RONNY DEILA, the Celtic manager, believes the next Lionel Messi could be uncovered in Scotland if proper investment is made in youth development.
On the back of Sky and BT agreeing a £5.1bn deal to show the Barclays Premier League, Deila felt that clubs in Scotland have no choice but to try to improve the standard of young players coming through the system by introducing better facilities and coaching.
Deila, only appointed Celtic manager last June, has already taken a keen interest in the club's youth academy and was last night due to meet with youth coaches to try to look at ways of implementing a better "flow" of young players into the first team.
Deila, who worked with Real Madrid's new teenage prodigy, Martin Odegaard, at Stromsgodset, believes there is no reason why Scotland can't similarly produce world-class talent if the appropriate culture and mindset is allowed to flourish.
"Martin is a once every 10 years player in Europe," said the Norwegian. "I have seen very good players but he is very special at that level. But Messi can come from Scotland if you believe in it.
"You have to develop him like Messi and that is not about results. It is about making him into a complete football player. You should never give young players boundaries. I have told my first team players if they make a mistake with a pass I couldn't care less.
"Longer term if you get freedom you relax more and can be creative. No one develops if they are afraid to make mistakes. It is not about results as youngsters, it is about processes. If they have good processes they get results. We are talking about culture and development and that takes time."
Deila is already taking a hands-on approach to youth development at Celtic. "I have a meeting tonight with all the academy coaches and we will talk about these things. It is important to have a pattern that everyone knows. Young players need to feel safe. There is no point playing totally different from under 14s to 16s because then they need to start again.
"I see a lot of talent in Scotland. I see the youngsters at Celtic. I see so much talent. But when you play on pitches like we did yesterday [Firhill] how can you develop technique? When you see what you are comparing it to in Spain, Italy, Germany, even Portugal, a country of 11 million - look at the world stars they get every year. It is not about money. It is about how you train. It's about how you play. Everything has to be instructed. That is my dream - to bring up youngsters from the Celtic academy."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article