docherty are keen to stress though that the report itself isn’t an exercise in laying blame at the doors of the clubs for the wider failures in youth development in the country, but a chance for all stakeholders to learn from the report’s conclusions and work together to implement its suggested solutions.

They are also aware that woolly notions of the collective good aren’t likely to be enough to precipitate the sort of change in mindset and actions required, so what the report also spells out is that adopting a youth development-led strategy is beneficial in both a performance and – critically perhaps – a financial sense.

“Barcelona is a brilliant example, a brilliant model,” Gould said.

“And there's other examples in there as well, whether it be Real Sociedad, who have a real desire to develop players from within their catchment area, for example, and push them through into the first team.

“So, it can be done, it's shown it can be done, and also it shows that it doesn't have to have a detrimental impact on performance.

“Not just economically [is this approach beneficial], also performance. So that goes back to Barcelona. They had three 17-year-olds and two 20-year-olds started [in their opening La Liga match at the weekend against Valencia], so that was five under 21. On the bench they had six under 21s and two 22-year-olds playing, but they also won the game.

“The pressure at Barcelona is greater than any club in the Scottish ecosystem. We had consistent messages from all through the divisions, from first team managers or head coaches saying that the pressure on the job was one of the reasons why they can't play young players.

“This is about all stakeholders, critically at the very top end. We need to and we want to stimulate change and create change.

“Everybody has that passion for the game of Scotland, we all want to see young players coming through. Certainly, that's the feeling that we got back from everybody when we had this discussion [for the] report.

“Translating that into the change is the next step and the next thing that we want to do. There are already things underway but at the very, very top end it is going to take that real cultural shift.”

The poor performance of the Scotland national team at the European Championships may well be enough to capture the hearts and minds of the average fan and to get them behind the report’s recommendations, but selling that cultural shift at board level is another matter entirely.

The brass tacks of pounds and pence is usually the language that is most understood in such confines though, and it is here, likely, where one of the most compelling arguments for clubs to change their approach can be made.

Not only do clubs save money across the board by feeding more players from their academy into their first team instead of signing them from other clubs, but Scottish clubs are falling way behind other nations of similar standing when it comes to raking in returns from player trading.

As we squabble amongst ourselves about domestic issues such as TV deals and pat ourselves on the back about our match attendances per capita, the percentage of income that clubs from other countries are making from transfers has soared.

Between 2012 and 2023, Scottish clubs generated just £76m from the sale of domestic players in total, while Croatian clubs took in £236m over the same period. Even the likes of Serbia took in £136m, leading Gould to conclude that Scottish clubs are missing out on a potentially huge revenue stream.

He said: “The evidence shows it from a financial perspective, they are benefiting from reduced wage bills, they're also then player trading and they're bringing in large resources that they can reinvest back into the club, which in turn then allows them to do that far better going forward.

“So there's a real strategic approach, a real joined up approach within those models that allows them to catapult themselves forward over a period of time. And that involves everybody, whether it's the head coach, whether it's the sporting director, whether it's the board and the owners.

“There's a collective there that I think again, if we delve into the report, it was really fantastic for us to get the opportunity to speak to our head coaches, to speak to people at the sharp end of the game. And in many respects, I think it would be a welcome for clubs, for head coaches to have that strategic approach to support them.

“You know, a lot of them were crying out for that support and crying out for that help to enable them to kind of take the club forward. Maybe in some cases they felt that they were left alone to lead the whole strategy of the club when actually their role as head coach is to prepare a team, put the team on the pitch and get the results in the short term.

The likes of Lewis Ferguson have made careers for themselves abroad (Image: Getty)

“Put in place the right system, the right approach, invest in the right areas, then the benefits for the club of that player going into your team and having a positive impact upon the performance, and the potential player sales that we're missing out on… “The biggest area of growth from an income point of view for clubs is not in all those other areas, whether it's gate receipts or whether it's commercial - it's through player trading. And we're now actually seeing a big gap between us and counterparts across Europe.

“So, for us to start to capitalise on that by making sure that we do everything possible within the journey and the development of that player, influencing them at all stages, that's what's going to allow us to make the difference.”

All this being said, the report is not advocating that suddenly flooding first teams at the top level of the Scottish game is going to necessarily be something that will immediately benefit clubs, or even individual players themselves.

