Csaba Laszlo calls for winter break and shake-up to Premier League

The Hearts manager, who has been frustrated by the bad weather of the past fortnight, is convinced that a 16-team top flight playing a 30-match league would ensure there was time for a winter break – which would in turn bring about a higher quality of football.

"The weather is the big enemy now," Laszlo said yesterday, as his squad prepared indoors for tomorrow's Scottish Cup tie at Aberdeen.

"We must rest players like Jose Goncalves, who can't train inside on the astrodome pitch. We've got injuries from training there and injuries from training outside on the hard ground, with muscles freezing.

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"If it's possible, I suggest we think about changing and having a break every winter. In Italy, Germany and France – big football countries – they have a break. Even Spain has a break.

"It's a very important issue for Scottish football. If you look at the players, they suffer. I don't know if the Aberdeen game will be on. But, if it is minus five, six, seven or eight, the ball freezes. It doesn't have the elasticity. The pitch can't be 100 per cent clear for football and the muscles of the players suffer in the cold – it is completely different. This will be for every player a big danger."

Laszlo knows that some clubs would be loath to play the Old Firm less often and cope with the drop in income that would bring, but he himself is willing to accept that as the price for higher quality play. "Definitely," he said when asked if he would give up the games against Celtic and Rangers which the current 38-match SPL fixture list guarantees. "Look for any other countries where they play each other four times a season.

'For Celtic and Rangers, the big teams, it's more competition if you just play home and away once. You must be concentrated.

"You have here what, 38 games? The answer is to have 16 teams in the SPL. You must reorganise everything and make reforms. But if you are to reform you need reformers - and if you are a reformer you make a lot of enemies.

"You need reformers, someone who will say: ''I take my flag and lead from the front. If you don't follow, you are not with me'.

"If you do this, you lose a lot of friends. It's a lot of work. But we must force the professional clubs to do this, and it must come from upstairs. This country must have a minimum of 14 teams and maximum of 16 in the top division. Even if you look at Luxembourg, I think they have 16 teams – 14 at least.

"If you got to Germany, they have the best facilities in the world – stadiums, training grounds, everything you need. This is a World Cup year, which means they must finish the season early, but still they have a three-week break. They have 18 teams in the top division and they have three professional leagues."

If and when Scotland changes the shape of its season, Laszlo believes that a lot of the agonising about the supposedly poor technical ability of our players will disappear. "Don't think that German, Brazilian and French mothers deliver more talented children," he said. "This is not true. Society forms young people into what they are now. We have a responsibility to form our football players to be better - and that means academies.

"France needed ten years, maybe longer, but they got there. They took children from the streets, children with nothing in life, and gave them a chance. They forced the clubs to develop academies."

Without that kind of coherent plan to bring about progress, Laszlo thinks there is no point in Scottish football harbouring grandiose ambitions - or at least, that is what he appeared to be implying in one of his typically surreal digressions from his principal theme. "I never understand how you could build a house then, when it is finished, think about building the road to the house. First you build the road, then you build the house.

"I would like to have a house at the top of Arthur's Seat. This is fantastic and maybe I'd get permission to build this. But for 300-plus days of the year, I must stay up there because I can't get down. Nice house, but I don't have the facilities to enjoy it."

Turning his attention to the Old Firm again, the Hungarian said that the failure of the two Glasgow clubs to engineer a move to England was another reason for everyone in Scotland to work together to try to ensure that facilities did improve. "The two biggest clubs in Scotland saw the problem. What was their first step? To leave Scottish football. With all my respect, we need the two biggest clubs to stay. Don't run away.

"Now the door is closed. Now even these two big clubs, together with the smaller clubs and the SFA, must find a solution. We need reform, and for reform you need reformers. You can't be scared to take this step and try to make reform.

"Every step, 100 per cent, will help Scottish football to go forward, together with the two big clubs who most regularly represent Scotland in Europe. I think it's so easy. OK, you don't have the same winter in Scotland every year – maybe every 30 years. But supporters, the players, the football federation, everybody suffers at the moment. We have a league on, but we aren't offering any quality."