"We need to admit that we have a problem,” says Mick Kennedy, the exasperated manager of League One side East Kilbride. “People don’t believe there is a problem, but let me assure you that there is absolutely a problem and I don’t know how anyone can deny that.”
The problem, as he sees it, is Scottish football’s timid approach to player development. Speaking after his side – with an average age of 23 – thumped Kilmarnock’s B Team in the KDM Evolution Trophy, satisfaction with the outcome was laced with worry and frustration.
This season the SPFL changed the format of the KDM Evolution Trophy – the Challenge Cup – to strengthen youth development. The decision was timely in light of Scotland’s failure at the World Cup finals and poor club results in UEFA club competitions. While the game still produces good players on a sporadic basis, it no longer produces nearly enough of them in key positions.
Those who show promise, between the age of 16 and 21, tend to be snapped up by covetous English clubs with deep pockets and disappear into a bloated academy system. Those left behind stagnate while clubs import lots of English and overseas journeymen from Slovakia and Turkey to block their path to the first team.
This week, the SPFL released figures showing that the situation was improving. Bolstered by club cooperation agreements, Under-21 players eligible to play for Scotland played 94,229 minutes during the 2025/26 KDM Evolution Cup, up from 21,489 minutes the previous season, with league chief executive Neil Doncaster calling the new figures “extremely encouraging”. Premiership B teams now play a minimum of six games in the competition where, previously, they were guaranteed just one.
The SPFL have also allowed 15-year-olds to play in the trophy, amending the rules to allow them to play league and League Cup games as well. Aberdeen’s Andrew Fasanya , St Mirren’s Marcello De Barrows and Dundee United’s Lorenzo Sasetti were the main beneficiaries, becoming the youngest players to represent their first teams in the Premier Sports Cup.
While Kennedy welcomes any effort to improve the state of play, he frets that it simply is not enough.
The next manager of Scotland will come in and find goalkeepers, central defenders, left wingers and goalscoring attackers as thin on the ground as Steve Clarke did and, to address the ticking time bomb facing the Scottish game, Kennedy favours “radical” thinking.
“It will be interesting to look at all the B teams in the new KDM tournament and see how many of the boys actually go on to represent the first team a year or two downthe line.
“All we are doing now is moving the deckchairs around on the Titanic. The reality is that it’s very small measures when it needs to be so much more radical. We are so far away from finding a solution it’s beyond belief.”
Speaking in The Fixture last week, former SFA head of men’s elite strategy Chris Docherty offered the view that the Scottish game had adopted just five per cent of the measures needed to emulate other small countries like Norway and Croatia and Iceland.
The governing body have called a meeting of the 42 senior clubs in St Andrews on September 4 where new chief football officer Craig Mulholland will outline “opportunities” to improve the crisis in youth development. While Kennedy hopes for the best, his expectations are tempered by the knowledge that Donald Trump finds more common ground with the mullahs of Iran than Scottish football clubs do with each other.
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“I don’t think they would let me in,” he says, breaking into a grin. “I just don’t think they would want to hear what I’d say. I get a lot of criticism for speaking so openly on this subject. People would rather that I kept my opinion to myself. A lot of folk are in denial about it.
“But we need a totally fresh outlook. We need to be radical and revolutionary. It needs a total change in mentality from everybody. What we have done in the last couple of years has been an attempt to appease people.
“Making changes from the outside looking in which say we are trying to be progressive. But we are nowhere near progressive enough. I think there are good players in this country. But they just don’t get an opportunity.”
When SPFL Premiership season 26/27 kicked off two weeks ago, 33 of the 132 starting players in the 12 top-flight teams were eligible to play for Scotland at some level. Just 25 per cent of the total, Norway’s Eliteserien boasted a native contingent of 64 per cent on the opening weekend, while Denmark’s figure was 47 per cent and Switzerland 45 per cent.
Hibernian’s game against Motherwell had one player from Scotland in the starting line-ups. The Fir Park side had none.
