Craig Mulholland wasted no time tackling the major problem in Scottish football, the lack of young players who are coming through and establishing themselves in the senior game, after being appointed as the new SFA performance director back in May.
The former Rangers academy director and Nottingham Forest talent manager convened a meeting with representatives of every SPFL club in St Andrews earlier this month and outlined a series of radical proposals at the gathering.
He is hopeful the new rules will, if they are passed at the SFA AGM in October and the SPFL AGM in November, increase game time for promising kids significantly and help more exciting prospects to make it as professionals.
For Roddy McKenzie, the former Hearts, Livingston, Dunfermline and Queen of the South goalkeeper who has moved in to coaching since hanging up his gloves, Mulholland needs to take similar drastic action to address another crisis in the national game.
New Scotland manager Sebastien Pocognoli has called up Angus Gunn of San Jose Earthquakes, Scott Bain of Falkirk, Liam Kelly of Rangers and Jon McCracken of Bradford City for the Nations League matches against Slovenia, Switzerland and North Macedonia and would appear to be fairly well covered for keepers.
However, McKenzie is still concerned about the number of Scots who are playing in the specialist position and fearful for the future.
Read more:
- Hail Cesar? Why a no foreign manager rule has stopped Slovenia building on Euro 2024
- How Celtic's first ever striker helped to spark a football revolution in Slovenia
- Scotland icon on the 'complete package' No.9 who Sebastien Pocognoli has to start
He would like to see the SFA make sweeping changes to how goalkeeper coaches are educated and Premiership and Championship club shake up how they develop youngsters who have designs on becoming the next Craig Gordon in the years to come.
“Just one Scottish keeper [Bain] played in the Premiership on the opening weekend of the season,” he said. “It was exactly the same story at the weekend there. Sorry, but I think there's something that is just not right about the system we have for goalkeepers in this country.
“Craig Gordon, Allan McGregor and David Marshall all broke through at roughly the same time back in the early 2000s. But there has been nobody else really who has come behind them. There is nobody who you look at just now and say, ‘He's outstanding and is going to be the Scotland goalkeeper for years’.
“That is because hardly any Scottish goalkeepers are playing on a Saturday. They are all just sitting on the bench doing nothing. It is a real shame. You have to ask, ‘What are the reasons are they not playing? What has changed since Gordon, McGregor and Marshall all emerged?’
“I do feel the league structure up here doesn't suit a young goalkeeper. Having so few teams in each of the divisions creates enormous pressure on managers to get results. They are not going to take a chance on an inexperienced player when they can easily bring an experienced one in from down south or abroad.
“But it was the same story when Craig, Allan and David emerged. I do think this is something the SFA need to have a serious look at. They have to say, ‘What are we looking for in our best keepers? What do we need to do to get that? How are we going to bring it together?’. They have to map out what they are going to work on with kids at a young age.”
McKenzie continued, “I think they need to have another summit. They should get all of the goalkeeping coaches at Premiership and Championship clubs in Scotland around a table and say to them, ‘Okay, how can we make this work?’.
“They’ve proposed rules which they hope will get more under-21 players game time at all levels. Maybe they need to look at bringing in a rule which limits a Premiership club to having just one foreign keeper in their squad. Perhaps they should say the lower league clubs can only have Scottish keepers.
“People may say that is too extreme, but I think we've got to look completely outside of the box here because if we don't do something radical we're going to be in exactly the same position in five years' time saying, ‘We’ve got nobody coming through who can play in goals for Scotland’.
“Steve Clarke spoke about this a couple of seasons ago when he had to play Cieran Slicker in a friendly against Iceland and he was absolutely right. We have definitely got a problem. But we can't just acknowledge we've got a problem, we have to do something about it.
Read more:
- Ex-Rangers academy director reveals why Findlay Curtis made his Ibrox breakthrough
- Mark Walters on being a black icon, anti-immigration rhetoric and his Rangers DNA
- The doctor who did his PhD at Celtic on how more Scots kids can emulate Colby Donovan
“I think it's up to the people who are in charge of Scottish football to sit down and decide how they're going to fix it. They are probably going to have to make some tough decisions which people aren't going to like. But that is better than continuing the way we are and being left with no one to play for the national team.”
The former League Cup winner, whose First Choice Goalkeeping Coaching business works with keepers of all ages and both sexes, has been both disappointed and surprised at the lack of basic understanding about the position which the players he deals with often have and would start at revamping the courses which aspiring coaches go on.
“I am not having a pop at the SFA here, absolutely not,” he said. “But I do think they probably need to go back and have a long hard look at the goalkeeper coaching courses they are putting on.
“Having attended some of them over the years, I feel they are more about who can put on a good PowerPoint presentation than actually working with goalkeepers out on the grass. They are not hands on, they are not really about the player for me.
“It is all very well and good writing down a lot of technical terms, putting it up on a screen and saying, ‘This is what we are looking for’. Anybody can put on a drill. But what is important is being able to actually see things when you are physically working with a goalkeeper.
“It really annoys me when I work with goalkeepers who have been coached all of their lives and see they don’t have the simple basics that every goalkeeper should have. I have lost count the number of times I have to ask, ‘Has nobody ever told you this?’
“I do wonder what some goalkeeper coaches are doing sometimes. Are they just putting on a session? Are they just hitting shots? Or are they actually thinking, ‘What do I have to do here to make this player better?’."
