GORDON PARKS, (pictured below) was starting off in football writing, just as I was switching back from general sports-writing to mostly covering rugby, so, while we shared a few press boxes, I didn't get to know him too-closely, plus, he's from a younger generation than I, so we didn't have much in common.
One advantage the bold Gordon has over most of the other sports hacks who are active today is – he's been there, done it, got the tee-shirts and DVDs. Anyone who, like him, survived Jim McLean and Dundee United, well, he's worth listening- to or reading. Gordon has also served his time down among the “diddy clubs” - he's done the hard yards.
On Sunday, I was pointed towards Gordon's page in the Sunday Mail, a paper I haven't even looked at for years, by one of my rugby buddies. He admitted, he's not a Parks fan, I hope he reconsiders, because Gordon's latest column ought to be required reading for the High Heid Yins along the sixth-floor corridor at Hampden Park, as he points-out the absolute moger they have made of Scottish football.
It's actually a very-good piece of journalism by Gordon, one for which he deserves praise. What he has done is picked-up on a series of tweets from Brown Ferguson, a former team mate/opponent from Gordon's playing days. Brown (pictured below) is now an Elite Performance Practitioner with sportscotland's Scottish Institute of Sport, at Stirling University; that's the day job, he is also Gary Naysmith's Assistant Manager with Edinburgh City.
Brown's day job involves working with elite athletes, helping them cope with the stresses of juggling work or studying with the demands of top-line sport. He's been having a look at some figures around player numbers in the Scottish Premiership, where he found:
With the January window now open, there have been 12 players signed by Premiership Clubs, only 1 has been Scottish.
In this season (2021/22) there have been 125 signings in the Premiership, 30 of them have been Scottish (24%).
Out of the 125 players signed in the SPFL, 30 of them have been loans and of the loans 7 have been Scottish.
Game week 20 in the SPFL (The last one before the winter break) saw the lowest number of Scottish Players start a game week this season with 56 out of 132 (42%) Scottish. Our highest week was game week 1 (Before the window shut) with 72 starting Scots (55%). Our average is 47%
Scotland currently has 150 Scottish players in 1st team squads across the SPFL. Scotland currently sit 38 in World Rankings, there is only one country above us (Switzerland - ranked 13th) who have fewer home based players
Countries of similar size, or less, have the following number of home nation players in their top flight squads:
Iceland (0.3m) – 317
Uruguay (3.4m) – 450
Croatia (4.1m) – 183
Norway (5.4m) – 304
Scotland (5.5m) – 150
Finland (5.5m) – 191
Denmark (5.8m) - 183
Brown also produced this graphic, to illustrate how much Scottish clubs have become wedded to buying in non-Scottish players:
I find that graphic particularly-interesting. There have always been non-Scots in Scottish football, the Old Firm has long had their share of Irish players: Sean Fallon, Charlie Tully, Bertie Peacock or later, Packy Bonnar at Celtic: Bert Manderson and later Billy Simpson, John McClelland or Jimmy Nicholl at Rangers, where there were the likes of the South Africans – Johnny Hubbard and Don Kitchenbrand.
County Durham man Jackie Hather was a key player in the 1955 Aberdeen team which won the Scottish League, while, Welshman Ben Ellis and Englishman Bob Ferrier played key roles in the great league-winning Motherwell team of the 1930s. Yes, we sent thousands of “Scotch Professors” out to teach the world to play football, but, we accepted the odd foreign player back.
Brown Ferguson's graphic shows, that trickle gradually became a flood, after Graeme Souness arrived at Rangers in 1986 – until today, Scots are almost in the minority in Scottish football.
This cannot be healthy for the Scottish game, but, sadly, I honestly cannot see the High Heid Yins at Hampden having the wit to notice, or the wisdom to change things. I do not say we should not import foreign players – Scottish football has benefitted from having the likes of Paul Gascoigne, Brian Laudrup, Henrik Larssen, Lubomir Moravcik, Frank Sauzee, Zoltan Varga, Istvan Kozma, Alexei Eremenko, Marko Rajamaki or Gunni Torfasson, to name but a few, playing here. But, that said, our primary aim should be to provide opportunities for young, native talent to thrive and perhaps go on to bigger things in bigger leagues – that is not helped by importing second, third or fourth-rate foreign players and ignoring the development of young Scots.
For me, however, the real kicker in the Gordon Parks piece comes at the end, where he points out that 11 of the 12 Premiership clubs (Celtic are the odd ones out) have accepted over £25 million in interest-free Scottish Government loans on the back of the Covid pandemic.
Gordon wonders how much of that cash will be earmarked for “player development” and how much will go towards “player recruitment.” That's a very-good question. I would (if I was a tax payer – but, being retired I'm not), not be best pleased to think my contributions to running Scotland were being spent on fringing in another second or third-rate foreign player, but, I could live with it going on helping young Scottish players make it.
Gordon Parks wrote: “Handouts shouldn't go to clubs spending on recruitment.” If he's still writing when he's 100 years of age, Gordon will never write a truer sentence.
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