It is a sign of Scotland’s predicament that introspection takes place before international fixtures. Legend may tell us the folly in writing off Scottish hopes at Wembley on Friday but the broader picture of talent decline seems impossible to ignore. For all Gordon Strachan’s errors, his core defence is straightforward: for some time Scotland have failed to produce top-level footballers.
As Strachan scrapes around for resources, others wonder how it has come to this. The days of Hughie Gallacher, Alex Young, Billy Bremner, Dave Mackay, Denis Law, Kenny Dalglish and scores of others making hay in England are long gone. Celtic kept hold of their reared talent and won a European Cup. For all Scotland is a small country, it once excelled in punching above its football weight.
Strachan now presides over a squad of relative also-rans. Scotland’s most expensive player, Oliver Burke, is among them but the country’s claim of influence in the development of the £13m RB Leipzig winger is tenuous.
“It is a government responsibility, not a football one,” the former Scotland manager Craig Brown says. “Twenty years ago, I went to Norway on a reconnaissance visit. At that time they had 12 indoor full-size pitches and every village had a half-size one paid for by the government. In Iceland, I think they have seven. In Scotland, now, we have four in a terrible climate. If you are a kid, are you going to go out and play in the weather we have?
“The government foolishly thinks football is wealthy. The Scandinavian countries give us a lesson. When the national lottery was instigated here, we were assured sport would benefit. I understand three times as much money goes to the arts as sport, so they don’t prioritise sport.”
Brown defends the position of those training Scottish players. “The coaches in Scotland are excellent,” he says. “That has been proven. A couple of years ago we had seven in the Premier League.” Yet his faith in those coaches is not unanimous. Neil Lennon, who kept a close eye on the biggest academy in Scotland when captain and manager of Celtic, feels the format has not justified itself.
“I don’t think the kids get enough football,” Lennon says. “I’ve seen boys in my time come to the academy, train two or three times a week where how much of the ball they see is dependent on the individual coaching session. Then they might travel three hours for a game on a Saturday and only play 15 minutes. If we go on about the 10,000 hours theory as an indicator of elite athletes and football players, we are not getting anywhere near that.
“A lot of ‘ordinary’ kids make up the numbers, which dilutes the quality. I think the quality ones will always come through but I’m not convinced the system works; I mean from eight, nine, 10. I’m not a big lover of coaching kids at that age. My boy is 10, I have been to watch him at boys’ clubs where they don’t see a ball for 20 minutes. That is 20 minutes of a session wasted where he could be shooting and passing.
“Sometimes we coach the natural instincts out of them. Where are the dribblers now? Where are the people who break the lines and take people on? We have become a nation of nice little passers. It has become about the 10-yard pass in front of teams, keeping possession. They don’t take chances.”
At Hearts the innovative Box Soccer scheme as devised by the current Newcastle United first-team coach Ian Cathro has been implemented for the youngest academy age groups. The concept involves an abundance of technique-based drills, with players expected to touch the ball between 800 and 1,000 times within an hour. Craig Levein, the Edinburgh club’s director of football and a former Scotland manager, is a firm advocate of the concept.
“There was definitely a laziness that crept in where kids didn’t practise nearly as much as they used to,” he says. “Any successful Scotland international of the past used to talk about how much they played football with their mates and practised. It is simplistic but when a golfer goes on to the driving range and hits 10,000 balls, that’s practice.”
Levein alludes to Scottish players’ lack of physicality as being to their detriment when it comes to playing in what was once the natural environment of England’s top flight. “I still don’t think we had a lot of athletes in those days,” he says. “Their main attribute wasn’t athleticism, it was more about skill. The Premier League now is a different animal altogether.
“The ones who go to England are only really successful if they have had 100 games and are established first-team players in Scotland because by then they are physically capable. The ones who go down at 16 I think get disappointed and dismayed at the challenges they have with the size of kids they play against. They get eaten alive. I think they have to learn the trade, play first-team football and go down there as experienced players to cope with the demands.”
To back up Levein’s point, only Darren Fletcher and Barry Bannan in the existing Scotland setup moved south as teenagers and blossomed.
A Scottish club that has proved recently appealing to Swansea City in particular with respect to young players is Falkirk. The latest to catch the eye there is the 17-year-old full-back Tony Gallacher.
“Swansea looked at their own 18-year-olds and felt they had nowhere near the experience of these lads,” says Falkirk’s manager, Peter Houston. “They see it as a no-brainer. They are not spending a lot of money for a Premier League club. I still think it is a cheap option, to come up here and get players who have played in a first team.”
Lennon is among those to point to a societal change. “We are more affluent now, probably a lot more middle class,” he says. “A lot of other sports have captured the imagination of the kids. Football doesn’t seem to be the priority any more. Football was never won on an iPad – it was out in the parks and streets. I walk around the west end of Glasgow and very rarely see kids out playing football.”
On Friday, naturally, a nation will look on in hope. A scratching of the surface reveals why that is far more legitimate than expectation.
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