Steve Clarke on Scotland football’s youth development system and how it needs to change in order to progress.
Steve Clarke warns Scottish football must improve youth development
Scottish football must take a completely different approach to young development, according to Steve Clarke, or else it runs the risk of slipping farther behind the top countries in the globe.
Domestic issues are obscured by Clarke’s outstanding work with the national squad, which has led to Scotland qualifying for back-to-back European Championships and finishing first in the Nations League. There are concerning statistics about the dearth of domestic players in the Scottish Premiership, particularly those under 21. The situation in Croatia, who Scotland will host at Hampden Park on Friday night, stands in sharp contrast to this.
“At some stage, people have to sit down, a thinktank or whatever, and try something a bit different that we haven’t tried before to see if we can improve it,” said Clarke. “If we keep doing what we’re doing, it’s not going to get better.
“I’m Scotland head coach and in these camps I concentrate on trying to get the results and performances the Tartan Army want because they come and watch us. Going down into the youth level needs someone with a different skillset, or me to step away from this job and really think about it more deeply. But if we continue to do what we’re doing, we’ll always get what we get.
“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? Yes, 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.”
Clarke pointed to Croatia’s “conveyor belt” of talent as a model Scotland must try to emulate. “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,” he said. “And they show a pathway for the young players. There’s a lot we need to try to change if we want to get better. We can get to that level but we still have a lot of work to do.”