JIM FLEETING –We need to give our kids a pathway to the first-team then support them
Courage.
It’s not a trait Scots tend to feel they lack.
After all, the nation’s history is built upon tales of against-the-odds victories, fuelled by little more than raw guts and cold porridge.
But ask Jim Fleeting what’s required to end our national team’s agonising, exile from major tournaments, and the answer is enough to send even the proudest Tartan Army member homeward to think again.
“We need to stand up and be a brave nation,” says the SFA’s outgoing director of coaching.
“The problem isn’t that we aren’t producing talented kids any more, because we are.
“It’s that the pathway for them doesn’t go all the way through to first-team level. It doesn’t happen, and it’s so sad.”
Since 1992, Fleeting has made Scottish football’s governing body one of the premier coaching education institutions in the world.
The 63-year-old is about to retire, and his success stands as one half of a clear paradox.
If Scotland can produce so many coaches to rank with the very best in the world, why haven’t those coaches been able to produce players of a similar standard?
For Fleeting, who accepts Scotland would be perennial Finalists if a World Cup for rolling coaches off the production line existed, the answer doesn’t lie on the training grounds of our top clubs.
Instead, it is to be found in our wider football culture.
“We’re investing so much money in younger kids, aged 10-14,” says Fleeting.
“But when we get them that bit closer – 15, 16, 17 – the time when we need to get them out there, let them play, there’s a brick wall.
“If you ask most of the coaches who work with us at the SFA, they will say there’s a concern between that 17-20 age group.
“We don’t give coaches the opportunity to get these kids into the game.
“If you go in and see these kids between the ages of 10 and 14, they’re absolutely fabulous. Their technique is just the same as any others around the world.
“But a few years down the line, our patience goes out the window when it comes to getting these kids into the first team at club level.
“These guys are not getting a game, so the development stops – bang. And all the money invested – bang, gone.
“It’s a tough one to sort, because a coach’s job is on the line at the end of the day.
“But that’s where the fans come in. They have to try to support the idea of blooding young players.
“Instead, if a coach loses two, three, four games, it’s: ‘Boo, get yourself away, cheerio,’ all this stuff – then they put somebody else in and start from scratch.
“It goes on and on and on. We can’t deny that. That’s the Scottish game.
“It doesn’t come from a bad place. It’s because we love our football and we love our clubs. It’s passion.
“But passion can be a destructive thing. So we need to get the top end to come together and ask: ‘How are we going to get better results?’”