Rather, it is exposure to first team football relevant to the stage of a player’s development that is the key. Even in the lower leagues, Scotland is lagging far behind other nations when it comes to under-23 players having exposure to competitive matches.

To improve matters, the report suggests some innovative solutions, none more so than the introduction of a ‘co-operation system’, the likes of which Docherty encountered while working in Hungary and Croatia.

Co-operation and Scottish football may seem like rather odd bedfellows, but Docherty believes the model could be a solution to issues such as bigger clubs stockpiling young players simply to fulfil UEFA quotas on their bench in European matches, a situation that stunts their development by prohibiting them from going out on loan. Prospects that Gould refers to as ‘just in case’ players.

“It's a system which has already been established, it's been used for a number of years in some other countries,” Docherty said.

“Austria, for example, has been a country which has got one of the longest running histories of doing so. So, let's say for example Red Bull Salzburg, they don't have a B team which plays in the pyramid like in some other countries, but they've got Liefering, who's a co-operation club with them, a partnership club.

“And in Croatia they now have the co-operation system model, in Hungary we had a co-operation model. I worked in Hungary, and we had a co-operation team in the second division.

“So, basically within that model it allows players, similar to a loan, but it allows them to move back and forward between two clubs who don't play in the same division concurrently, to move back and forward outside the transfer window.

“And the benefits of that, above the loan, there's a few of them. Number one is, if you're a club which plays in European competition, you need to fulfil UEFA quotas by having players on the bench who are of a homegrown status.

“That means that you can't let your best young players [leave on loan], because you're only two, three injuries away from potentially needing one of them to go on the pitch. So, therefore you keep your best young players in-house because you might need them for the European games.

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“With the co-operation system, you could hypothetically go and play a senior game at the weekend, and then you could come back and be part of the matchday squad for European competition as well.

“Of course, if you're planning to be getting regular minutes, then you wouldn't need to be part of that, but for the players in between, those players would benefit.

“If you're a club which is not in European competition, let's say one of the other Scottish clubs, you don't tend to have a substantial budget where you can have a 23 or 25 player squad, and then also have a lot of young players who are in full-time contracts that you're building up underneath.

“Typically, within your 23-player squad, you might have four or five of those, or players come through from the academy. So, you're then hesitant to put them out on loan, because again, if you get four or five injuries, you need those players to be playing in your team.

“However, when you don't get those injuries, those players don't play in your team, so again we see an issue where sometimes the players that go out on loan are not the ones that the head coach or the club actually identify as the highest potential player, but they then overtake that player because they've got minutes playing senior football.

“There's a grey area, or a blind spot there, where a lot of our best young talents don't get any minutes, and over two or three years consistently, they don't develop and progress. So, there's two reasons why the co-operation system would help.

“The co-operation system will allow these players to go to those clubs down the pyramid in a more flexible way, they'll get more access to them. It will stop the issue of clubs demanding financial compensation if the player doesn't play because that doesn't work within the co-operation system.

“So, there's an agreement between the clubs. I think it can be a win-win for both the clubs down the pyramid, the clubs in the SPFL Premiership, and also our intention would be that clubs in the Championship could also put their players out.”

In theory, a by-product of such a system would be more players following the sort of pathway that the likes of an Andy Robertson or Lewis Ferguson did in their careers, gaining exposure at a lower level before testing themselves progressively on the way up the divisions, rather than following the path that many young Scottish players are currently taking, where they go to England at a young age without any exposure to first team football.

The truly exceptional young players at that stage, such as Billy Gilmour or Ben Doak, may well make it at the elite level eventually, but there will be many more who will not.

“I think that is a process,” Gould said.

“A lot of people talk about moving to that big club and taking that big move. Andy Robertson was one where he played at Queen's Park, then Dundee United, so you can see those aggregated minutes, he was being challenged and continued to develop. Then Hull, then Liverpool.

“The players that maybe take those bigger steps actually then find that they're going to get less opportunities. So that kind of strategic approach to player development then is really important for our clubs, for us to sell those ideas and concepts for them to see that, and for the player himself to see that pathway.

“We need to sell those situations, and those Lewis Ferguson models, just as much as the Billy Gilmour approaches.”

How do Scottish clubs stop English Premier League sides with bottomless pockets poaching their best emerging talents though for the relative pittance of training compensation?

