Celtic manager Martin O’Neill maintains young players will come through at clubs if they “are good enough”.
An ongoing symposium in Scottish football looking at youth development has led to a summit of clubs and associations in St Andrews in Friday.
Advertisement
The Scottish FA are to offer clubs financial incentives to play youngsters while data analysts and Club Brugge recruitment director Guilian Preud’homme presented to those assembled.
O’Neill first managed Celtic from 2000-05 and has also managed extensively in England and with the Republic of Ireland.
“One of the things that I believe they might be discussing at St Andrews today, I think, is maybe bringing young players into the squads, like they did when I was here 25 years ago,” O’Neill said. “We had to have a couple of players, at least on the bench, to play.
“Now, it’s got some merit and it’s also got a lot of drawbacks as well, because eventually you need these players to be good enough.
Advertisement
“There’s no point if they get a false feeling that they have made the grade when they’re brought into the squad and they’re maybe miles away from it, but you’ve had to do it because of a reason. And secondly, and you know the old selfish reason, as a football manager, you have to try and win some games. So, it is a difficult one.
“I’ve always had this feeling that if you’re good enough, you will come through. Of course, you need people to believe in you very, very early on. You need coaches to believe in you, you need a manager to believe in you and you need belief in yourself.
“But if you are good enough, you will come through.”
And O’Neill added: “My concern is that the players are naturally being taken away so early here, out of Scotland, because the rewards, or seemingly the rewards, or the immediate rewards are a lot of finance to the player and the family, are things that you probably can’t turn down.
Read the full article here