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Real Madrid Forward "a luxury"


Sweet Pete

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Most of the current Scotland squad played in the U21s at some point in their career, so it's hard to define "stepped up" in a reasonable way. Generally any Scotland U21 squad will only contain a handful of players who are capable of playing international football, then you get the jobbers like Paul Hanlon, David Wotherspoon etc who earn loads of caps but are never realistically going to play for the full side.

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How many players have made the step from u21 to senior team in recent years? Surely that can be deemed a failure by those in charge

I would say that's a failure of our clubs. How many of Celtic's first team have came through the ranks?

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I would say that's a failure of our clubs. How many of Celtic's first team have came through the ranks?

Not many for us, but plenty of our former youth players have went on to make it elsewhere

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Not many for us, but plenty of our former youth players have went on to make it elsewhere

Is that acceptable? Given that Rangers and Celtic get first pick and hoover up all the best young Scottish players for their youth teams and all they can produce is players for lower teams. Then having to go to other Scottish clubs for young developed payers. I would say that's a failure. As for my own team our record in the last 30 years is shameful and is only now being addressed.

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You can't blame the international setup who only get a few weeks with the players, over the clubs who get the rest of the time.

There's a more pertinent question around this topic. 9 years ago, Scotland made it to the U19s European Championship Final against Spain. They narrowly lost 2-1 (OK, not sure if it was narrow, could've been a 2-1 pumping, but still, just a goal in it). When you look at the sides, you can see the difference.

GK: Andrew McNeil - Alloa (CH)

RB: Andrew Cave-Brown - Beccles Town (NL)

CB: Scott Cuthbert - Luton Town (L2)

CB: Jamie Adams - Ayr United (L1)

LB: Lee Wallace - Rangers (CH)

RM: Simon Ferry - Dundee (PR)

CM: Greg Cameron - Brechin City (L1)

CM: Charles Grant - ?

CM: Ryan Conroy - Queen of the South (CH)

LM: Michael McGlinchey - Wellington Pheonix (A-League)

SC: Calum Elliot - (Manages Edinburgh United)

Subs - Scott Fox (Ross County), Mark Reynolds (Aberdeen), Gary Kenneth (Skonto Riga), Brian Gilmour (Ayr United), Graham Dorrans (Norwich)

So out of the 16 that went into that final, one top flight English player, three top flight Premiership players and a whole lot of meh. 18 caps out of 16 players. The Spain side had 110. Granted Gerard Pique has 69 of those, but why have so many of the players who could have won a tournament faded into obscurity, while pretty much every player that faced them that day has gone on to have a very good career?

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You can't blame the international setup who only get a few weeks with the players, over the clubs who get the rest of the time.

There's a more pertinent question around this topic. 9 years ago, Scotland made it to the U19s European Championship Final against Spain. They narrowly lost 2-1 (OK, not sure if it was narrow, could've been a 2-1 pumping, but still, just a goal in it). When you look at the sides, you can see the difference.

GK: Andrew McNeil - Alloa (CH)

RB: Andrew Cave-Brown - Beccles Town (NL)

CB: Scott Cuthbert - Luton Town (L2)

CB: Jamie Adams - Ayr United (L1)

LB: Lee Wallace - Rangers (CH)

RM: Simon Ferry - Dundee (PR)

CM: Greg Cameron - Brechin City (L1)

CM: Charles Grant - ?

CM: Ryan Conroy - Queen of the South (CH)

LM: Michael McGlinchey - Wellington Pheonix (A-League)

SC: Calum Elliot - (Manages Edinburgh United)

Subs - Scott Fox (Ross County), Mark Reynolds (Aberdeen), Gary Kenneth (Skonto Riga), Brian Gilmour (Ayr United), Graham Dorrans (Norwich)

So out of the 16 that went into that final, one top flight English player, three top flight Premiership players and a whole lot of meh. 18 caps out of 16 players. The Spain side had 110. Granted Gerard Pique has 69 of those, but why have so many of the players who could have won a tournament faded into obscurity, while pretty much every player that faced them that day has gone on to have a very good career?

Robert Snodgrass and Steven Fletcher also played in that tournament but missed the final. I think part of the answer is found in that those boys were quite physical and played a couple of really decent games together (Spain absolutely played us off the park in the group stage though - the gulf in class was evident in that match). We conceded 8 goals in the group stage, the defence actually did look out of its depth most of the time, but there were a few decent attacking players in that squad.

I think from start to finish we've been rubbish at developing good defensive players for years.

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I think from start to finish we've been rubbish at developing good defensive players for years.

That's a good point, actually. I suppose that last good guy was Hendry in WC 98, then back to 1990 for guys like Gough, McLeish and Malpas.

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