Wotte hopes Celtic will join SFA's flagship youth development scheme

Sports Writer

Friday 10 August 2012

MARK WOTTE, the Scottish Football Association performance director, last night paid tribute to the class of 2012 and said he hoped it wouldn't be long before Celtic would be encouraging their youth players to take part.

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Stewart Fisher

More than 100 12-year-old boys and girls, spread among seven specialist schools across Scotland, have been selected to comprise the opening intake of the SFA's flagship £15m youth development scheme, and will begin the initial four-year project next week.

Only one of them, however, has an attachment to the Parkhead club, who have their own schooling scheme from the age of 14 at St Ninian's High School, Kirkintilloch. It all means that while the SFA's national teams effectively benefit from an eighth elite academy, the SFA pay Celtic nothing for the privilege."I'm very excited to be part of this process," Wotte said. "A lot of clubs are struggling financially so we have to support them in developing our young players. Celtic are the only club that doesn't provide players for the performance schools; we have only one Celtic player because his father insisted it was the best thing for him to do. "Celtic has its own schools programme at St Ninian's which we don't pay a penny for, which I don't think is clever from Celtic. We wanted four or five kids from Celtic Under-12s but they were advised not to participate in the performance schools because they have their own St Ninian's project and so are not benefiting from our investment. But it is only for a year and I am sure that when Chris McCart and Peter Lawwell consider it, I hope they will change their opinion."The investment in schools is a hugely positive development for Scottish sport, and could hardly be timed better to coincide with the strong showing of Team GB at the London Olympics. Wotte hopes the Scottish government will buy into this programme in order to expand it from seven schools to 20, and believes these elite new pupils will act as role models to the other pupils. Players develop at different rates, however, as Wotte knows only too well from his time at Southampton when discussions were being held as to whether to release Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, who has now gone on to represent England at full level. "The positive thing about the Olympics is that it is 'inspire a generation' and football is also trying to inspire a new generation," Wotte said. "What I have seen in Holland was that they are all in their tracksuits and all the girls are looking at the boys thinking, 'oh, he is a footballer, great' so all the other boys who are not part of the performance school want to get in there too. These players will have three things on their mind, football training, education and then their social time off, but their social time off will be limited. "To grow up in a performance school and a healthier envionment will cause less problems in future; that is why I want to have a buy-in from the government. We have only seven schools just now, but there could be 20, and not only for football, but for other sports, or maybe even musicians or artists. We have these schools in Holland."

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Wotte hopes Celtic will join SFA's flagship youth development scheme

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