'We need to act now': Scottish football told it is flirting with crisis unless change comes now
Mulholland spells out why proposals have been made
Chief football officer Craig Mulholland has warned Scottish football is standing on the brink of a crisis unless change is brought in to encourage clubs to play more youngsters.
Scotland is only behind Turkey in terms of game-time for native under-21 players in Europe this season and Mulholland believes the national team will struggle to qualify for major tournaments in ten years’ time unless the situation is rectified.
The Premiership clubs have also been told by external firm Twenty First Group that they are leaving £40 million on the table in potential revenue by not placing more faith in academy players.
It all led to a Scottish Football Association-led conference at St Andrews on Friday, where all 42 senior outfits were represented and given a package of proposals aimed at securing the future of the sport in Scotland.
Their plan is for a minimum of two Scottish under-21 players to be selected by each team in a Scottish Cup tie and for two Scottish under-21 players to be picked by each team in the Premier Sports Cup, starting from the 2027/28 campaign.
From next season as well, the SFA want under-21 players to be on the pitch for an average of 60 minutes per game, across the season, in the Premiership, equating to six per cent of available minutes. This would span across the league campaign and clubs would manage how they do this.
To incentivise this, the SFA are putting in £1 million into the project and a fee will be paid for each eligible under-21 player who plays 60 minutes or more in a league match across all four senior divisions - £250 in the Premiership, £200 in the Championship, £150 in League One and £100 in League Two.
The SFA hopes that the Scottish Professional Football League will agree to a forfeit of 10 per cent prize money from a club that doesn’t comply, to be distributed among those that do.
The clubs have now entered a consultation period until the end of September, before the SFA call a general meeting next month for the Scottish Cup vote to take place. The SPFL annual general meeting is held in November, where the Premier Sports Cup and Premiership changes will be voted upon.
And while Mulholland stopped short of calling it a crisis and acknowledged lots of good work across the country, he has warned that action needs to start now - before it gets too late for Scottish football.
“Do you know why we didn't want to use the word crisis?” explained Mulholland. “It’s because that then becomes the headline and we also didn't want to hide all the good bits of non-sport football because we didn't want our clubs to think, in any way, shape, or form, that we've been negative by the effort and the work that they're doing.
“Because there's too many good people in that room really grafting to be successful. But that lag of ten years' time, if we don't address this now, we are going to go back to a bit where we could be risking qualifying for tournaments.
“Maybe crisis is just too strong a word, but what I am saying is we need to act now, otherwise we could end up finding ourselves in a crisis at some point in the future.”
Mulholland pointed to the downward trajectory of young Scottish players being selected in the Premiership over the past ten years, which has dropped alarmingly in the past few years. The impact, he says, will be felt in the next decade - with Scottish players simply not equipped to operate at the top level.
“If you look at the lagging minutes ... it’s alarming. If you're in the leadership of the Scottish FA or any governing body, and that's your curve, you need to do something to change that. Because we know that that line correlates with success for your national team. We also know that line correlates with player sales and revenues. This ultimately will help our clubs invest more, And we never, we can't allow ourselves to become a nation that small nation that's not competing at that top level.
“Some days, governing bodies are afraid to put something forward in case they lose a vote. Right? You'll never do anything if that's the case. Somebody walked into the Belgian FA ten years ago and said, ‘right, we're a distance office. We're going to go and do something about it.’ So, actually, why can't we not go and do that? Now we might lose the vote. We might. But actually, for once, people can say Scottish FA have actually went and led in something. We've not asked for another working group.
“We've not asked for another think tank. We've actually put a set of proposals forward. The other thing is, the proposals we put forward, there's 31 other countries with similar rules. We're not copying it. We've made something unique to Scotland. We are probably the outliers now by not doing it - it's not radical across Europe. I think we need to lead. I hope we don't lose the vote because it would worry me. But at the same time, we had to lead today and listen.”
Mulholland believes his plans were met with approval from the floor. “Going back to a positive, the mood in the room was such,” he added. “The questions we got and the ones that spoke were ‘could we go further?’ So that's got to be a positive sign that there's an energy in the room to make change.”
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