Matthew Lindsay: A radical overhaul of the youth set-up is required for Scotland to fulfil their World Cup ambitions

McLeish, the former East Fife player, First Minister and author of the much-vaunted Review of Scottish Football in 2010, popped up to describe the appointment of Brian McClair’s successor as “the most important in the Scottish game”.

It was almost as if time had stood still. For five years ago now Stewart Regan, the SFA chief executive, had used virtually the same words as Mark Wotte was confirmed as the first incumbent of the newly-created post. “This is the single most important recommendation in the review,” he said.

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Craig Levein, the then Scotland manager, had also heralded the arrival of Dutchman Wotte in an identical manner at the time. “I believe this is the most important role ever in Scottish football,” he declared.

Every one of them had a valid point. But what impact has this earth-shattering development had on our ailing national game so far? How has this highly-paid official transformed the fortunes of the Scotland team? What has changed for the better as a consequence of this ground-breaking move?

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As we saw on Saturday night, when a Lithuania team which is in 117th place in the FIFA world rankings looked technically and tactically superior, more athletic and stronger physically than Scotland at times during a Russia 2018 qualifier at Hampden which they were unfortunate not to win, not a great deal.

Of course, it could be some time before the benefits of Wotte’s work - if, indeed, the changes which he instigated in the youth football system in this country do bear fruit - can be seen. He was optimistic they would aid our efforts to reach the World Cup in Qatar in 2022 when he stood down after little over three years in 2014.

McClair recommended wholesale changes during his own brief tenure before growing deeply frustrated at the resistance to the new performance strategy which he encountered in club boardrooms and resigning himself earlier this year.

We are left with a system which has been heavily criticised by many coaches, managers and former players and is obviously not working along with a reluctance, or downright refusal, to accept a different approach is required by those who appear to be putting self-interest ahead of the greater good of Scottish football. The future hardly looks bright.

It is rather hard, then, to share the excitement of McLeish about the endless possibilities of the new SFA Performance Director. We have been in this movie before.

McClair was, for all his experience in the game as a player and a coach at youth, club and international level with Celtic, Manchester United and Scotland and his obvious personal intelligence, possibly not the most gifted politician.

Who knows? Perhaps his replacement will possess greater diplomacy and better people skills and will be able to push through the modifications which are so obviously required. But don't hold your breath.

The new performance director could do worse than give a copy of the illuminating Das Reboot: How German Football Reinvented Itself and Conquered the World by Raphael Honigstein to those who he or she has to persuade so they can see how even major footballing nations can prosper from radically rethinking how they develop talent.

German football was experiencing many of the same issues the Scottish game is currently facing towards the end of the 1990s; the number of kids participating in football was diminishing, the quality of their domestic league was deteriorating, professional teams were relying on foreign imports to an alarming degree, the worthies in charge of the Bundesliga clubs were opposed to those who realised something needed to be done and the performances of the national team were suffering badly as a result.

Read more: No swithering from Slovakia camp: "100 percent we have to beat Scotland now"

The victory Die Mannschaft recorded in the World Cup in Brazil two years ago was a result of innovative changes which were introduced in the German game at grassroots level at the turn of the century as well as extensive investment.

Jerome Boateng, Bendikt Howedes, Mats Hummels, Sami Khedira, Toni Kroos, Manuel Neur, and Mesit Ozil , all key members of Joachim Loew’s side in South America, came through the revamped structure.

If one the most successful countries in the history of international football can rip up its youth programme and start again after decades of heady achievement and consistent success and then why can’t Scotland? Until that happens we face watching reruns of the debacle at Hampden on Saturday for some time to come.