SFA creates new role to help shake up game

THE PREVAILING mood has altered, according to SFA vice-president Campbell Ogilvie, who says that Scottish football is now more willing than ever to buy into change – which will make life easier for the man charged with turning the recommendations of Henry McLeish's review of the game into a reality.

Speaking after the SFA AGM this week, he said priority has been given to the job of appointing a "performance director", with the background work already under way.

The new position is designed to help identify and cultivate elite talent and bolster the nation's chances of being involved in major championships again on a regular basis and while Ogilvie has refused to put a time-frame on finding the right candidate, Scotland boss Craig Levein is hopeful that the position can be filled fairly early in the new season.

"I know there have already been moves to set up a steering group to decide what the job would entail and they are keen to get out and speak to people in other sports to see what role their performance directors play," said the manager. "I think it's important that they don't jump into anything and that they do the background work, but at the same time I wouldn't like to think the process will be drawn out. I honestly don't think it will be. I think they are looking to have somebody in place by around October, or at the very least a short-list drawn up. It has to be the right person for the job."

Getting that figure may not be easy unless the SFA are willing to invest some of the cash coming in through television deals and sponsorship. But, while chatting to their counterparts in Ireland, who splashed out 2 million to attract the likes of Giovanni Trapattoni, Ogilvie has said they are also looking to other sports such as swimming and cycling, which have benefited since appointing performance directors.

"One thing we haven't done here, which other sports have, is have a performance director to set objectives and monitor success and failure. We are still drawing up a strategy but, fundamentally, he will deal mainly with the elite side and will track players coming through to make sure there is a clear pathway," said Ogilvie.

"It's a new role completely. We will have the chief executive looking after the business side, the team manager predominantly dealing with the international team and he is very keen on having someone to help track players coming through the system and being responsible for ensuring we are meeting objectives and measuring our success and development."

That means that failure to qualify for future World Cups or even Euro 2012 will bring its own post-mortem, with weaknesses identified and addressed before the next campaign.

While both Levein and the SFA hierarchy are keeping an open mind on whether the performance director should have a football background there is a feeling that the candidate should come from outwith the SFA set-up to ensure there is no perception that things have been done on the cheap or simply as a way of creating more jobs for the boys.

"On a general point, the SFA can be more transparent with regards things we do. But the most important thing is that we have a clear strategy in place and don't go for the performance director until we have a clear idea of what we want that person to do," explained Ogilvie.

A major part of the ground-work will include discussions with the SPL and SFL, though. "If you read the report the word 'cohesion' keeps coming up and there are more areas where we can all work together and I think a cohesive strategy won't work properly if the clubs don't buy into this as well. That is the key to this – we have got to work with the clubs when we are implementing this so we can take them with us. They, in the main, are the ones working with the elite players beyond 16 years old."