Alan Irvine is rattling through the list of young players he helped to climb the ladder to the highest rung of the professional game.
Back at Everton as assistant to long-term cohort David Moyes, there is a mention of ‘Wayne’. No one sees the need to ask for a second name. “So there was Wayne right at the beginning, really,” he says. “I then worked with Damian Duff and Damian Johnson, and James Beattie.
“James Vaughan, Ross Barkley… Declan Rice. I've been lucky I've worked with good young players.”
The Scotland coach once worked as academy director at Everton. When anxious parents sought assurance that their offspring would be offered a reasonable chance of first team football, he employed a powerful visual tool by way of persuasion.
“We had a board up on the wall that just showed all the players that had made their debuts at 16 years old. I didn't need to do anything to sell the club, just make sure that the parents and the boy are walking past that board when they come out into the office. And the job's done for you.”
One of Steve Clarke’s lieutenants at the World Cup Finals, Irvine is invigorated by some of the young blood around the Scotland squad. Like others, he knew little of Tyler Fletcher until the Manchester United teenager dazzled in a second-half cameo against Curacao, but likes what he sees.
He looks at James Wilson and Ben Gannon-Doak and acknowledges that Scottish football still has the capacity to produce decent footballers. The issues begin when they reach the key transition phase between the ages of 17 and 21 and find their path to first team football blocked by cut-price journeymen from England and overseas.
Starting out with Queen’s Park in 1977, Irvine, 67, remembers sticking in with his Insurance qualifications. Just in case. Playing over 80 games for the Spiders, he earned a move to Everton and never needed them. When he looks at Scottish teams now, established first team players are rare.
The situation concerns him. “I think there are too many foreign players in the leagues and not enough young players getting the opportunity to play at a time when they need to be stretched.
“Having worked in youth development as well as at first team level when young lads are making progress and they're coming through quickly at the lower age groups, they need to continue to be stretched.
“And if they keep on hitting a glass ceiling, then they've got no chance of continuing to develop and because they've stopped developing they plateau and then they drop off.”
During his time as assistant to Moyes at West Ham United, Irvine was given the task of scouting future opponents. He would travel to Denmark – roughly the same size as Scotland - to compile reports and return with a notebook full of young players with a big future in the game.
He struggles to do the same when he travels back to the land where he grew up before forging a very respectable career with Everton, Crystal Palace, Dundee United and Blackburn. Scotland had so many strikers in those days he never came close to an international call-up. “It’s a different level but Declan Rice was one I remember speaking to.
“When I was leaving the full-time role at West Ham, I spoke to Declan, and I said to Declan, ‘if you want my opinion, it's not time for you to go yet.’ Because there was a lot of talk about him possibly going.
“I said, ‘stay here until you feel as if you can't develop any more here and then go. Declan's done that and you look what's happening from there. I've seen too many players - Jack Rodwells and people like that - who have made the mistake of going too early.
"If you're not playing game after game, on the other hand, you need to go.”
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Asked if the Tartan Army should be excited about Tyler Fletcher, son of former Scotland captain Darren, the answer comes complete with a caveat.
Manchester United manager Michael Carrick detected a difference in the teenager during the final months of the season and, like his father, he stands on the cusp of first team football at Old Trafford.
The pace of his continued development is contingent on playing first team games and last season he played just five in all competitions. “So I joined up with the squad on Friday, and the coaches were talking about Tyler,” says Irvine. “And that's big.
“He came on to the pitch against Curacao and looked terrific. Albeit that he's playing against 10 men and we were on top at the time, but he did really well. He looks like a really promising young player.”
There is no ‘but' on the end of the statement because he doesn’t need one. The message to young Fletcher hardly needs spelling out in banner headlines. “Look at Andy Robertson’s pathway or John McGinn, how similar are their pathways?
"They've done all that to go and get to where they are now. Whether it's playing for Queen Park or it's playing for St Mirren, you need to play games.
“That's the only way that you really get stretched and you really continue your development, because if you've been stretched all the way through from being a little kid and you are continually getting put up with the older boys and things like that, then you need that to continue.
“It's like Tyler, Tyler needs to play. Now, I'm I don't know where he is in terms of things at Manchester United, but the worst thing I believe can happen for Tyler is that he sits on the bench every week. I mean, he's very close to playing for Man United, so that would be the ideal; that's the pinnacle.
“I think that just that he is he's a really good, young player who needs to keep on developing and he can certainly still develop in Manchester United, of course."
For Irvine, the chance to work with young international players with Scotland at a World Cup is an experience he never expected. Working side by side with Moyes at Everton, he will also provide analysis on Scotland’s opponents at the World Cup as well as schooling the team on where they should be when they take possession of the ball.
A former Scotland under-19 coach, he joined the senior set-up after Euro 2024, when John Carver left. While Clarke sings his praises, he was never involved with Scotland as a player at any level and sounds like a man embracing an Indian summer in his coaching career.
“As a player, I was a late developer. I started as an insurance broker and played for Queen’s Park. My last game for them was against Cowdenbeath at Central Park. My next game of football was for Everton in Japan against Inter Milan.
“That probably shows I was trying to bridge quite a big gap. I genuinely didn’t think I’d continue being a professional player after the three-year contract I signed at Everton. Because that gap just seemed too big.
“But by December of that year, I got into the first team and stayed in there. Even then, I kept my registration going because I’d got an insurance degree. I didn’t want to lose that because I thought I’d be back there soon.
“Fortunately, that’s never happened, but it was probably 10 years before I actually stopped that. I realised then I was going to be around for a little bit longer.
“My insurance was my insurance…”
