Can SFA summit encourage clubs to give youth a chance?

Robbie Ure made his debut for Rangers at the age of 18, a goal-scoring appearance in a League Cup tie against Queen of the South in August 2022. The teenage striker played two more games that season - or more accurately, one minute apiece in two different Premiership games six months apart, against St Mirren in the November, against Hibs in the May. For a young man keen to play, the meagre rations that Rangers served up weren't enough. Even though Rangers were toiling on all fronts, his prospects of game-time were not high. In Ure's position, Rangers spent £6m on Danilo (with wages, cumulative cost to date of about £10m) and £3.5m on Sam Lammers (over £4m if you include salary). With no prospects at Ibrox, Ure left for Anderlecht in Belgium and then IK Sirius in Sweden. At Sirius, Ure has matured and excelled. He's now 22 and currently on a run of 15 goals in 15 games including 10 in his last six. News came through on Sunday that Sevilla are interested in signing him for close to £8m. Having lost 2-1 at home to Hibs the same day, the collective Rangers' mood won't have been lifted by the story of the former academy kid they allowed to leave for nothing being courted in a multi-million pound deal involving one of Spain's most storied clubs. If the deal does go through it will be private grist to the mill of the Scottish FA as they prepare for their "critically important" forum with the owners and CEOs of Scotland's senior clubs in St Andrews next month. Billed as 'Made In Scotland?' the presentation will be led by SFA chief executive Ian Maxwell and his chief football officer, Craig Mulholland. It's tantamount to a plea to clubs, mostly Premiership clubs, to look at their pathways and give young Scottish players more of a chance to show what they've got. If they were minded, which in the interests of diplomacy they surely won't be, Maxwell and Mulholland could cite the Ure case to back up their essential point. If only they'd trusted their youth they might have saved themselves one fortune and then made themselves another by developing him and selling him years later. Things are more complicated than that, of course. Ure might not have shown the promise then that he's showing now. There is an element of 20-20 hindsight about this, but it's still a sore one for Rangers just as Celtic will have been sore after hardly playing a young Ben Doak, now Gannon-Doak, and subsequently losing him to English football. Another multi-million pound boy that got away. We don't need the statistics of the opening two weeks of the Premiership to highlight the obvious need for the summit, but they highlight the problem none the less. Across the opening two rounds of the top flight season only 31% of the players who played a part in the action were Scottish. Only 5% were Scots aged 21 or under. Forty-six different nations were represented. There are stark individual cases in all of this, the most remarkable being Dundee United using just one Scottish player - Dylan Tait - in their two games so far. Ask chairmen, chief executives and managers if they want to have young Scots in their first team and they will all say that they do, that they're passionate about rearing and playing their own. Then you'll hear myriad reasons why so many of them don't - some legitimate, others less so. There are nuances, naturally. Dundee United will talk about the investment they've made in developing their own players and how their promising 16-year-old, Kai Hutchison, was lured away to Everton, one of dozens of young Scots who have gone south in the post-Brexit age. Celtic will mention Dara Jikiemi (Liverpool) and Daniel Cummings (West Ham). Rangers will throw in Cameron Scott (Burnley) and Chris Eadie (Sheffield United). Hearts will offer up Boyd Fraser (Nottingham Forest) and Keir McMeekin (Man City). Hibs will cite Ben Vickery (Man City) and Josh Landers (West Ham). Those names are only scratching the surface of the ones who have headed away. There appears to be multiple reasons for leaving. Bigger money is part of it, for sure, but it's an overly convenient argument put forward by clubs. Avarice is one thing. Lack of opportunity is another. These players, and their parents, aren't seeing much of a pathway in front of them in Scotland. They're not seeing first-team chances. The biggest clubs in Scotland don't have many recent poster boys to illustrate their commitment to giving academy players regular first-team football. Too many of them - not all - clog up the pathway by recruiting journeymen foreigners. What must a promising teenager make of the endless amount of players with, at best, dubious playing pedigrees arriving at their club? Stay and stagnate or leave and hope? Maxwell and Mulholland have it all to do at St Andrews. They'll have an audience, but will it be a captive one? In attempting to win over those clubs who are not giving youth a chance they're going to have to appeal to the self-interest of these owners. Never mind the national interest and the greater good of feeding more young players to the national team down the line. Everybody in that room's first and last duty is to their own club. If that involves a ton of homegrown players, then great. Loads of clubs down the leagues are totally committed to giving their young players every chance. If others think that recruiting from Mars is going to help them to prosper then that's what they're likely to do. Their obligation is to their own backyard. It has to be. We've been here before... If you're asking Scotland's biggest clubs to give more game-time to the kids then you'd better be bringing your A game. These people, some of whom have invested a lot of their own money while bringing in money from other investors, might only be prepared to listen if you're telling them something that's of benefit to them rather than in the interests of the national team five, 10, 15 years from now. The emphasis is on the 'might only be prepared' because we've been here before. The Scottish FA's Transition report was published in August 2024. It was a 114-page document put together by the then chief football officer, Andy Gould, and the former head of men's elite football strategy, Chris Docherty. It was a mighty document. Global player data, case studies, interviews - it challenged some old doctrines about the risks of playing young players and preached the gospel of youth. It wasn't a cry in the dark, it was a mission statement on the footballing and financial logic of giving more senior minutes to academy players, it showed the vast transfer income that dozens of European clubs have made by nurturing, playing and then selling their young players, it went through the pitiful number of minutes that academy players were getting in Scotland compared to any number of other successful leagues and nations. The message was that giving more game-time to young Scots is in everybody's interest in every conceivable way, that the old beliefs of 'kids winning you nothing' is not supported by data. It was a compelling document, but it largely fell on deaf ears. Some recommendations were adopted but the thrust of the argument - be bold - was not. The Scottish FA published another report in October 2025 - 133 pages this time. It was another strong piece of work with really good ideas. Gould and Docherty were the authors once again. Neither of them work at Hampden anymore. Too many sore heads from too many brick walls, you suspect. We're now into another round of this, another attempt to shift the thinking. Just outside the window of the room all these club owners and chief executives are going to be sitting in next month is the famous Old Course Road Hole bunker, scene of many a golfing nightmare. Holing-out from the sand on that 17th hole will seem like a skoosh compared to the task that's facing Maxwell and Mulholland. For the future of the game, we wish them well, but a cry of Fore! might be ringing in their ears as they enter the room that day.