Celtic manager Neil Lennon hits out at Henry McLeish's vision for football academies in Scotland

Lennon's surprisingly negative response came after the former First Minister, who was commissioned by the SFA to revive the state of the game, challenged governing bodies and the Scottish government to come up with the 500million he claims will solve the "crisis" that has left the country among the also-rans of the world game.

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Among his recommendations is a call for over 400m to be spent on facilities for youth and talent development over the next ten years.

"We have a crisis on our hands in terms of facilities and infrastructure," said former First Minister McLeish. "I thought long and hard about using the word crisis, and I decided to say it is a crisis."

He called for summer football to be adopted at youth level and for the SFA to appoint a performance director to oversee the new academy network and the development of youth and elite players.

But Lennon believes academies do not work and facilities are "not the be all and end all". "The academies are not working. We haven't produced a regular first-team player since (Aiden] McGeady, probably, although we have a good crop of players coming through," he said. "I'd like to go back to the system when I was growing up.

"There were no academies in those days and Scotland, England and Ireland were still producing top-quality players.

"My argument is someone like Wayne Rooney. Would he have needed an academy to come though in the game? Would Steven Gerrard or McGeady? I'm not so sure.

"Some people think academies are the way forward and a lot of them work on the blueprint from Clairefontaine in France.

"But I've been on courses where I've argued about it and studies have come back to say academies aren't working. They are not as successful as people thought they were going to be.

"So maybe I'm right and everyone else is wrong, I don't know."

On the subject of facilities for football in Scotland, which McLeish described as woefully inadequate, Lennon retorted: "Facilities? So what? I trained with Henrik Larsson at Barrowfield for ten years and all we had was a couple of pitches.

"Kids in Africa play in ploughed fields. Kids in Brazil play on sand.

"Having facilities is great and it's probably important to the future but they are not the be all and end all. Kids' talent is the be all and end all and it should be nurtured.

"All I ever hear is that the facilities aren't good enough here.

"Well, make them good enough. If the kids can't play on the streets then give them somewhere they can play on and make more of them.

"I have thought about it. Do we need to spend hundreds of millions on it? I don't know.

"If there is no money in the game then maybe we have to go back to basics. Rip it up and start again."

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