Steve Clarke has warned Scottish football’s big-wigs to change the way we develop young players – or fall further behind the top nations.
The Scotland boss says we should learn from tonight’s Hampden opponents, Croatia, in terms of how they nurture talent. Clarke believes there aren’t enough kids being given a chance to play at first-team level in this country, which has a direct impact on him. He wants the game’s hierarchy to come up with a solution to the problem. Because he’s adamant that if we don’t, we’ll be left trailing the rest of Europe.
A recent SFA survey highlighted the dearth of talented youngsters in the Scottish Premiership. Damning stats emerged last week which showed that – apart from Motherwell – top flight clubs have given less than eight percent of first-team minutes to Under-21 players this season, with Celtic, Rangers and Aberdeen at zero. Ahead of the Nations League clash with Croatia, Clarke says that MUST change.
He said: “If we keep doing what we’re doing, it’s not going to get better. I’m Scotland’s head coach and I concentrate on trying to get results and performances for The Tartan Army because they come and watch us.
“Going down into the youth levels, it needs someone with a different skillset – or for me to step away from this job and really think about it more deeply. Because if we continue to do what we’re doing, we’ll always get what we get.
“We have to try and find a way but the change has to be driven from the top. They have to understand we need to change.I’m sure previous head coaches have said it before, going way back. Is there an understanding from the top? Yeah, I think there is but it needs a collective.
“It’s not just the people at the Scottish FA, it’s the people that are in charge at the clubs. Everybody has to sit down and try to work out a way that we can improve going forward.”
Croatia are renowned for developing their own talented kids, who rack up games in their own country before being sold on. They’ve produced Champions League winning superstars like Luka Modric, Mateo Kovacic and Josko Gvardiol in recent years – with the national side regularly reaching the latter stages in major tournaments.
Clarke insists we have to learn from them to move forward. He said: “They’ve set up a system, right from the young ages all the way through, and seem to have a conveyor belt of talent. They also have a lot of players with longevity at the top level, with over 100 caps or between 75 and 100.
“They’ve just got the balance right. They produce a lot of good young players and allow them to play a lot of games in their own country before they move out – which is a really good grounding and something we can maybe get better at here.
“They show a pathway for the young players. There’s a lot we need to try and change if we want to get better. We CAN get to that level but we still have a lot of work to do. At some stage, people have to sit down – a think tank or whatever – and try something a bit different that we haven’t tried before to see if we can improve it.”
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