Introducing Game Changer, a Herald Sport special investigation into repairing Scotland's national sport.
Having featured as a pull-out in last Saturday's (October 12) Herald newspaper, and now being rolled out online this week, join us for a dedicated series of in-depth and exclusive interviews, opinion pieces, Q&As and deep-dives into the shortcomings of the Scottish youth football system.
The system's inability to produce a reliable generation of players capable of competing at the highest level – underpinned by a reluctance to emulate the frameworks of some of Europe's most successful footballing nations – has had a devastating impact on the Scottish game at club and national level.
From the overarching impact of Brexit, to England's pivot in the youth player marketplace, FIFA's underwhelming compensation measures for youth starlets, the response to the SPFL's transition report, and a multitude of case studies, the Game Changer campaign asks: Why is the Scottish youth football system broken? And, crucially: What can be done to fix it?
Game Changer – a Herald investigation into fixing our national sport
Here is where we'll gather each Game Changer article in turn as they're published online – starting with Herald Sport Chief Football Writer Matthew Lindsay's comment piece on why clubs must think of the bigger picture when it comes to developing homegrown youth football.
Clubs must shelve self-interest and put Scottish football first for game to flourish
By Matthew Lindsay
Herald Sport's Chief Football Writer Matthew Lindsay kicks off the Game Changer series with an op-ed on the state of Scottish youth football, comparing it against some of Europe's most thriving nations while calling into question the self-serving conceit of our nation's biggest clubs.
Here's an excerpt: "Yet, for the Scottish game to flourish, for our clubs to produce their own talent, serve up entertaining fare for their fans and excel, not just make up numbers, in the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League every season, there has to be seismic change from grassroots level up.
"For Scotland to compete with larger rivals – or even just rivals who have long ago tackled the issues which were preventing their youngsters from fulfilling their dreams of becoming professional footballers - for a place in the knockout rounds of major tournaments there has to be an acceptance that how this country produces and promotes talent needs to overhauled and upgraded."
English clubs' Brexit brawn drain putting Scotland's academies at risk
By Matthew Lindsay
Herald Sport's Chief Football Writer, Matthew Lindsay, chats to Hamilton Academical manager, John Rankin; professor of business management at Leeds Business School, Dr Bill Gerrard; and the chief executive of the Association of Sport Directors, Dr Dan Parnell about the brawn drain in Scottish youth football catalysed by Brexit.
FIFA urged to act as Celtic and Rangers go from 'hunters to hunted'
By Matthew Lindsay
FIFA have been urged to increase training compensation for young players and regulate agents more closely amid concerns about the impact of Brexit on the Scottish game and growing fears that Premiership clubs could be forced to shut down their youth academies.
Read more here.
Former First Minister slams unfit SFA youth governance
By Graeme McGarry
The governance of youth football in Scotland is ‘not fit for purpose’ and the lack of ambition shown by the Scottish FA in developing young players is ‘insulting’, according to former First Minister, Henry McLeish.
In a wide-ranging interview on the ‘Improving Scottish Football’ podcast that has been shared with The Herald for inclusion in this series, McLeish criticised the absence of vision and aspiration on the part of the game’s governing bodies when it comes to nurturing talent in this country and suggested that an independent body taking responsibility for the governance of youth football may be required.
Read more here.
No regrets for Dire Mebude over swapping Rangers for Man City at 16
By Graeme McGarry
There will be those on the outside looking in, Dire Mebude knows, who will look at his decision to make the switch from Rangers to Manchester City at 16 and surmise – with a hefty dose of hindsight – that it was the wrong move for his career.
After all, in his three years with City, he failed to make a first team appearance, before departing for Belgian side KVV Westerlo last summer. Hardly a black mark against his name, mind you, when you consider the strikers ahead of him in the pecking order at the Etihad.
For his development though, might he have been better placed to stay at Rangers, and perhaps have clocked up far more experience of first team football at an earlier age than he ultimately did by moving south so young?
By Graeme McGarry
One of the many noteworthy findings from the Scottish FA’s transition report was the apparent busting of the myth that the Scottish Premiership was a uniquely pressurised environment, where the demand to win it made it difficult for Celtic and Rangers to blood youngsters, and the small size of the league brought enough jeopardy for just about everyone else to have the same effect.
By citing similarly sized leagues in comparably sized countries such as Denmark, and the stark difference between the playing time there for native youngsters under the age of 21 to here, the report looked to demonstrate that the number of teams in any one division should be no barrier to giving young players opportunities at first team level.
In theory, that seems a perfectly reasonable hypothesis. As someone who has been in a position of authority at one of Scotland’s biggest clubs, though, and who has been charged with balancing the need for immediate results with the desire to hone and develop young talent, Joe Savage found that in practice, throwing youngsters into such a febrile environment wasn’t so straightforward.
Docherty: Directors of football need more power, like Man Utd & Fergie
By Graeme McGarry
Why do clubs need a clear strategy? Why do they need a sporting director to oversee it? After all, look at Sir Alex Ferguson. He had all the power as manager of Manchester United, and he won the lot. He also developed some of the best players the English top flight has ever seen along the way.
If Chris Docherty had a pound for every conversation he has had along such lines, he might not have spent just about every waking minute over the past year or so trying to get to the root of one of Scottish football’s age-old problems – the transition period for players between the ages of 16 and 21.
Then again, such is his passion for the subject, perhaps he would.