For East Kilbride’s meeting with Kilmarnock B, 18 of the 22 starters were Scottish. How that translates into first-team minutes in future remains to be seen. If the idea is to school young players in the hard facts of footballing life then the first round of games in this season’s KDM Evolution Trophy proved it taught them plenty.
Dundee United shipped five goals to Highland League Clachnacuddin without reply. City rivals Dundee were thrashed by Formartine,
Hibernian B were thumped 4-0 by Clydebank and Motherwell lost to Kelty Hearts.
Promoted in successive seasons, Kennedy’s League One East Kilbride side beat Kilmarnock playing possession-based football. The same can’t necessarily be said of other teams in the lower leagues who prefer to head it and kick it as hard and as far as possible. While Celtic are impressed enough with East Kilbride’s set-up to hold talks over a cooperation agreement, others seem less puritanical over the way they play the game and Kennedy frets over the impact of long-ball football on young talent.
“I think we do have good players,” he adds. “I think the problem we have is that the coaching environment we create for them does not develop football players. That’s just my opinion. We are too reliant on being hard working, being organised, being difficult to beat.
“I might get a bit of stick for saying this, it won’t be popular, but we are expecting League One, Two and some Championship clubs to be the basic foundation level for these young boys learning their trade before going into first teams at a higher level.
“But if you look at the possession stats in the lower leagues, the football is really direct.
“I don’t see how that develops or directs young technical players. Sometimes it’s long-ball football and I understand why because, from a manager’s perspective, people are worried about losing their jobs and need to win on a Saturday.
“I just don’t think that environment creates or develops technical players. I actually feel that it does them a disservice.”
Wary of turning his fire on fellow professionals, Kennedy acknowledges that East Kilbride are part of the problem. By his own admission the club could “do more” with their youth system. Despite an impressive set-up at the Bumblebee Stadium, they do not claim to be standard bearers for the Scottish game.
“I am not advocating here that we are in any shape or form setting the standard for everybody else,” said Kennedy.
“But I am a firm advocate of giving young people an opportunity. And our system suits it.
“If we were very direct and back to front, our average would go to 28 or 30 and we would be looking for more experience.
“But I look at the successful teams in the successful countries and they are all possession-based.
“Now we need more managers and coaches to accept there is an issue and it needs clubs, the SFA and the SPFL to do the same.
“Right now, it feels as if nobody really wants to take full responsibility.
“Everybody wants to blame someone else and one another when we all really need to come together and create a better environment.
“Because I look at the stats for the development of young players in other smaller countries like Norway, Croatia and Denmark and there is no way that we should be as far behind as we are.”
He harks back to a conversation with Dane Jens Berthel Askou before the former Motherwell boss left for Toulouse in France.
Berthel Askou spoke of a fundamental reset in player development in the Scandinavian country a decade ago and advocated something similar for Scotland.
When clubs get round a table in St Andrews next month, Kennedy harbours no real expectation of a Eureka moment.
While Mulholland has begun the process of change by removing the managers of Scotland’s Under-21 and under-17 teams from their roles, clubs will require flattery, careful delicate persuasion and incentives to put their own interests to one side and act in the interests of the game at large.
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“We are at that critical tipping point,” says the East Kilbride boss. “The question for me is, ‘Who is going to lead that?’
“The SFA take a lot of criticism but I don’t think the responsibility lies with any one body or individual.
“Everybody finger points when, in reality, everybody – me included – needs to take their share of responsibility.
“I actually lay a lot of responsibility at the door of managers. We have this fixation with bringing in players from down south. Guys who won’t improve the standard here at all.
“Ultimately, you are picking the team and building the culture and environment where youth players develop.
“And we all need to make it better because if you look at the most advanced countries, they are possession-based right through the whole system.
“We do not have that joined-up thinking at all. I rarely watch a first team and then the youth team and watch them playing the same system or style of play.
“How can you prepare kids to go into a first-team environment when you are not educating them properly on what’s expected once they get there?
“I mean, I’m 46 now and in my lifetime I don’t think this country has ever done anything radical to develop our football.
“If I was in that summit next month, that’s the question I would be asking everybody.
“Do we have radical in us? I just don’t know that we have….”