McKenzie added, “A few months ago a keeper came to me and said, ‘I’m really struggling at cross balls’. We did a couple of drills and straight away I spotted he didn’t move his feet properly or take off on the correct foot. I pointed it out and it took about 90 seconds to fix. He replied, ‘That feels much better. Nobody’s ever told me that’. He was 28.
“I have worked with guys at a lower level who have had half a dozen simple things which are not right because they have never been coached correctly. You have to be good at hundreds of things to be a goalkeeper and it is not easy.
“During my era, goalkeepers didn’t get any specialist coaching before they went full-time. It came in more towards the end of my career and even then it was only one or two sessions a week. But now there are hundreds of them and kids from the age of six upwards get goalkeeping coaching.
“There are goalkeeper coaching courses. But some people go on them just to tick a box. They get a qualification, pick up a job and are able to put on sessions. But are they actually any good? I don’t think some of them know what being a goalkeeper is about because they have never been a goalkeeper or have never been coached by a really good goalkeeper.
Read more:
- Drafting in their saviour's son is savvy - but Celtic still need a smarter strategy
- Could a 'creepy' and 'chilling' technology end hooliganism in Scottish football?
- Scottish youth football clubs ignoring new PVG law and risking criminal prosecution
“When I was at Livingston my coach was Roy Baines, the former Hibs, Celtic and Morton player. He was very smart. Straight away, he looked at a couple of things I did and said, ‘That’s not the correct way to it’. But once he showed me it was immediately sorted. That is what a good coach can do for you.
“I think that changes have to be made in how goalkeepers are coached so that players have the basics. If somebody has a technical problem then the coach has to know how to fix it because ultimately that is what coaching is.
“Moving in to coaching has probably opened my eyes. I have watched a lot of pro-youth games and even there I see things which are not quite right. For me, that is why we haven't really produced any top class goalkeepers in the last 10 or 20 years. We should have brought a lot more through than we have.”
But there is hope. McKenzie is optimistic the SFA cooperation system – which allows Premiership and Championship clubs to recall Scotland-qualified players under the age of 21 who have been sent out on loan when their services are required – will help more young goalkeepers to make the successful transition from age-group sides in to first team football.
“When I was 20 I was sixth choice keeper at Hearts and I went on loan to Stenhousemuir,” he said. “Eamonn Bannon, my old team mate, was playing at Ochilview and they were looking for a goalie. It was the best thing that ever happened to me.
“When I went back to Hearts I was their second choice. I was behind Gilles Rousset and then Antti Niemi for about five or six years after that didn’t play a great deal before I moved on to Livingston. But I still had the benefit of playing the 40 odd games I got at Stenhousemuir when I did feature.
“I also had a spell in the juniors with Blanytre Vics after I stepped up from under-18 team. It was great because I was playing with ex-professionals who smashed you every week. They knew you were there on loan and they targeted you. I was just a young kid and it was an eye opener. But do you know what? I loved it.
“Blantyre had a centre-half called Harry Erwin who was a real junior stalwart. He taught me a lot about the proper old school game. Opposition teams would just put the ball on top of you to see how you got on. I can remember getting clattered in one game and Harry saying to me, ‘Welcome to real football!’
“So I definitely think the cooperation loans will help. I think they will be a great thing in fact. When you go in to the professional game there is money on the line and pressure to perform. Kids will gain experience of that.
“Clubs need to send kids out on loan to the lower leagues and then send them out on loan again to a higher division the following season. They have to create a pathway that works and get loads of guys out.”
Read more:
- The positive Sebastien Pocognoli record ahead of Scotland dugout debut
- SPFL confirm Aberdeen pyro & pitch invasion punishment as tickets vs Rangers cut
- How to watch Slovenia vs Scotland for free: TV channel, live stream & kick-off
But McKenzie has another interesting suggestion – he would like to see Premiership clubs forge partnerships with local boys’ clubs and send their academy goalkeepers to turn out for them so they can play more competitively and gain experience a more rough-and-tumble style of football.
“Game time is the biggest thing for young kids and they are not getting enough of it at the moment,” he said. “Sometimes boys are only getting half an hour with their academy side. If they have a link with a grassroots team they can go and play 90 minutes for them as well.
“It is a different type of football. It's a bit more in your face. Balls get thrown into the box, players get stuck in. That doesn’t happen as much in pro-youth football as it does in what I would call street football.
“I've watched loads of pro-youth games and many of them are of a very high standard. But they are not the same as the games you get when you go down to your local park. It is about trying to get that mix of technical and physical.
“At the moment, when kids get older and go in to the lower leagues on loan they're not used to that environment because they’ve never been involved in the ugly side of the game. Goalkeepers need to be ugly, they need to come out and smash in to people, they need to be the bad guys.”
Hearts goalkeeper Liam McFarlane, the 6ft 6in 21-year-old who Scotland took to the World Cup in the United States this summer as a training player, has had temporary spells at Brechin City, Montrose, Hamilton, East Fife and Alloa Athletic during the past five years and is currently on loan at Partick Thistle in the second tier.
McKenzie, like many others, has high hopes for the Scotland Under-21 internationalist. But he feels that he needs to get a chance both in the Premiership and with the national team sooner rather than later.
“Liam has got a lot of games under his belt at a young age which is just brilliant,” he said. “But at some point somebody is going to have to give him his opportunity in the top flight. That might not be at Hearts, it might be somewhere else. But he has to play at the highest level soon.
“Craig Gordon was the Scotland keeper by the time he was 21 or 22. I think we should be looking to get a young player like Liam into the national team as quickly as possible because at the moment there are not enough goalkeepers coming through and it could be a major issue in the years ahead.”