Docherty, as the Scottish FA’s head of elite men’s strategy, was one of two main driving forces behind the governing body’s recent report into the issue along with chief football officer Andy Gould, and he has been encouraged by the initial feedback from both within the game and from without.
By Graeme McGarry
Courage in your convictions. Faith in your young players. No fear of the sack. Those are the key pillars of Stuart Kettlewell’s management philosophy, and the values that have allowed arguably the most exciting young talent in Scotland at this moment, Lennon Miller, to flourish.
Kettlewell isn’t about to lecture other managers about how they should approach their job, mind. Managing Motherwell comes with its own pressures, of course, but he recognises the environment is perhaps a little more forgiving than some others in this country.
He has a fanbase at Fir Park that revels in watching their own homegrown players coming into their team, and as a result, may be more understanding of their flaws in the early stages of their development. He also has a board who see the development of young talent as a non-negotiable aspect of his job description, and the future survival of their club.
By Matthew Lindsay
When pre-tournament predictions are being made by ex-players, managers, supporters and pundits ahead of European Championship and World Cup finals these days, it is not unusual for Denmark to receive a mention.
The Scandinavian nation may not, not yet anyway, be fancied as highly as the likes of Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain.
Still, they are, due to the abundance of gifted footballers their manager has at his disposal, always considered dark horses who are capable of upsetting more feted rivals and progressing far into the competition.
The country which failed to qualify for either Brazil 2014 or Euro 2016 and which plummeted to 51st place, an all-time low, in the FIFA World Rankings in 2017, has enjoyed a resurgence in fortunes the past seven years.
So how have Denmark, who have a population of just under six million, gone from being a national embarrassment to a major force in the global game during that time?
By Matthew Lindsay
AS a Scot who has played and coached in Norway for the past 20 years or so, Kevin Nicol was looking forward to the Conference League qualifiers between St Mirren and Brann and Kilmarnock and Tromso back in August.
Nicol was intrigued to see how two top flight clubs from his homeland would fare against rivals from the country which he has made his home in the third qualifying round.
What he witnessed in those double headers, though, troubled him greatly.
He was taken aback by both the lack of homegrown players in the St Mirren and Kilmarnock sides and the superior technical ability of Brann and Tromso teams packed full of young talent which they had developed in their own academies.
“I was actually shocked to see St Mirren’s starting line-up against Brann,” he said. “They only had two Scottish players [Marcus Fraser and Shaun Rooney] in the starting XI.
“But what really shocked me, without being disrespectful, is that they had all these players from League One, League Two and even non-league in England.
By Graeme McGarry
In light of the SFA's recent youth development pathway transition report, Herald Sport sat down with Andy Gould, the Scottish Football Association's chief football officer, as part of our Game Changer investigation into Scottish youth football.
Gould overseen the transition report, published earlier this year and designed to "examine, quantify and make recommendations to improve the development and progression of talented Scottish players in the key ‘transition’ stage of 16-21," as per the SFA's official website.
By Graeme McGarry
During his decades working in the field of athlete development, with many of those years spent in Scotland, Neil Gibson has long pondered the question of what goes into producing a top-level footballer. Or, more pertinently, what are the factors that would allow Scotland to produce more of them on a reliably consistent basis?
It is a question that the Scottish FA transition report attempted, in part, to answer. And one that most football fans have an opinion on. Gibson may now work in Sydney as the Project Director for the redevelopment of an Olympic legacy site, but he too read the report from afar with great interest.
And as someone who worked for Hearts for a decade between the academy and the first team, who was previously the Managing Director of Oriam, the National Performance Centre for Sport (and who was responsible for its delivery), who was the former Director of Sport Performance and Health at Heriot-Watt University and who for seven years, was the Head of Fitness at the Scottish FA and part of Gordon Strachan’s backroom team, he seems a smidgeon more qualified than most to offer his tuppence worth.
By Graeme McGarry
As a professor of exercise physiology, but also a volunteer coach at youth level and a battle-hardened Falkirk and Scotland follower, Chris Easton has long seen the potential for the passions of his working life and his spare time to come together for their mutual benefit.
During 12 years at the University of the West of Scotland, he developed partnerships – some informal, some formal - with clubs such as Glasgow City, St Mirren and Ayr United, where those teams would benefit from access to facilities they otherwise would be unable to afford as well as the expertise of their students, while the students would benefit from the exposure to the coalface of the industry.
Now with Heriot-Watt University, Easton was enthused to read recommendations in the Scottish FA’s transition report for clubs and universities to work more closely together to help plug the skills and facilities gaps that may exist, particularly in relation to academies, so that the conditions for the development of young players are as optimal as they can possibly be within the funding limitations that exist in the Scottish game.
By Matthew Lindsay
Losing to Luxembourgian minnows Progres Niederkorn in the first qualifying round of the Europa League back in 2017 very much spelled the beginning of the end for Rangers' then manager Pedro Caixinha.
The calamity-prone Portuguese coach, who famously stood in a bush outside the ground and argued with irate Bears in the wake of the humiliating 2-0 defeat to their part-time opponents, was sacked by the Ibrox club just four months later.
Being beaten by F91 Dudelange from the tiny football nation in the first qualifying round of the Champions League five years earlier had also underlined the need for seismic change at Red Bull Salzburg.
There was, though, more of a conceptual shift than a managerial one at the Austrian champions.
"Red Bull gives you wings," was the advertising slogan of the sports energy drink around that time and their billionaire businessman owner Dietrich Mateschitz was not afraid to ruffle a few feathers.
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