The point has been done to death about Celtic’s constant exodus of their academy players.
From Islam Feruz back in the day to modern examples like Ben Gannon-Doak, there seems to be a new talent leaving for England every year.
This is not exclusively happening to Celtic; it’s happening to Scottish football as a whole. Scotland internationals Billy Gilmour and James Wilson swapped Rangers and Hearts for Chelsea and Tottenham respectively, despite being involved with the first team at age 16.
With the league powerless to defend itself from the riches of the Premier League, some Celtic fans have called for the academy to be closed altogether – but as is often the case with Scotland, there are solutions already in place elsewhere.
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Celtic and Scotland’s solution to losing academy players
It’s not to say that the SFA haven’t tried to prevent the exodus. The introduction of B teams to the regional Lowland League was certainly a curveball, but it simply didn’t work.
More recently, we saw the invention of the Cooperation System, allowing teenagers to freely move on loan to clubs elsewhere in the pyramid outside of transfer windows.
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This is a good first step which has already seen a drastic increase in playing time for young players in the country, but other nations are going much further.
The Scottish Premiership is an outlier in Europe for not having any mandatory homegrown player rules. Back in August, Dundee United generated controversy by naming a starting XI without a single Scottish player.
The problem is not with Jim Goodwin for picking a team to win a game. The problem is that he is able to.
Scottish clubs are routinely outplayed by clubs from Belgium, Norway and Denmark, and there is a reason for this.
In Belgium, every matchday squad must include six nation-grown players. In Norway, full 25-man squad lists must include 16 nation-grown players.
The effect that these rules have had on youth development in these nations says everything.
Unlike the idea of enlarging the Scottish Premiership to 16 teams, this approach would directly impact playing time for academy players in Scotland, benefiting the Scotland National Team and incentivising young players to stay.
It would ensure that instead of receiving empty promises, the best academy graduates form every generation would immediately find themselves playing meaningful minutes at Premiership level.
Any Celtic fan will know that a player being recruited from abroad does not guarantee that they will improve the first-team squad.
In giving minutes to promising teenagers at an earlier stage, we’ll realise that there isn’t just ‘something in the water’ abroad, and that our own academies aren’t that bad after all.
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