Saudi Arabia manager Roberto Mancini raised the point this week about the amount of foreign players piling their trade in their domestic league - and just how much it's actually stifling the development of home-grown stars and his own international selections.
The rise of the Saudi Pro League has been well-documented, with Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema and Sadio Mane among the high-profile star's to make the move to the Middle-East over the past few years.
The influx of talent has had a knock-on effect both positively and negatively to the oil-rich country since there's been more media spotlight on the teams and the league, coupled with huge sponsorship deals.
Sadly, it's been a detriment on the regular playing time for Saudi nationals though, with the former Manchester City title-winner suggesting almost half of his pool of players aren't currently getting regular game time at club level.
Speaking ahead of Saudi's World Cup qualifier against Japan, Mancini said: "I've said this many times. The only problem that we have is three years ago all the Saudi players played every [club] game.
"Today, 50, 60 per cent don't play in the games. This is the problem that we have."
That's something that Scotland boss Steve Clarke could probably relate to, with an array of injuries and withdrawals prior to the UEFA Nations League double-header versus Croatia and Portugal leading him to hand maiden call-ups to several players - who otherwise probably wouldn't usually get a look-in at such level.
Aberdeen's Nicky Devlin and Jack MacKenzie, Preston North End's Liam Lindsay, and Andy Irving from West Ham United have all been included in his latest squad for the first time.
Regular No.1 goalkeeper Angus Gunn pulled out after sustaining a knock and the lack of ready-made replacements regularly getting game time is a cause for concern.
Craig Gordon is 41, and at Hearts who are bottom of the league. Jon McCracken hasn't exactly covered himself in glory in recent weeks for Dundee. While Robby McCrorie, Liam Kelly and Zander Clark are all sitting on the bench at their club's.
Read more:
-
Devlin on 'surreal' first Scotland call-up & flawless Aberdeen
-
'Very talented': West Ham's Andy Irving deserves Scotland recognition
The CIES football observatory actually states that 57.4 per cent of the minutes that go to Scottish Premiership players are, on average, played by "footballers who grew up in a different association than the one they currently play in."
Scotland do, of course, now have men playing overseas. Scott McTominay, Che Adams, and Billy Gilmour all earned transfers to Serie A this summer - albeit all signing from English Premier League teams. Scott McKenna and Oli McBurnie are also at Las Palmas in La Liga.
That leaves you thinking, how does the Scottish Premiership raise the standard while incorporating a strong number of Scottish natives into a first team environment, with a clear pathway into the national team?
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel