New report reveals why Scottish football is falling behind

The timing could not have been better. Andy Gould and Chris Docherty spent months putting together the case for giving young players a serious platform and everything they believe in was showcased in 90 wonderful minutes last Saturday night.
The two Scottish FA men were among the television audience as Barcelona opened their La Liga campaign with a starting team which included three 17-year-olds and a couple of veterans…aged 20. On their substitutes’ bench were another six players of 21 or under. In one of Spain’s most formidable venues, Valencia’s Mestalla Stadium, they won 2-1.
All the principles of strategy, youth development and bravery that Gould and Docherty believe in were laid bare. It was a world away from the reality they are trying to address in Scottish football, with its nervousness and preconceptions about giving young players a chance in the developmental goldilocks zone of 16-21 years old.
In the course of compiling the most comprehensive study ever done on the issue in Scotland, Gould — the SFA’s chief football officer — and Docherty — its head of men’s elite strategy — discovered the situation was even more alarming than they suspected.
In a calendar year of league football, only three Premiership clubs achieved more than 10 per cent of their total minutes being played by under-21 year-olds (take a bow Motherwell with 17.1, Dundee 13.4 and Hibs 13.4). Of the other big clubs Hearts managed only 5.8 per cent, Rangers 5.5, Aberdeen 2.7 and Celtic a lamentable 0.9. Only Livingston were lower with 0.1.
The average across the top flight was lower than comparable leagues like Denmark and Croatia, and this from a country which offered nothing at Euro 2024 with the second oldest squad at the tournament. “We were certainly aware that there wasn’t enough young Scottish players playing,” said Docherty. “We didn’t realise quite the extent of that until we started to get the data.”
More and more European nations bring young players through quickly while Scotland is resistant. Gould and Docherty’s “Report on the ‘Transition Phase’” is not the first attempt to recognise and address blockages in the pathway from academy to regular first team football, but it is the first to systematically undermine the traditional arguments and explanations the club chairmen, directors and managers give for maintaining the depressing status quo.
Gould and Docherty conducted interviews with figures across the Scottish game but it was existing global player data and their case studies which showed successful clubs across Europe had no detrimental effect from regularly playing some under-21 players.
Crucially, as they attempt to win hearts and minds among SPFL owners and directors, they found that foreign clubs which prioritised youth involvement lowered their wage bills and created valuable assets which improved annual transfer revenues. They were able to debunk the belief that the Premiership was unusually competitive, finding instead that comparably-sized countries with a higher percentage of automatic relegation places still had clubs giving a larger percentage of minutes to academy players.
“Barcelona is a brilliant example, a brilliant model,” said Gould as the report was circulated to clubs yesterday ahead of the SFA publishing it today. “The pressure at Barcelona is greater than any club in the Scottish ecosystem [yet] we had consistent messages from all through the [SPFL] 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.” Their data found that the Champions League and international tournaments feature more 16- and 17-year-olds than ever, including Barcelona’s Spanish poster boy of Euro 2024, Lamine Yamal.
“We’re seeing that happening at an earlier age now across European football, between the ages of 16 to 18,” said Gould. “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.
“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. [Here] there is 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.”
It is about clubs and coaches trusting talented young players and giving them the aggregated minutes in those crucial developmental years. Even breaking through under the top flight — as Andy Robertson did — can be crucial as long as a young player gets regular game time to develop. Robertson, Lewis Ferguson and Billy Gilmour made their senior debuts at 18 and were quickly playing consistently. Kieran Tierney did so from 17, Aaron Hickey from 16. Current teenage stars Lennon Miller and David Watson are playing regularly during the goldilocks zone too. But those are the exceptions. How many others never realised their potential because they did not get enough game time in the years which mattered most?
As for answers, the report makes a number of recommendations including the creation of a “co-operation system” which would see increased freedom of movement for young players between clubs outwith the transfer window. One benefit of that would be to allow a teenager who is regularly in one of the bigger clubs’ European matchday squads, without playing, to shuttle back to a loan club and still get weekend game time. Another recommendation is innovations to encourage playing young Scottish players in domestic cup ties, and the creation of a scholarship system to encourage 16-year-olds to stay in the SPFL rather than go to England.
The biggest issue is changing the collective mindset. Making Scottish football bolder. Steve Clarke, Brendan Rodgers, Philippe Clement, Steven Naismith and Derek McInnes were among the managers consulted during the process but the recommendations will stand or fall on how owners and chairmen respond as the findings work their way through the SFA’s Professional Game Board and the SPFL’s competitions working group.
Most Scottish clubs see TV deals, tickets and merchandising as the main ways to increase revenue; in comparable European leagues the focus is on developing young players to sell for increasingly lucrative sums.
“There are already things underway,” said Gould. “But at the very, very top end it is going to take that real cultural shift.”
• Young players to be able to move outside the transfer window• Loan shuttling for young players not playing for parent club• Increased youth player involvement in cup competitions• New scholarship system to help retain young players