Regan admits McLeish aim of £500m aid is pie in the sky

EVEN a visionary can’t be oblivious to what is staring them in the face. And though Stewart Regan is willing to set out a bold series of changes he is determined to push through to revitalise the Scottish game, the SFA chief executive knows the very starting point of the Henry McLeish review for doing just that can be filed under ‘pie in the sky’. McLeish’s blueprint for reshaping the game top to bottom came with a price tag of £500 million over ten years. In recessionary Britain, Regan accepts no Scottish government is going to furnish football with that.

“The £500m figure for new facilities that seemed to be around for a few years was a figure plucked out of the air,” Regan said. “Well, we’d be naive to think we are going to be handed that sort of money. We need to campaign and lobby for the sort of facilities we want and need. I’ve already met with the sports minister [Shona Robison] and met with sportscotland. I’ve also met with Kenny MacAskill.

“There is general support but the problem is there are so many priorities and they’re getting salami-sliced from Westminster. I have to keep putting a mirror up in front of people and telling them we have to do something about this. We have to get people playing every sport, not just football. [SFA President] Campbell Ogilvie is convinced we do have the facilities in schools, they are out there. The problem is we shut them at the weekend and four o’clock every day.”

Yet, Regan is willing to be bold in where the SFA’s own funding can lead the game. “I don’t think you can nail yourself to the wall and set a deadline to say ‘I think we will have achieved X by a certain time’. If you look at our strategy you will see we have set ourselves some fairly ambitious goals. We have said we would like to qualify for the World Cup in 2014: that’s our big target. Look at the youth initiative, we would like to have 80 per cent player approval rating at four elite academies in Scotland in the next five years. We want 75 per cent Scots playing in the SPL – we currently have 55 per cent – and so on.

“When you look at the number of players playing in the English Premier League and Championship, we currently have 60 and we would like to have 100. We would like to have 30 Scots in the English Premier League, where we currently have 19.”

In addition, the plan is to double the participation numbers in the game from 65,000, half of what they were 20 years ago. “Increasing the gene pool” will be central to delivering on a performance strategy in which Regan believes “steady progress” is being made.

He added: “We’ve appointed Mark Wotte and last week appointed Ricky Spragia to come in as national youth coach with specific responsibility for the under 19s. We have looked at how we could create the opportunity for elite players to have 10,000 hours contact time with the ball over a 20-year period in order to become elite players. Six schools across Scotland will become performance schools and they will be split geographically. The idea is that talented players will have the opportunity to do football before school, and again after school, so you create the space to have 10,000 hours, or certainly contribute to what the kids are getting from their local club.

“Mark Wotte is looking at the structure to make that happen and bring in specific national managers for each of the key groups – under-15s, under-17s, under-19s, under-21s. He is also looking to appoint six performance coaches who will be responsible for a region each.

“Their role will be to liaise with the clubs in that region and identify the very best players together. They will be the eyes and ears of the performance department, working with the clubs, bringing those kids together.

“That whole strategy supports the best versus best. They’ll play against each other so you get high-quality matches for these guys at under-12s, 13s, 14s, right the way up. From these six performance squads you will create a national performance squad at each age group and we will look at establishing a national performance centre in Scotland, so that you can bring them together, not just for football training, but offer them other supports and services.”

In addition, there will be the creation of Club Academy Scotland, wherein the 17 academies currently operating will pitch to become part of a new elite tier by meeting a number of conditions, including links with a performance school and the presence of coaches with Uefa licences. In the short term, this will make no impression on the strength of playing resources at senior clubs. But the performance fund, wherein clubs receive £1,000 for playing three under-21s in their senior sides, can encourage youth development, he believes, as will a number of cash-earning initiatives related to rearing youngsters. “We want to reward clubs for doing the right things,” he insisted.

The right thing for the senior game could be the introduction of an under-20 league. “It is an idea we are bouncing around,” Regan said. “We all believe the gap between under-19s and first team is too wide. Mark has looked at it and said that there is not enough opportunity for good players, 18, 19, 20 and 21, to play regularly against good quality opposition.”

Regan won’t need to be told what paves the road to hell. But better good intentions than not. Even if there is no government funds to lay foundations.