Tartan talent
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Despite failing to qualify for Euro 2008, the Scottish football team gave some of its best performances in years during the qualifying games. Alan Pattullo, sports correspondent for The Scotsman, argues that losing Sky’s money in 2001 was a blessing in disguise – it allowed Scottish football to refocus on talent at home
Given the rather more sensible sums of money being spent in Scottish football these days – Rangers spent months haggling with Kilmarnock over a fee for Steven Naismith, and in August eventually coughed up £2m for a young, exciting talent – it is difficult to fathom what made the Ibrox club agree to pay Chelsea £12m for Tore Andre Flo, the Norwegian striker, seven years ago.Scottish football was going to hell in a handcart in the belief that Sky’s investment would go on for ever. It didn’t. Indeed, it lasted only until 2001, when Sky declined to pay what the SPL (Scottish Premier League) demanded for television rights. Scottish football appeared to have made it to the precipice. The first in line to tumble off this precipice were not Rangers and Celtic. Instead, mid-ranking teams such as Motherwell and Dundee, those who had sought to keep up with the lavish spending of the Old Firm, suffered.
It was the darkest hour before the dawn, something England might need to experience – perhaps are experiencing – before they can begin a process of recovery after a miserable Euro 2008 qualifying campaign. While it remains very much boom time in the English Premier League, in the SPL belts have been tightened for some time. Clubs have been forced to look to their own youth ranks. The realisation dawned that Scottish football had to get back to doing what it once did so successfully – nurturing their talent.
Pat Nevin, who was chief executive at Motherwell, told Talent Management Review, “We were forced into it, to a large extent, but it gave young players an opportunity [when the financial collapse came]. Three players we developed were recently in the Scotland team which beat France in Paris. We were already concentrating on youth before the crash came, but it quickened everything up. Every club, including Celtic and Rangers, were prepared to spend the time and effort to bring players through. It also made sense in the longer term. It is, after all, much cheaper to develop and nurture your own talent.”
The number of Scots playing in the English top flight withered alarmingly in the nineties, although a resurgence is now evident. Champions League weeks now regularly feature more Scottish players than English, with Celtic and Rangers prepared to rely on home-grown players. Perhaps the restoration of Scottish football is illustrated most vividly by the fact Sunderland recently paid Hearts £9m for Craig Gordon. He is a Scottish goalkeeper, a breed who, for so long, formed the butt of cruel jokes south of the border. Not any longer.
Money was invested not in exotic sounding players from France and Italy, but in youth academies and scouting systems. The SPL made an effort, too, and implemented a rule which meant clubs had to feature three players under the age of 21 in their matchday squad. Murray Park, the Rangers training facility opened in 2001, and Hearts followed suit with a training academy constructed in conjunction with Heriot-Watt University. Hibs will move to a new, 36-acre training ground in East Lothian in December, while Celtic opened the gates at their new sports academy on the outskirts of Glasgow in October.
The landscape, literally, has been altered. The nurturing of footballing talent is one core Scottish industry that has been put back into production.