Scotland’s young talent aren’t getting enough minutes in the Premiership
With 25 weeks of the 33 matchdays this SPFL season gone, 286,110 minutes have been played, however, only 6.92% (19,802) have featured Scottish players under the age of 23.
In stats gathered by @_VitaminT__ on X, the table shows some the shockingly low percentages for some of the country’s biggest clubs.
The absence of availability in the top flight for the youngsters poses serious worries towards the future prospects of Scottish football.
Of these minutes Kilmarnock lead the way with 22.9% (5,667) of their available 24,750 minutes given to up and comers – with Killie currently sitting fourth in the table it’s proof that these young players don’t hinder success.
In what might be an unsurprising revelation Celtic and Rangers occupy the bottom of the league of stats, in complete juxtaposition to their success.
Rangers have offered only 34 (0.14%) of their 23,760 minutes to Scottish under-23s, with Celtic giving only 181 minutes (0.73%) of their 24,750 available – both falling worryingly below 1% for clubs with so many opportunities and development available.
Sanctions have been proposed on multiple occasions to impose a level of ‘home grown’ talent within clubs, but these have always been opposed by the Old Firm.
Opting to build their matchday squads with talent from further afield means these players have very limited exposure to the highest level of the game.
Robbie MacDonald, Editing and Publishing Officer at Youth Football Scotland (YFS), said: “It’s disappointing to see such few numbers of homegrown talent being given the opportunity to play at Scotland’s highest level.
“When Celtic, Rangers and Hearts were all granted the opportunity to put B teams into the Lowland League one of the main arguments for their inclusion was that it would help develop young Scottish talent but that just doesn’t seem to be the case.
“Even Hibernian had a fantastic UEFA Youth League run last year and haven’t seen many from that squad be able to make the step up.
“I suppose it’s testament to just how close the league is that teams are fighting for every point and may see it as a gamble but I think that giving hometown players who really care for the clubs a chance can only be a benefit to these teams.”
As Scotland’s national side head off to Germany this summer for Euro 2024, after many years of struggling to qualify for major tournaments, our future stars may be lost or underdeveloped within Scottish league football.
Credit: Donald Erskine
The national squad currently has an average age of around 27, and while it’s unrealistic to expect youngsters to play at the highest level early in their careers this average could be lower if they were given more chances on home turf.
Not to mention if young talent were nurtured more by the SPL clubs, we would no doubt see more success on the world stage.
We have, however, seen a surge in Scottish players making headway in other leagues, something which Creative Manager at YFS, Stuart Storar, appreciates. He said: “On the face of it it’s disappointing to see such a small number of our young players getting meaningful game time in our premier competition.
“The immediate concern when you see this is that our top clubs are either unwilling to give these players the opportunities they need or that the players themselves aren’t the required level.
“With that said, we are seeing more young players than ever before electing to play development football in England over first team football in Scotland which means many of our best young players aren’t in Scotland to begin with so it remains to be seen what kind of impact that will have on the future of our game.”
Donald is a third year Multimedia Journalism student at Glasgow Caledonian University.
