Craig Mulholland still clearly remembers the words spoken by an ambitious young striker by the name of Robbie Ure three years ago.
Academy director of Rangers Mulholland had just slapped a new contract down and was reaching for a pen. Aged 19, with no realistic prospect of playing first-team football, Ure pushed it away.
“I want to stay,” said the boyhood Rangers fan, “but I don’t believe I will get an opportunity here.” By his own admission, Mulholland’s reaction was a cocktail of anger, astonishment and a degree of admiration.
“Robbie's a great lad,” he says now. “He's very strong-willed in his own opinion, and he knocked back the contract. And I remember him saying to me that it was about opportunity.
“I asked him, ‘Did he believe in keeping to the pathway in the country that we had?’ And he didn't. When someone knocks back a contract, you get one emotion where you're going, "I'm a bit angry with this.”
“But on the other hand, it was part of this inside me saying, ‘fair play, kid…”
Moving to Anderlecht, Ure stayed put in Belgium for one season before leaving for Sweden to join IK Sirius.
After 15 goals in the first half of the season, the young Scot was the highest scorer in Europe and, earlier this month, Spanish giants Sevilla paid £5.5m up front, with a further £2million to come in add-ons. That money might easily have gone to Rangers instead.
Now the gamekeeper and not the poacher, Mulholland wants to ramp up the number of first team minutes played by young Scots under the age of 21. Joining the SFA from Nottingham Forest seven weeks ago, he was charged with giving the Robbie Ures of the future a decision to make. A reason to believe they can play first-team football in the SPFL.
The current figures don’t offer up much hope. At the start of 2016-17 approximately 53 per cent of the players who started the first round of Premiership fixtures were born in Scotland. At the start of this season that figure fell to 28 per cent. Look across Europe and only Turkey offers fewer minutes to homegrown talent under the age of 21 than here.
Unveiling a package of measures to address the situation, the Scottish FA wants to nail down a Scottish Football Elite Player Development Plan by the end of the year.
To that end, they will make £1million available to clubs to incentivise game time for youngsters. Two under-21 players will now start all Scottish Cup matches from next season, with one player on the pitch at all times. Provided clubs agree - and the early signs are promising - the same rule will apply in the Premier Sports Cup. In the Premiership, clubs will be asked to field under-21 players for an average of 60 minutes per game across the season.
Reluctant to describe the situation as a crisis for the national game, Mullholland knows that, unless something changes, Scotland’s national team will return to the barren years preceding Steve Clarke. The players will dry up.
“If we don't address this now, we are going to go back to a bit where we could be risking qualifying for tournaments and never making it to the group stages,” he said in stark terms. “I think we need to be.
“I get frustrated when I look at Club Brugge today because their presentation is so exciting. I get frustrated when I look at the Twenty First Group presentation because we should be one of those other nations that can go and achieve that.
“Maybe crisis is just too strong a word, but what I am saying is we need to act now, otherwise we could end up finding ourselves in a crisis at some point in the future.”
The final days of the transfer window showed the extent of the challenge ahead. Rangers signed a Venezuelan striker and an Algerian winger while Celtic signed two Dutchman, a Swiss, a Dane, an English keeper and two Chelsea teenagers. Dundee United signed an Iraqi midfielder.
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There was better news for new Scotland manager Sebastian Pocognoli when he watched young Hearts striker James Wilson strike his fourth goal in seven games against Hibernian. Josh McPake and Josh Mulligan of Hibs suggest that Scotland still produces good players. A lack of opportunity is the problem.
In 2013 under-21s in Scotland earned 80,845 first-team minutes in the SPFL. By last season that figure had slumped to 18,706. In 2013 Scotland also had more homegrown starters in the league than Norway. Once the land of Haaland and Odegaard introduced new regulations on locally trained players the tide turned. While the SPFL has just 16 regular starters under 21 now, Norway’s top flight boasts 75.
Plans to tackle the issue were put to clubs by Mulholland and the Scottish FA's Chief Executive Ian Maxwell at a conference held at the Old Course Hotel in St Andrews
The two men will now address the individual concerns of clubs in the coming weeks before the Scottish Cup measures are put to the vote at an SFA General Meeting next month. The SPFL measures are trickier to get through, but will go before clubs for a decision at the league AGM in November.
London-based data led football advisory consultancy Twenty First Group helped the SFA with the recruitment of manager Sebastian Pocognoli and, in a sobering presentation, made the case for clubs to act.
One surefire way to prick up the ears of owners and Chief Executives is to tell them how much money they could make if they did things differently, and TFG data shows that clubs are collectively missing out on an annual sum in excess of £40million compared to similar countries by failing to produce or play young talent.
In a presentation, Club Brugge Head of Recruitment and Sporting Director Guilian Preud’homme, son of legendary Belgian goalkeeper Michel, also told chairmen and CEOs that 55 per cent of the Belgian outfit’s turnover derives from player trading.
Motherwell have shown what clubs here can achieve if they put the effort in. The sales of Lennon Miller, Elijah Just, Theo Bair, Elliot Watt and Callum Ward raised a sum in the ballpark of £15million at a time when matchday and television revenues continue to flatline. The biggest growth potential for Scottish clubs lies in player trading.
Often portrayed as helpless victims of predatory English teams with deep pockets snapping up their best young players, the data paints a different picture.
English football currently gives 4.6 per cent of available first-team minutes to players under-21. In contrast, Scotland gives the same age group just 2.3 per cent. Those who stay put fare no better than the chicks who flee the nest.
Risk is often cited as the biggest reason for filling first teams with experienced journeymen and jobbers from England and overseas.
Data also shows that the risk of fielding young players is overstated. Those clubs that gave them first-team minutes fared no worse than those who went the other way.
There appears to be no more risk in playing a young player from the academy than there is in playing a new 25-year-old right-back from the Netherlands or Denmark.
Financially, the benefits far outweigh the costs. For every pound Scottish clubs put into their academy, they make a return on their investment 7p. In the Netherlands the figure is £4.94, Belgium makes £2.13, Denmark is £1.98 and Norway 56p. Switzerland - with a 12-team top league posing the same perceived risk to managers as Scotland - makes £1.21.
All of this paints a picture of cultural failure. An attitude to risk which really needs to change.
While managers and head coaches are usually blamed for their reluctance to give youth a chance in a 12-team league, caution and conservatism run through every level of the game.
From owners to sporting directors and supporters, there is a mental block impeding the progress of academy prospects. It’s a mentality strangely absent in the Netherlands or Denmark or Belgium or Norway.
Scotland is making a conscious choice to be the exception to the rule, and the SFA thinks it’s time that changed.
