Celtic’s academy is back in the spotlight thanks to Zion Pullan.
The 15-year-old’s outrageous academy form has drawn attention beyond these shores, with Spain handing him an U15 call-up.
As a result, reports now say that Athletic Club are tracking Pullan due to his eligibility for their Basque-only policy, having been born in Tudela, Navarre.
This has led the conversation to the inevitable point of: how do Celtic stop losing their young players?
Academy players are leaving Celtic at an unprecedented rate…
Why Celtic’s academy continues to struggle
Celtic’s commercial revenue resembles that of Benfica or Ajax, but their academy doesn’t even come close to that level.
When an exceptional talent comes along for the Hoops, such as Karamoko Dembele, Ben Gannon-Doak or Islam Feruz in the past, they don’t have the body of successful academy graduates to look up to that a special prospect would at either of those clubs.
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An immense amount of publicity is given to players in this position. Fans are impatient for academy players to resemble heroes of the past, but the academy is producing them at a lower frequency than ever.
A luxury afforded to those academies in Lisbon and Amsterdam is that their B-teams compete in the third, sometimes second, tiers. This idea receives fierce opposition in a country with a footballing tradition as strong as Scotland’s, putting Celtic at a disadvantage
Recently, Scotland saw the introduction of the Cooperation System, allowing teenagers to freely move on loan to clubs elsewhere in the pyramid outside of transfer windows.
This has been a success, leading to a clear increase in the number of young players receiving senior minutes throughout the pyramid.
But other nations are going much further. The Scottish Premiership is an outlier in Europe for not having any mandatory homegrown player rules.
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.
Unless Scotland takes steps equally as hard-handed to increase meaningful minutes for young players, the league’s close proximity to the richest division in the world will cause the academy exoduses to continue.
Academy players are leaving Celtic at an unprecedented rate…
Martin O’Neill has urged Celtic to make room for young players
Speaking about the academy last week, interim boss Martin O’Neill said he would like the club to make room for more young players.
He said: “You know, players are out all over the place and I want, believe it or not, if I was here, I’d like to make room for younger players coming through.
“Myself and Fozzy [Mark Fotheringham] went to watch the B team. They played Brentford last Tuesday at Barrowfield and some of the younger lads, I know they’re not of the age at this minute, they are really impressive.
“So it is a balancing act of trying to be strong, still strong, and hopefully that these players can come through in the next couple of years.
“Because that would be lovely, that would be really nice to see young boys who’ve got the club at heart, who’ve maybe been in the academies here since they were about 12 or 13 to come through. And we’ve got one or two lads.
“It was an under-18s or 19s game against Brentford, but it was very impressive, both sides. So that was really good.
“I think we should have an eye on that, and not stifle young talent coming through, particularly here because Scottish football needs it.”
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