When you look around European football, you can see that young players from their retrospective leagues are getting more of a chance to prove themselves in the first team. Why is this not happening in Scotland as much as anywhere else? Young players in Scotland looking to make a name for themselves are finding it extremely difficult to break though now.
Take a look at Holland, Spain, Portugal and now recently England. In Holland, Ajax are notorious for developing young players. Bringing them up through the ranks and eventually selling them on for mega money. In Portugal, Benfica and Porto are renound for the same scenario, as they find and develop talented players before selling them on. Spain on the other hand is even better, with Barcelona and Real Madrid developing superstars. Not only do they do this, they are also able to keep hold of them as they are two of the biggest clubs in the world.
In England, more and more young players are now pushing through and making a name for themselves. Arsenal in particular have a very good youth set up and they develop players very well. When it comes to a Cup competition though, it’s not just Arsenal who play numerous youth players. More or less every Premier League team will look to the youth team and play a few of them to give them experience and see what they are capable of. There are also teams down in the lower leagues with extremely good youth set ups, like Crewe. Is it a simple answer that Scottish team’s just think that their youth system isn’t good enough?
Although there are teams like Hibernian and Aberdeen who bring youth players into the mix quite a lot, the same cannot be said at Celtic. It’s the same situation at The Rangers. After forming the new club, The Rangers had the chance to rely on their youth players to get them back into the top flight of Scottish football, but instead they chose to sign a huge amount of old players instead. Excluding James Forrest, who was the last player Celtic looked to from the youth team and gave them a proper chance? Aiden McGeady? McGeady has been the best youth player out of the Celtic youth team over the past few years, with Celtic eventually selling him on for a fee of £10 million.
Tony Watt is another player who was brought into the mix by Celtic, and he scored that famous goal against Barcelona. But ever since then he struggled to even get on the bench at Celtic. Celtic this year have sent him out on loan for some experience instead of testing him out here. In my opinion, Tony Watt causes defences major problems, always looking to run, dribble and shoot. Celtic have the best youth team in Scotland without doubt. There are numerous players out on loan to clubs which is all fine and well. But will they eventually get a chance in the Celtic team? Looking at the history of loan deals, the answer to this would be no. Even in the League Cup or Scottish Cup over the past few years there hasn’t been much of a chance for any of the youngsters. The Celtic team changes, but it’s more fringe players than anything else. In the long term it’s not looking very good internationally. How do the national team get better? How does the co-efficient rise? How does Scotland qualify for any major final in the near future?
The appointment of Gordon Strachan as manager of the national team has helped in terms of the problems on the field, getting the team to perform at a much better level and they beat Croatia home and away in the World Cup qualifiers, which is a fantastic achievement. Croatia are ranked the 10th best team in the world, so beating them was brilliantly done. Strachan I believe is still trying to figure out what his best starting eleven would be, and has tested numerous players since his arrival. Anya is a player that excites me, and with his pace and trickery he is a handful to play against. We then have Mark Wotte, who was installed as the man to get the players improving all the time and noticing youth players. But how is it that Wotte does all of this? Can it be achieved even though most youth players aren’t even being tried and tested with their club team? Celtic in particular I think should be looking to play a youngster in every home game in the league. There’s no reason why Celtic can’t do this as one, there are plenty of players ready to step up, and two, the league is won before a ball is even kicked!