BRIAN Whittle, the former Olympic athlete who is now the MSP for South Scotland, told Holyrood yesterday that both the SFA and the SPFL have “questions to answer” over how children in the Club Academy Scotland (CAS) system are treated and alleged their current rules are allowing “skulduggery” to take place .
However, Whittle, who was a member of the Public Petitions Committee at the Scottish parliament when the governing bodies were urged to scrap regulations which had been branded “exploitative” back in 2020, expressed his frustration at youth football campaigners turning to legal representatives in an attempt to achieve their objectives during heated exchanges.
He called for compromise from both sides so that a long-running dispute which has now raged for 15 years can be settled and change achieved which enables promising players to flourish at elite professional clubs and kids who fail to make it in the paid ranks to remain involved in the sport.
The Scottish Conservatives politician was speaking following a meeting of the Health, Social Care and Sport committee at Holyrood which heard evidence from Nick Hobbs of the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland, Scott Robertson of RealGrassroots and Mahesh Madlani and Alex Waksman of Gunnercooke.
RealGrassroots and the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland made complaints to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) back in December about four SFA and SPFL statutes which they alleged violated UK competition law and potentially constituted the economic exploitation of children.
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The CMA wrote to the SFA and SPFL in March reminding them of their obligations to comply with competition law and recommending they assess their practices.
Whittle, while expressing his concern about the disputed “no poach”, “no approach”, “unilateral extension” and “development contribution” rules, admitted that he would now like to see the two factions reach agreement which benefitted the Scottish game.
Hobbs, the head of investigations with the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland, alleged the Wellbeing Panel which was set up to determine if players in the CAS set-up could be released from a controversial two year registration which they sign when they turn 15 acted in the interest of the clubs not children.
“The Wellbeing Panel is a really good example of the kind of attitude that underpins all of this,” he told the committee. “On the surface, it looks and sounds like a very positive mechanism for facilitating that movement between the clubs where necessary.
“But when we met with the SFA we asked, ‘In what circumstances would you envisage a wellbeing panel would refuse permission for a child to move from one club to another’. They weren’t able to tell us. That strongly suggests to me that the wellbeing panel exists not as a mechanism to facilitate that movement, but as an obstacle to prevent it from happening.
“Children will tend not to raise complaints when there are significant administrative processes that they have to go through and barriers that they have to jump over. I think The Wellbeing Panel is designed to restrict movement between clubs rather than facilitate it.
“The underlying issue here, and it always has been, is that the clubs principally view these children as economic assets and have rules and processes in place which allow them to be monetised. That SFA has made rules which are in the interests of clubs and not of the children.”
However, he revealed that he has two grandchildren who are members of the CAS system and stressed that their experiences did not tally with the evidence which had been given.
He said, “The changes which have been made to the unilateral extension rule are an adequate compromise if they’re actually applied properly. The devil's in the detail here. The reality is that some do it properly, some don't. So I would like to see the application of the rule tightened up rather than the rule changed. The rule is not a problem. The application of the rule is where we need to start looking.
“There are some significant issues which need to be tackled. I have spoken to Mr Maxwell about this in a meeting we had at the SFA offices about six weeks ago. I was equally upset in that meeting as I was today. The ‘no approach’ rule, for example, doesn't make sense to me whatsoever. What nonsense is that? That's restrictive to everybody.
“But that's not getting to the nub of what the problem is. That's why I was getting so frustrated, because this is not getting us to where we need to be. We need to start with a blank bit of paper and say, ‘What do we want?’ We want a system here where we bring kids in at one level and they have the ability to route map all the way through to international level.
“But along the way there are other stations where their talent can be utilised, even if that's just playing five-a-side football with their pals. That's not happening at the moment. There's lots of things we could be doing and should be doing that would make it much better.”
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He added, “I'm not optimistic the change that is needed can be achieved. If you get two sides so entrenched, it's very difficult to find compromise. My problem is this is a real grassroots issue, but all we heard from were lawyers. You're never going to get a compromise out of that.
“The SFA and SPFL will always be on the defensive if lawyers are involved. If it's a legal problem, deal with it in the courts. They kept saying, ‘They're breaching this, they're breaching that’. But they've proved nothing.
“Some of the things they were saying in there did not reflect my experiences. I've got a couple of grandkids who are in the Club Academy Scotland system. One moved from a smaller club to a bigger club as well. I never saw any problems. Don't get me wrong, there are problems. If you've got 2,700 kids and you've got all these clubs, you know there is some skulduggery going on.
“But as it's not just in Scottish football where there are problems. In my sport, in track and field, if you move to a club without it being okayed you get a nine month ban. You need to have extenuating circumstances. The clubs have to agree or Scottish Athletics have to say, ‘You're allowed’.”
Whittle continued, “I am quite frustrated. I think the SFA and the SPFL have got questions to answer here. But I heard a lot of conflated evidence here today which I was actually quite angry about.
“We need to get the two sides in the room with the same objective. We all have the same objective. We want to get all the kids to play football. We want all levels of football to be at their best. We want Scotland to win the World Cup. That's not going to happen obviously, but that’s what we want. At the moment, the system is not allowing that to happen.”
The SFA and SPFL were both approached for comment.
Back in March, an SFA spokesperson said, “We have been in dialogue with the CMA and will continue to monitor our policies and procedures in line with FIFA regulations.”
