Why Northern Lights dimmed on caps front
It’s hard not to sympathisese with Derek McInnes.
A 30-man Scotland squad and not a player in sight from the second-best team in the country? Say it ain’t so.
No Graeme Shinnie. No Ryann Jack. No Kenny McLean. Really? No Kennyenny McLean? Fifteen midfielders in the squad and he’s not one of them??
When you watch him week in, n, week out for Aberdeen you can n see why his manager’s expressingg his disappointment in public.
Maybe rightly he thinks he should be in there ahead of a Barry Bannan at least, maybe even a John McGinn from the league below his.
The truth is, all three of Del’s boys have been excellent.
But sadly for him, there are a few truths at work here.
One is that these three are competing in areas of the parkk where Scotland are at their most…… blessed is the wrong word maybe.be. Let’s try prolific.
Jack? Just who is he going to shift from Darren Fletcher, Scott Brown,rown, James McArthur?
Shinnie is worse. Not only does he have that lot to compete with ass a sitter but in his better position of left-t-back he has just as big a queue in front of him.
And McLean? Up against nott only the established order of Robert Snodgrassnodgrass and James Morrison, both playinging in the supposedly hallowed playgroundnd of the Prem, but also against a resurgentnt Stuart Armstrong running riot for Scotland’scotland’s champions-elect and Tom Cairneyey setting Gordon Strachan’s favoured arenaena of the English Championship on fire.
There’s also the perfectly legitimategitimate argument that the Dons’ strengthgth lies in their collective, not their individuals. And the individuals who do excel for them are all from the other side of the Irish Sea.
So there you have it. Explanations for all of it on an individual level.
But not the collective idea that Aberdeen don’t have a single Scotland player.
Nor, by the way, do they even have one in the Under-21 squad to play Estonia a week on Tuesday.
For that explanation you have to look a little deeper.
Since 2008, the last time Scotland’s Pro Youth system was revamped, there have been 72 new caps for Scotland. Not one of those 72 has been reared by Aberdeen.
If Ryan Fraser is capped in either game this week, he’ll be the first in nine years.
A generation of fans reared on the Dons as a bedrock of raising top Scottish talent will find that statistic inconceivable.
But I’ve got the list here in front of me and in alphabetical order, Arbroath are top next to Andy Webster’s name. Or Albion Boys’ Club for Shaun Maloney if you give them the credit before Celtic. Either way, no Aberdeen for the thick end of a decade.
Think back to the Dons side who won the European Cup Winners’ Cup in 1983.
Of the 16 guys stripped for that win over Real Madrid in Gothenburg, Aberdeen was the first club for 12 of them.
Of those 12 brought through the ranks, seven of them won full caps, three of them in the top 10 of all time. Another three recognised at Under-21 level and only Ian Angus and John McMaster never won any honours.
Even the Dons side who went all the way to the final day in 1991, they had half a dozen home-reared lads in the side, five of whom were full caps – Alex McLeish, David Robertson, Stephen Wright, Eoin Jess and Scott Booth – with Michael Watt an Under-21 and B cap.
Fast forward to today. It’s a figure I’ve quoted before but it bears repeating.
Ryan Jack turned 25 three weeks ago. He’s the youngest player in their side. At 21, Craig Storie got nine minutes of football in two sub appearances back in August but that’s your lot. Not another Scot has appeared under Jack’s age.
And while Ryan Christie may now be getting minutes, they’re developing Celtic’s talent for them, not their own.
This isn’t a slight on Aberdeen’s academy, with which I believe SFA performance director Malky Mackay was impressed, but more on the wider philosophy which undermines McInnes’ argument.
Sure, they have eight players out on development loans, five of them Scots, but Daniel Harvie at Dumbarton is the only teenager among them. At 21, they should be established, not starting out.
If you want Scotland players, someone has to take responsibility for creating them for future generations as well as this one.
Much was made of the Under-17s’ 6-1 win over Montenegro on Friday night, featuring the Dons’ Seb Ross, and it was impressive. The Under-16s also performed bri l l iant ly winning their UEFA development group last month.
But how often have we seen rays of sunshine at these age groups extinguished by lack of opportunity when they go back to their clubs?
I understand McInnes doing what he does. His job is to win and keep his job.
So how do we create an environment which allows that AND allows Aberdeen to be in the vanguard of developing brilliant young Scottish players for the national team they way they used to?
That way, the lack of Dons players in a squad might be a true injustice rather than just a superficial one.
If Aberdeen want to have Scotland players, someone has to take responsibility for creating them