Fifteen-year-old St Johnstone prospect Callan Hammill is the latest young Scottish player that looks to have been tempted south, with reports suggesting he will sign for Arsenal next summer once he turns 16, and it seems unlikely the McDiarmid Park faithful will see him in a blue jersey before then.

“There are then lots of things that we need to do to influence those players, to influence those individuals, to influence the culture, whether it's parent education, whether it's player education, coach education, all of those things are key points,” Gould said.

Callan Hammill in action (Image: SFA)

“The young players moving to England between 16 and 18 at this point, for example, there's a huge education piece there for us that traditionally players are thinking, that's the next step that I need to take, and that's where I need to go to develop my journey.

“The ECA report [European Club Association report, ‘Transition from Academy to First Team Football’, published in July] is really clear that that's not necessarily the right move for you to take at 16 to 18 years of age, a very, very tricky age and stage of a young player, of course.

“For some players that is the right move in the sport, for some people that is the right move to take to go abroad and to go into that different environment. But actually, for many, the majority of those players, we need to make sure that the system can retain those players but then continue to develop those players.

“So, those pieces of education are really critical for us to be able to make sure people have an awareness and an understanding of.”

Clubs also have to show these players that there is a plan for their development and a clear pathway to first team opportunities, in Docherty’s view, rather than young players relying on an injury crisis, for example, to get a crack in the first team. As has tended to be the case in the past.

“The Scottish players who are playing at the highest levels of the game, or the Scottish players who are at the highest level of the Scottish pool, it could be a circumstance which was more down to chance than down to strategy,” he said.

“That's the case for the vast majority of them.

“Now, if you've got the case that certain players are able to go on and play X amount of games for Scotland and go on and play at some of the elite clubs, and if circumstances wouldn't have worked out that they would have made their debut at a certain time in the first team environment, that player may never have had an elite career.

“How many more players are out there that they've just never been given an opportunity that could have also went on to have an elite career? And that's something which you can also see in the trends of success section of the report.

“Croatia has obviously had a longer period of developing this model of player trading, and it's been long understood there that the players should make the right step, not take too big a step at the right time.

“For example, if you look at the pathway of Luka Modric, he goes on loan to Bosnia when he's coming through as a young player, then he comes back and he goes on loan to Inter Zapresic, which was not a top team in the top division in Croatia, then he plays for Dinamo Zagreb, then he goes to Tottenham, who was not a top team at that time in England, then he goes to Real Madrid, and then of course the rest is history from there.

“But there's been other players from the Croatian pathway which I won't name who have made a big jump at a really young age, and they've not achieved the same level of success.

“The trends that we see are the player that makes a jump at 16-17 to one of the top European clubs, it’s very, very difficult for them. There are some players who will make it through, but the vast majority won't."

What now then if this report isn’t to have been in vain, and end up collecting dust on boardroom bookshelves next to Project Brave?

On strands such as the co-operation system, there are already understood to have been encouraging noises from the SPFL that the vote required to tweak league rules and allow its implementation would bring a favourable outcome.

Clubs received the full report today, and it will be published on Wednesday morning. Then, the work really begins to ensure this is a line in the sand moment, rather than one where the nation’s clubs collectively bury their heads in it once more.

“Importantly for us, I think this is something that we needed to make sure we did,” Gould added.

“A big body of work, an important body of work, that got into real depth and used evidence, used data, used insight and I think that was really clearly important for us.

“[It comes] against the backdrop that we've qualified for two European Championships, which is wonderful, but we want to do that on a consistent basis.

“Against the backdrop of a lot of young players going down to England, potentially too early, a very young age, and evidence that obviously suggests that there's an issue with players between 16 and 18 going down to England.

“Against the backdrop of a large number of foreign players coming into the country and creating a blockage to young players coming into the system and getting those opportunities.

“My role I think is to put down the facts, to show that there is challenges and issues, to agitate and make sure that there's a compelling case for change when there's a need for that change. And I guess that's where we are with regards to the report and what happens next on the back of that.

“But I think it's important that that need is demonstrated out in the public domain so that we can really have that discussion and have that debate and get clarity on what the challenges are and what the issues are, because that leads us to then being able to make sure that we make the right decisions as we move forward.”