We need cash for our kids!
Mackay in funding call as cost of playing rises
SFA performance director Malky Mackay has warned that some Scottish youngsters are in danger of being priced out of football unless more funding is made available. Mackay was at Hampden yesterday to welcome the latest batch of 12-year-old hopefuls who will enter the ruling body’s seven development schools in the hope of eventually pulling on the famous dark blue jersey for the Scotland national team.
However, as he did so, he acknowledged the difficulties faced by families on the poverty line, those who simply cannot come up with the money to allow their children to turn out for their local clubs.
Quite apart from the cost of football boots, parents with, for example, two boys wishing to participate in supervised training and matches are now being asked to pay hundreds of pounds for that privilege.
Football is in danger of becoming a middle-class sport when, in the past, most of the top footballers came from deprived working-class areas as youngsters sought to better themselves through the beautiful game.
Mackay, though, claims that the SFA is doing all it can to find the potential stars who are slipping through the net while calling for elected officials at Holyrood and Westminster to do more to help.
‘The Scottish FA is for grassroots, women’s football, disability sport and for the country and the people of Scotland,’ he said.
‘The wee kid who couldn’t afford to play for a club through a direct debit could, in the past, play for his school. Everyone used to know who the best players were because they were in the school team.
‘They would breed these talented kids through the help of janitors and teachers but it changed following the strikes in the 1980s. Now we have boys’ clubs with parents paying by direct debit.
‘But we get out as much as possible to look at players and spread our resources as far as we can. We’ve set up a talent ID department to try and find them, we’ve sent scouts out and have a database to find players. We’ve found some who haven’t been in our system.
‘However, there are issues with the lack of money in Scottish football and sport in general and there are certainly conversations to be had with the SFA, Sportscotland and the Scottish Government. All we can do at the SFA is keep putting on programmes in the hope that something can happen.’ Mackay was keen to stress that it is not all doom and gloom and he has been encouraged by the performances so far of Celtic, Rangers, Hibernian and Aberdeen in Europe this season. ‘Last week’s results were important,’ he said. ‘It was great to see Hibs come back from being two down at halftime to win their first leg and then go to Greece and get through. ‘I was at Aberdeen to see them draw with Burnley. I spoke to Turf Moor boss Sean Dyche and knew what a test it was going to be for Derek McInnes’ team. However, their 1-1 draw and, even more so, the same score after 90 minutes in the second leg, raised eyebrows in England. ‘Rangers had a terrific result in Croatia. We all know how tough it is to win away in Europe. The more experience our guys have of playing that type of opposition the better. Playing these teams will help us get to major finals. We must give Alex McLeish the best chance by providing him with more players to choose from.’ Mackay and his colleagues have also been poring over a 2009 study by Daniel Coyle into the factors which see some individuals prosper while others fail — with surprising results.
‘There’s a book called ‘The Talent Code’ and we have done a study on that and age maturation,’ he said.
‘We’re looking at the age effect and the size of players when they come through and which birth months produce most footballers.
‘Funnily enough, it’s Januarys and Septembers everywhere — that needs to change.’
This is in reference to kids playing in ‘age groups’ where some could be almost a year older than their team-mates and therefore have a physical advantage over their younger colleagues.
Mackay continued: ‘We need to recognise those who have something in them called a “rage to master”, meaning it doesn’t matter about the size of the player, it’s about recognising the ones who have that thing inside them which means they will come through anyway.
‘By hook or by crook, they will become footballers. It’s a really interesting topic, because it’s not the old way of how a scout would look at the biggest, strongest boys and put them in the academies when someone else has the technical ability but just needs his body to grow.’