Mark Wotte, erstwhile performance director at the Scottish FA, has jacked in his job. In that peculiar Scottish way, the news has provoked disdain and mocking in certain quarters.

Wotte tended to split opinion - some admired him, others disparaged him - but either way the key evidence about his work in Scottish football will not be available for some years to come.

Wotte's job in Scotland was to create an environment in which our young football talent could flourish. His big idea was Performance Schools, seven of which have now been established around the country.

In this new system Wotte has created a pathway for hundreds of Scottish kids to combine a traditional education with elite football development.

And "elitism" is shamelessly the word. This is no Jack-and-Jill free-for-all. This is about creaming off the best young Scottish footballers and rearing them, if possible, for future Scotland teams.

Will these schools work? Will they prove their worth? We won't know the answer to that for at least another five years, in which case a true verdict on Wotte must be suspended in time.

Wotte has had one almost inviolable rule in his favour - he is Dutch. Somewhat amazingly, the aura of Total Football, the brilliant Dutch system of 40 years ago, lingers to this day.

In football, any coach from Holland, barring obvious idiots, is almost viewed like a Greek philosopher, a keeper of eternal truths to be handed down.

There is obvious nonsense in this cliché, but the image endures. And Wotte arrived in Scotland with the not infrequent knack of quoting endless players from the Netherlands whom he claimed to have set on their way.

The SFA certainly invested much faith and hope in him, and can to a degree feel that Wotte, in lasting just three years, has not quite gone the distance in terms of seeing the job through.

Funnily enough, on the few occasions I encountered Wotte, he was a strange mix of devotion to the task but also, at times, showing a certain rolling of the eyes, as if he'd had his fill of the very earnest role of grassroots strategies.

The Wotte experience brings us back to the very heart of a key issue in Scotland…how do we produce new generations of talented players?

In the old days, seemingly, it was easy. Working class Scotland produced batches of Jimmy Johnstones, Willie Hendersons and Billy Bremners, almost without having to think. They just seemed to pop up. They were just there.

In the age of the new technologies, however, something happened. Scotland ceased producing great footballers - or at least, we appeared to fall behind the pace of other European countries.

It was as if, in the post-industrial age, Scotland didn't know how to do it anymore. The production-line of fine Scottish players began to resemble an old, disused coal-pit.

Wotte, with the rich culture of Dutch football behind him, was hired to provide a thoughtful response to this national anxiety. Indeed, his Performance Schools idea was imported wholesale from his homeland, where he held it up as a resounding success.

There is intrigue about where Scottish football will be in five or 10 years' time. Right now, under Gordon Strachan, there is renewed optimism about the national team.

But here's the thing…there is randomness at work. What fine players the country currently has seem to have emerged from all sorts of different backgrounds: the back garden, the school, the boys club ranks, the pro club ranks.

There is something about the scatty nature of football development - thank God - which no education system will ever master. As Judy Murray has put it: "Within a safe environment, just encourage our kids to go out and play."

What Scotland still has not got over - and what Wotte and others have tried to fix - is the fact that little boys no longer play football as voraciously as they once did.

Up until the 1980s, when some sort of behavioural shift occurred, Scottish boys spent thousands of hours playing - ie practising - the game. When that ceased, the search began to find a replacement model whereby our future footballers would be moulded.

That search goes on apace. And Wotte, until this week, was leading the quest.

The SFA now has to find a new Performance Director. There is no disputing it, it is a key position within football. And there can be no turning back - the Performance Schools are it.

As for Wotte, like everyone else in the game, he has been and is gone.