DARE TO LOSE
Celtic boss offers bold solution to nation’s ills
ON the plight of Scottish football, Ronny Deila is clear. At almost every l evel of the national game an emphasis on winning at any cost is damaging the development of players. Unless Scotland’s youth teams are prepared to lose for the greater good, Celtic’s manager believes nothing will change.
There was a similar message from Mark Wotte. The former performance director of the SFA arrived preaching the need to develop young players, even if it meant discarding results. Clubs were unimpressed and the Dutchman left his post last year.
Like the hapless Berti Vogts before him, Wotte discovered that overseas methods and ideas are regarded with a mixture of mistrust and suspicion.
Yet Deila, Celtic’s Norwegian coach, looks at 18 years of failure for the national team and draws a logical conclusion: those who refuse to change are destined to make the same mistakes time and again.
‘You have to dare to lose to get good,’ said Deila. ‘There’s a lot of pressure in this country on results. When everyone is doing the safe things all the time you can win short-term — but you’ll never win long-term.
‘I see c ountries s uch as Switzerland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland really giving opportunities to young boys. They give them the chance to get experience and develop.
‘Norway has done this for many years now with the under-21s. They were so bad for a period but suddenly now they are coming because the generation, with Stefan Johansen, have been doing well in the under-21 championship and we also changed our way of playing i n Norway and were wanting to create much more.’
Norway’s national team found themselves in a qualifying group with Italy and Croatia. They came to within 20 minutes of automatic qualification, leading the Italians before losing two late goals. Yet, in contrast with Scotland, they qualified for a third-place play-off comfortably. Deila believes he knows why. ‘If you lose you lose — but you want to win in the way you want to play,’ he said. ‘Then you develop more skills and that is the most important thing, to develop good, young football players, then give them a chance and let them play football.
‘If it’s been too tactical and if you’re too afraid to lose, then you’ll never develop the full potential of the player.
‘So that’s the way I did it in Stromsgodset.
‘We lost a lot but I knew we would progress all the time and, in the end, we had a lot of national team players and people going abroad.
‘If Martin Odegaard wasn’t given the opportunity to play free then we’d never get this talent.
‘That’s what they do in Spain, Portugal, it’s about the training, it’s about wanting to create and wanting to get players to realise their full potential.’
Were Deila to adopt the same policy at Celtic, few doubt he would l ose his j ob. In t he cut- throat environment of a 12-team Premiership, where money is tight, managers rarely have the option of blooding teenagers at the expense of old stagers.
A former teacher, the Norwegian looks at Scotland’s youth teams and wonders why winning should matter more at that level than playing the game with skill and imagination.
‘It’s a lot about results here,’ he r ef l ected. ‘ Results are very important. I can win one game, short-term, by just being very tactical and thinking this is important.
‘But if you’re thinking long-term you play the same way and maybe you l ose — but you’ll l earn something from the game. So I think that is the way to develop your team and players.
‘It is very difficult here when you have so many games and the pressure is here all the time.
‘You do the safe things all the time and it’s hard to be creative and do new things and develop as a player.’
Celtic have introduced a policy of snapping up the best young Scottish players. Ryan Christie and Scott Allan have been signed and the expectation is that Dundee United’s John Souttar will follow suit in January.
The fear exists, however, that young players will struggle to develop at Parkhead unless they play.
‘That’s the goal,’ Deila insisted. ‘But they have to be good enough as well. It’s harder to do it at Celtic than at Motherwell or Partick Thistle or whatever because we need to win every week.
‘Aberdeen have built a team over time now and they have lost — but they have been a little bit better every year. So that is thinking long-term and that’s important.
‘Give youngsters an opportunity, think long-term and then you’ll build up teams and players as well.
‘The senior team is one team that has to be all about results. It’s a bit different for them.
‘But when you play under-15 to under-21, it doesn’t matter if they lose.
‘It’s the same here at Celtic. We want them to win but we want them to win our way.
‘If you try to win tactically by closing down opposition to stay close then they have no chance.
‘It’s all about the system and they are not using games to develop their skills. You will get results in the end.’
The chance to offer his thoughts on how to assist the national team arises t omorrow. Scotland’s assistant manager Mark McGhee has returned to Motherwell as manager and will be in the opposite technical area.
‘I don’t know Mark McGhee,’ added Deila. ‘But it always brings a lot of energy when a new manager comes in. We have to be up for it.
‘You never know what the shape is going to be so we need to focus on ourselves and producing a good performance. If we do that we can win the game.’