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.

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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.

What he would now like to press home is the message, backed up by the findings of a similar report carried out by the European Club Association into the transition phase this year, that without an over-arching strategy to develop players, clubs will not be able to consistently do so.

In fact, the ones who in fact consistently do so, have a structure far removed from the one that doggedly perseveres in Scotland – and just about in Scotland alone – where most of the power and responsibility for the direction of any one club lies in the dugout.

His exhaustive research into the subject means he can assert this with a degree of authority, and as a self-confessed ‘fanboy’ of Sir Alex, he also has an interesting take on his role at United. One that those who hold up his example to argue against a more European-style hierarchical football structure, may not realise they are actually advocating for by citing his success.

“Everything that Sir Alex Ferguson was doing at Manchester United, it is the definition of a top, top-level sporting director,” Docherty said. “This is when the manager model was actually the sporting director model. If you look at Matt Busby, he did it as a manager before Ferguson. Bill Shankly at Liverpool, how many players did he bring through? Jock Stein, he brought through the Lisbon Lions team.

“Alex Ferguson was the sporting director at United, that was exactly what he did. He was a long-term strategist, a planner. He signed the players at 13, 14, 15 for the academy, he knew the parents but he never took the training sessions on the pitch, he never got involved in the details of tactics and so on.

“The assistant managers in his model – Carlos Queiroz, Steve McClaren – they would all have been the head coaches if that was at Real Madrid.

“There’s evidence in the report where it’s been shown that the manager model doesn’t work, the model where you give the power to the first team manager on strategic decisions.

“I’m not talking about tactical decisions about how we shape up against the opponent or whether I should start this striker or that striker, those things are core for the coach.But if you’re going to develop young players, you need to have a strategic approach to it.

“In the report by the ECA, it said that was the most important factor they found in the correlation between clubs that consistently transition players from their academy to their first team, and those who don’t.

“So, you take the evidence of what we found in our game and what we found across Europe, and there’s a massive discrepancy there.”

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Docherty has engaged with clubs throughout the compilation of the report and beyond, and certainly doesn’t want to criticise anyone for their approach in the past.

But he hopes that by leading the horse to water, so to speak, and highlighting what the correlations are between strategy and success in this area, there will be the bravery from within boardrooms to follow the report’s findings and promptings.

“The report highlighted the extent of the problem,” he said.

“So, everybody knew from the get-go that Scottish football was behind in this area, even when we spoke to stakeholders at clubs and internally, but I think that there was a shock when we saw the level of discrepancy between ourselves and comparable countries.

“The first point was to highlight that. The second point, which was really important for me, is the trends in success.

“So, what are the patterns that we see in clubs and in players who have a successful experience in the transition phase? Because that essentially provides the blueprint that clubs, agents, parents and players themselves can copy if they then want to aspire to have a career at the highest level.

“The ECA report found that the biggest correlation between clubs across Europe successfully transitioning players from academy to first team consistently was having a strategic approach that runs throughout the club from top to bottom.

“Simultaneously, when we did our consultations, there was a large number of issues listed there which showed that a number of our clubs were really lacking in a strategic approach.

“The optimal structure of the club always depends on the priority of the club and also the profile of the person running the structure.

“The trend shows that there’s more chance for a player to come through the academy to the first team if there’s a structure which oversees, from board level, the first team and the academy, so that there’s an alignment throughout the club and process. It’s logical that that would be beneficial.

“For example, we got reports from people working within our Premiership clubs to say that the academy might train and play a completely different way than the first team and the first team manager might be looking for a different type of player than the academy’s producing.

“You can immediately see that it’s going to be difficult for that player to break through to that first team. But more than that, it’s also 10 years of the player’s journey, the parents driving them to training, the coaches who are working in Scotland for very low salaries at times, often part-time on top of a full-time job.

“They’re putting in a lot of energy and effort and there’s no end goal in that type of format.”


Ultimately, in Docherty’s view, informed by his research, clubs must identify what their ‘DNA’ is, and then allow that to lead their decision-making.

That DNA may be different from that of other clubs who successfully rear their own talent. Docherty cites the examples of the Red Bull clubs moulded in the vision of Ralf Rangnick’s philosophy, contrasting that with the more possession-based style of a Barcelona or an Ajax.

Being led by that DNA though, allows all of these clubs to successfully rear players who fit into their first teams, and are fit to grace it.

“The DNA, that’s about what do we represent and what represents us, and that will be unique to each club, to their history, to their community and so on,” he said, “Based on the DNA every other decision you make as a sporting director comes from that, and that then creates an alignment throughout the club.

“It’s not about the philosophy, there’s no right and wrong philosophy in football. Red Bull and Barcelona and Ajax, they don’t do things the same way and they’re all successful, but what the clear pattern is, is that they’ve got an identity of what they are and the people that they recruit within the organisation all fit to the alignment of that.

“They also would not allow an academy coach to come in and do what they want. None of the top academies in Europe that I’ve been to have been allowed to do that.

“In Scotland it is much more the norm that in most of our academies, coaches can have a lot of freedom in what they do, so there’s a lack of structure to the work.”

It seems then that the transition report – Docherty certainly hopes, anyway – will be a starting point for many of our clubs to identify that DNA, and revisit their strategy and their structure accordingly. They now have the blueprint, and he senses a desire to follow its lead.

“I think that there’s been a positive wave of enthusiasm, for sure,” he said.

“In Scottish football, I think it’s quite rare that anything is received warmly by the majority. So, I think that’s a positive. However, what really represents success is change.

“There are so many good people within our clubs who want to do their best for the game here as well as for their own clubs, it’s just about helping them along the way to recognise how best to achieve that.”