Stewart Regan has given an incredible interview to the Telegraph in which he is portrayed as a visionary leading Scottish football out of the dark ages!
The normally reliable Henry Winter has sat down to chat with the SFA chief executive in an interview covering many areas but strangely the events of 2012, the Five Way Agreement and the liquidation of Rangers aren’t brought up.
To those not upto speed with the state of the Scottish game it reads like a glowing endorsement of Regan but is riddled with factual inaccuracies as the former Yorkshire Cricket chief airbrushes recent events to one side.
A picture of developing and nurturing young talent is painted without any mention of the vacancies for a Performance Director or u-21 manager. Regan also discusses an u-20 league which takes place on Monday evenings at senior stadiums!
“Our Under-17s reached the last four in Europe,” Regan tells the Telegraph. “The 19s reached the elite round of the Uefa Championships. The 16s won the Victory Shield last season. There are lots of green shoots from the plan we put in place in 2011.’”
Bringing things upto date Regan could have mentioned how this season’s u-19’s finished third in the European Championship qualifying group behind Lithuania and Norway. In the Victory Shield Scotland have lost at home to Northern Ireland and Wales- green shoots anyone? As Stuart McCall and others will tell you it’s not possible to live off past glories.
Regan added: “Greg (FA chief executive Dyke) has spent time talking to Campbell (SFA President Ogilvie, former director of Rangers (IL) and Hearts) bouncing a few ideas around about developing home grown talent. You’ve got to start young, at school. We opened seven performance schools in Scotland where we have Uefa qualified coaches coming in at 7.45am and taking a group of gifted kids for coaching lessons before school.”
Within 18 months of taking up their posts as performance coaches Ian Cathro, Ray McKinnon, Dean Gore and Scott Booth had quit to take up other jobs. Performance Director Mark Wotte quit last month quickly followed by u21 coach Billy Stark.Â
Taking his revisionism even further Regan added: “We put in place a number of initiatives which we think will make a difference. We’ve introduced competitive Under-16, 17 football at the top end of our Academy programme. We’ve got an Under-20 league and we’re insisting those matches take place in stadiums, at a fixed time on Monday evening so the players get to feel what a stadium is like, playing a competitive match. It’s really all about giving young players game-time. You need a pathway, a strategy which ultimately will result in Scotland winning.”
Unless I’m seriously out of touch I’ve yet to see a league table for u-16 or u-17’s, nor is there a national cup competition at these age levels.
As for an under-20 league that was a one season wonder with the players now playing in a Development League allowing five overage players, plus an overage goalkeeper, in recent weeks Celtic have played Stefan Scepovic, Leigh Griffiths, Alexsandar Tonev, Beram Kayal and Nir Bitton. 90% of the games are played on a Tuesday night.
Hearts play their home matches at the home of Newtongrange Star, Inverness Caley Thistle play at the home of Inverness Clachnacuddin and Hibs play at the home of Spartans.
With the Tonev and Shay Logan situation unresolved, another financial disaster unfolding at Ibrox as licencing issues are ignored and 15,000 empty seats at Scotland’s Euro 2016 qualifier against Georgia perhaps the garden isn’t quite as rosy as Regan portrays in his interview with the Telegraph.
CLICK HERE to read Regan’s interview in full.